£15,000 FOR SPANKING

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 14 February 1930, Page 7

£15,000 FOR SPANKING

NOTORIOUS HARRY THAW. The limelight of publicity has once again been uuiiected upon Harry Thaw, the man who narrowly escaped! death ior killing Stamford \Vhite. the millionaire architect, in 1909, by an action in which he figured as defendant in New York the other day. Thaw was ordered to pay £15,000 damage® to Alias Marv O’Neill, an attractive night club hostess, who was also known as Miss Marcia Esfardus. a. O’Nei'il alleged that Thaw invited! her to a pyjama party at his apartment on January 1, 1927, and then, undressed her. bit her and sipanked her with .a hairbrush. She declared

..t she had suffered great mental and! physical anguish. Harry Thaw, who is now a grey-haired', middle-aged man and rather podgy, is just as ganradous and impetuous as in the days of the famous trial. He declared that he was amassed by the action of t'he New York jury, and that he would appeal. The verdict made it the highest-priced spanking on record. Thaw gasped audibly on hearing the jury’s decision, and was at first speechless with astonishment. Miss O’Neill weipt copiously while she described the way in which Thaw showered his attentions upon her during the New Year’s party which terminated! in the hairbrush episode, and she broke into fresh tears when the verdict was announced. “Gentlemen,” she exclaimed to the jury, “I am happy because vou have restored my name as a pure woman. Now it- is good-bye to the cabarets and night clubs of New York. I am going to a country where hairbrushes are only used for brushing hair.” Before Thaw 'left court he was served with a summons for £2OOO by Dr. Smith Jelliffe, an eminent New York neurologist, who stated he was engaged by Thaw in connection with his trial for the murder of Stamford White 21 years ago. and still remained unpaid.