HARRY THAW’S RETURN.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19367, 25 July 1925, Page 4

HARRY THAW’S RETURN.

“NEW YORK IS ROTTEN.” AFTER TWENTY YEARS. Harry Kendall Thaw returned to the bright lights of Broadway last week, after 20 years—a modern Rip Van Winkle. Thaw found a different Broadway than in the days when he. one of its best-known habitues, wooed and won Evelyn Nesbit, the dancing girl-Evelyn (Nesbit for whose love ho quarrelled with Stanford White, the architect, and shot him to death under the soft lights of the Madison. Square roof garden. Twenty years of fleeing before the law, languishing in steel-barred prison cells, walking with a guard in. the grounds of insane asylums —then Thaw I came back. He found the old Broadway dead, his friends dead or vanished, the bright lights too bright, the old haunts all gone. Even Madison Square 'Garden, the seen of his tragedy, crumbi ling under the hammers of labourers, iwas being torn down to make -way for a modern structure. j The girls shun him. There are only a few —they could be counted on the ' lingers of one hand —who are even friendly with him. His former wife, now dancing in her own cabaret in Atlantic City, was mentioned. Thaw laughted mirthlessly. Thaw visited some of the night clubs. The jazz bands, the slang of the girls —all'of it made him irritable. His visit to Broadway lasted two nights. Then ho left. “New York/’ he said, “is rotten. I don’t understand it. It isn’t the place ' I used to know. I don ’t understand (the girls. Twenty years —what a change. ’ ’ _______