FIGHT WITH ADVERSARY

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3308, 30 March 1926, Page 13

FIGHT WITH ADVERSARY

EVELYN THAAV’S ok deal. MURDER REVELATIONS RECALLED. One of the most tragic women in the world has again come into the limelight—the ill-starred Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, former wife of Harry K. Thaw, the millionaire, who shot Stanford White in the Madison Square Roof Garden in 1906. Hearing a cry, her young son, Russell, rushed into his mother's bedroom and found her on the floor screaming that she had taken poison. Dut for his presence of mind in administering an emetic she would have stood little chance of recovery. A doctor was summoned, and after the vigorous application of a stomach pump and other first-aid action, she was removed to hospital.

Worn and grey, with the marks of vicissitude upon her face, Evelyn Thaw to-day bears little resemblance to the lovely and brilliant young society woman whose honour Thaw avenged in such dramatic fashion.

More than fifty years of age, he is once again enjoying the bright lights of Broadway, apparently little the worse for his incarceration in Kirkbride Asylum, whore he remained for eighteen years after the long legal battle for his life had culminated in his being declared insane.

But the beautiful woman for whom he did not scruple to take life has sunk lower and lower, until now she is reduced to earning a precarious living as a show girl in small town theatres.

The only time she emerges from obscurity is when some new and painful episode of her life is revealed. Twenty years ago, however, the name of the "angel wife” —as she was then called—was on every tongue, and the courts of the United States wore resounding with the astounding disclosures of her tragic romance.

It was on a night in June that Harry Thaw, a revolver in his clenched fist and stark murder in his eyes, set forth to seek the millionaire libertine who, he was convinced, had debauched his wife when she was a mere child. A Tense Second. Stanford White was seated at dinner with a party of friends when the slayer walked over to the table and calmly levelled the weapon at his head. As clearly as though it had been written on the other’s brow, the millionaire saw his doom, and threw up his hands in despair. For a tense, pregnant second the voluptuary and the outraged husband

For a tense, pregnant second the voluptuary and the outraged husband faced each other across the litter of champagne bottles and cigar ends; then the revolver spat flame, and behind the coil of blue smoke White reeled back with his fingers clutching a scorched hole in his shirtfront.

Another shot rang out; thou another. Petrified with horror, the guests saw White crumple up like a marionette when the string has been cut.

The greatest of all American architects lay dead on the floor of the building which had made him famous. Long Legal Battle.

Then the long legal battle began. Immediately the vast Thaw fortune was brought together, and the greatest of American lawyers were retained for the defence. In a desperate effort to save her husband from the electric chair, Evelyn Nosbit Thaw bared her life to the world. She told of her association with White, of his luxurious studio, its secret passages, Its plush swings where the millionaire swung women and girls until their feet touched the ceiling. She told of a dinner the feature of which was a huge pie containing a nude young girl— a girl who later died in the gutter. All through the ordeal —and It was a terrible one —she displayed oxtraordinory powers of endurance • and courage. Only once did she break down, when the prosecuting lawyer was dragging from her the details of her intimate relations with her seducer. Her mother, she declared, forced her to write to White, even though she hated him. A fortune was spent, but Thaw was committed to an asylum. Then another fortune was spent in an attempt to free him. Meanwhile he staged a dramatic escape in a motor car to Canada, but was arrested and sent to the Tombs prison. Then in 1915 he was released on the report of five physicians, who announced that he had completely recovered his sanity. He went to his mother’s home at Crcsson, Pennsylvania, and declared his intention of passing the remainder of his days in retirement. "I want to forgot the world and be forgotten,’’ he said. "I have had enough of women. I havo done with them, and I will take good care they do not cross my path again. There is only one woman I shall ever love—my mother " Thaw seemed tired of his life of seclusion, and it was not long before he was sighing after the ‘‘flesh pots." At last the lure of the bright lights broke down his resolutions, and once again he began to live the life of a wealthy man about town. His return to Broadway the beginning of- a round of hectic nights at cabarets and restaurants. Photographed and feted everywhere ho went, he finally declared himself tired of all the attention lie was attracting. “I will have no more of it,” he said. "I will just do as I wish, and please myself in every way. If 1 want Broadway, I will have Broadway. I want peace, and 1 want Broadway, and I shall do just what I like." Living for Her Son. At one of the fashionable cabarets ho was in the habit of visiting he made the acquaintance of a girl who quickly changed his views towards women. “I had done with girls for ever,” he told her. ”1 had

put them from me. I had believed that love was not for me, who had suffered so deeply, and have been through what would have killed many. But I forget everything now in my love for you.” Cut the girl, whose exquisite figure had been modelled by some of the most famous sculptors in America, declined to give a definite pledge. ;'he asked for time to “think matters over.” Vrhile her former husband is in search of youth, however, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw has fallen upon evil times. "I look in my mirror and say to myself,” she declared not long 'ago: “You wore once beautiful, but j care and worry and trouble have 'taken their toll. Now you have nothing to live for except your son.”