Evelyn Nesbit

Based on Wikipedia: Evelyn Nesbit

On June 25, 1906, in front of hundreds of theatergoers watching a musical on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden, a man named Harry Thaw walked up to one of America's most famous architects, Stanford White, and shot him dead. The murder weapon was a pistol. The motive was a woman—specifically, the woman Thaw had married the year before, a twenty-one-year-old former chorus girl and artist's model named Evelyn Nesbit.

The newspapers called the ensuing trial the "Trial of the Century." They weren't wrong to be dramatic about it.

But to understand why Thaw killed White, and why the entire nation became obsessed with the story, you have to understand Evelyn Nesbit herself—a woman who, by her mid-teens, had become one of the most photographed people in America, whose face sold everything from beer trays to life insurance, and whose beauty had attracted the attention of men who were willing to spend fortunes, destroy reputations, and ultimately commit murder to possess her.

The Girl from Natrona

Evelyn Nesbit was born on Christmas Day, 1884, in Natrona, Pennsylvania, a small town near Pittsburgh. Her father, Winfield Scott Nesbit, was an attorney who adored his daughter and encouraged her intellectual curiosity in unconventional ways. He built her a personal library stocked not with the sentimental novels considered appropriate for girls of that era, but with adventure stories—the "pluck and luck" tales that were typically reserved for boys. When she showed interest in music and dance, he paid for lessons.

This childhood of relative security ended abruptly when Evelyn was about ten. Her father died suddenly at forty, leaving the family destitute. Everything was auctioned off to pay debts. Evelyn, her mother, and her younger brother Howard became, in her own words, nomads—sharing single rooms in a succession of boardinghouses, dependent on the charity of relatives and friends.

Evelyn's mother tried running a boardinghouse herself, sometimes sending twelve-year-old Evelyn to collect rent from the lodgers. "Mamma was always worried about the rent," Evelyn later recalled. "It was too hard a thing for her to actually ask for every week, and it never went smoothly." The venture failed. Mrs. Nesbit, it turned out, lacked the temperament for business.

In 1899, the family moved to Philadelphia, following a tip that Mrs. Nesbit might find work as a seamstress. She ended up as a sales clerk at Wanamaker's department store instead. Both children joined her there—fourteen-year-old Evelyn and twelve-year-old Howard working twelve-hour days, six days a week.

It was at Wanamaker's that everything changed.

The Discovery

An artist spotted Evelyn in the store and was struck by her appearance. She asked the teenager to sit for a portrait. Evelyn's mother, cautious about propriety, agreed only after confirming that the artist was a woman. For five hours of posing, Evelyn earned one dollar—roughly equivalent to thirty-two dollars today.

That single dollar pointed the way to a new life.

Word spread among Philadelphia's artistic community. Soon Evelyn was a favorite model for illustrators, portrait painters, and stained-glass artisans. The money was better than anything Wanamaker's offered. "When I saw I could earn more money posing as an artist's model than I could at Wanamaker's," she later explained, "I gave my mother no peace until she permitted me to pose for a livelihood."

In November 1900, the family moved to New York City, where they crammed into a single back room in a building on 22nd Street in Manhattan. Mrs. Nesbit's attempts to find work as a seamstress in the competitive New York market failed. So she did what any desperate mother might do: she used the letters of introduction her daughter had accumulated from Philadelphia artists.

One letter connected them to James Carroll Beckwith, a respected painter whose primary patron was John Jacob Astor—yes, that Astor family. Beckwith took a protective interest in the teenage Evelyn and introduced her to other legitimate artists.

Within months, Evelyn Nesbit became one of the most sought-after models in New York City.

The Gibson Girl

To understand Evelyn's rise, you need to understand what was happening in American visual culture at the turn of the twentieth century.

Photography was beginning to replace illustration in advertising. The "live model" style—using photographs of attractive young women to sell products—was just emerging as a marketing technique. Evelyn arrived at precisely the right moment to ride this wave.

She worked with pioneering photographers like Otto Sarony and Rudolf Eickemeyer. She appeared on the covers of Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, The Delineator, Ladies' Home Journal, and Cosmopolitan. Her face sold Coca-Cola, Prudential Life Insurance, and countless other products. She appeared on beer trays, tobacco cards, pocket mirrors, postcards, and sheet music covers.

But her most famous appearance was as one of the "Gibson Girls."

Charles Dana Gibson was arguably the most influential illustrator in America at the time. His drawings of the idealized American woman—tall, elegant, with masses of upswept hair—defined feminine beauty for an entire generation. When Gibson used Evelyn as his model for a work titled "Woman: The Eternal Question," her profile became iconic. In the portrait, her luxuriant hair forms the shape of a question mark, a visual pun that captured something essential about her appeal: she was a mystery, an object of fascination and speculation.

The fees she earned from modeling eventually exceeded the combined income her entire family had earned at Wanamaker's. But even this wasn't enough to keep pace with New York's brutal cost of living.

She wanted something more.

The Florodora Girl

The theater beckoned. Specifically, the chorus line.

In 1901, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, Evelyn landed an interview with John C. Fisher, the company manager of Florodora, a wildly popular musical then enjoying a long run at the Casino Theatre on Broadway. Her mother's initial objections softened considerably when she learned that several chorus girls from the show had managed to marry millionaires. The theater, it seemed, could be a path to wealth and security.

Evelyn joined the chorus as a "Spanish maiden." The cast nicknamed her "Flossie the Fuss," which she hated. She changed her professional name to Evelyn Nesbit and never looked back.

After Florodora, she won a part in The Wild Rose, where producer George Lederer recognized her potential and promoted her from chorus line to featured player—the role of a Gypsy girl named "Vashti." The newspapers went wild. On May 4, 1902, the New York Herald ran a two-page spread about her rise from model to chorus girl to star. "Her Winsome Face to be Seen Only from 8 to 11pm," announced the headline.

The press coverage focused almost entirely on her physical appearance and stage presence. Her acting skills were rarely mentioned.

But it didn't matter. Evelyn Nesbit had become famous. And famous meant wealthy men would come calling.

The Architect

Stanford White was forty-six years old when he met Evelyn Nesbit. He was one of the most celebrated architects in America, a partner in the prestigious firm of McKim, Mead & White. He had designed landmark buildings across the country, including the second Madison Square Garden—the very building where he would eventually be murdered.

He was also married with a son. This did not prevent him from maintaining an active independent social life.

A fellow Florodora chorus girl named Edna Goodrich introduced Evelyn to White. Evelyn's first impression was of his size—she later described it as "appalling"—and his age. He seemed, she said, "terribly old."

But White was charming, witty, and extraordinarily generous. He invited Evelyn and Goodrich to lunch at his elaborate apartment on West 24th Street, an apartment so luxuriously furnished that Evelyn was overwhelmed. After the meal, White led the party upstairs to a room decorated in green, where a large red velvet swing hung from the ceiling.

The swing became famous later, a lurid detail in newspaper accounts of their relationship. That afternoon, it was simply entertainment—White pushed Evelyn on the swing while everyone laughed and played games.

White quickly became a fixture in the Nesbit family's life. He moved Evelyn, her mother, and her brother into a suite at the Wellington Hotel, fully furnished at his expense. He paid for young Howard to attend a military academy near Philadelphia. He won over Mrs. Nesbit completely.

Then he persuaded Mrs. Nesbit to take a trip to Pittsburgh to visit friends, assuring her that he would look after Evelyn in her absence.

What Happened Next

Years later, during the murder trial that would consume the nation's attention, Evelyn testified about what happened while her mother was away.

She described having dinner and champagne at White's apartment, followed by a tour that ended in what she called the "mirror room"—a chamber furnished only with a green velvet sofa. She said White asked her to change into a yellow satin kimono. The next thing she remembered, she claimed, was waking up naked in bed next to an also-naked White, with blood on the sheets. She was, by her account, sixteen years old. She had been given alcohol, possibly drugged, and raped.

The allegations were explosive. But what made them even more complicated was what happened afterward: despite what she described as date rape, Evelyn continued her relationship with White for some time. He remained her lover and close companion.

Why? The question haunted observers then and continues to puzzle historians now. Some suggest Evelyn was trapped by economic necessity—White was her family's primary financial support. Others point to the psychological complexity of abuse and the difficulty of breaking free from a powerful man in an era when a young woman had few options and fewer protections. Still others have questioned the accuracy of her account, noting that it emerged only during a trial where establishing White as a villain served her husband's defense.

We cannot know with certainty what happened in that mirror room. What we do know is that Evelyn later claimed to have discovered White had affairs with other underage girls, their names recorded in a "little black book."

The Actor

Before Evelyn met the man who would become her husband, she had a romance with another man who would become famous: John Barrymore.

Not yet the legendary actor he would become, Barrymore in 1902 was a twenty-year-old aspiring illustrator and cartoonist, charming and irresponsible with money. He saw Evelyn perform in The Wild Rose at least a dozen times before they finally met at a party thrown by Stanford White.

Evelyn was smitten. Barrymore was witty, fun-loving, nothing like the older men who usually pursued her. They stayed out together until the early morning hours. When Barrymore eventually asked her to marry him—in front of both her mother and Stanford White—she turned him down.

Both White and Mrs. Nesbit considered Barrymore an unsuitable match. White, perhaps not coincidentally, arranged for Evelyn to be enrolled at a boarding school in New Jersey, separating the young lovers. The school was run by Mathilda DeMille, mother of the future film director Cecil B. DeMille.

The Barrymore chapter of Evelyn's life closed. The Thaw chapter was about to begin.

The Millionaire

Harry Kendall Thaw was the son of William Thaw, a Pittsburgh railroad and coke magnate whose fortune at its peak approached forty million dollars—equivalent to well over a billion dollars today. Harry had grown up with every advantage money could buy and none of the discipline that might have made him a functional adult.

He had a history of mental instability and violent behavior. He had been expelled from Harvard. He was known in certain circles for his sadistic treatment of women. He was obsessed with Evelyn Nesbit.

Thaw pursued Evelyn relentlessly after they met in 1901. At first she rebuffed him—she found him strange and off-putting. But Thaw had patience and bottomless wealth. He sent flowers, gifts, invitations. When Evelyn needed to travel to Europe for her health (she had developed appendicitis), Thaw appeared on the same ship, having booked passage specifically to continue his pursuit.

In Europe, according to Evelyn's later testimony, Thaw revealed a different side of himself. He became obsessed with her past relationship with Stanford White, questioning her about it repeatedly, demanding details, flying into rages. She described him beating her with a whip during their trip.

And yet, in 1905, Evelyn married him.

Why would a woman marry a man who had already shown himself to be violently unstable? The answer, again, is complicated. Evelyn's modeling and acting career had peaked. She was aging out of the ingenue roles. Her family still needed support. And Thaw, despite everything, represented security—the security of one of the largest fortunes in America.

She was twenty years old. He was thirty-four.

The Murder

The evening of June 25, 1906, was hot and humid in New York. Harry and Evelyn Thaw attended the premiere of a new musical called "Mamzelle Champagne" at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden—the building Stanford White had designed.

White was there too, seated at a table near the stage.

During the performance, Harry Thaw left his seat. He walked across the crowded rooftop toward White's table. He pulled out a pistol.

He fired three shots at close range into Stanford White's face.

White slumped over, dead before he hit the floor. The orchestra stopped. The audience, initially uncertain whether this was part of the show, began to scream. Thaw held the pistol above his head and walked calmly toward the exit, where he was arrested.

Asked why he had done it, Thaw reportedly said: "I did it because he ruined my wife."

The Trial of the Century

The murder trial of Harry Thaw became a national sensation. Newspapers competed to provide the most salacious coverage. The public was transfixed.

The defense strategy centered on Evelyn's testimony about her alleged rape by Stanford White. If Thaw could be portrayed as a husband driven temporarily insane by the violation of his wife's honor, he might escape the electric chair. Evelyn became the trial's star witness, describing in detail her relationship with White—the champagne, the mirror room, the blood on the sheets.

The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second trial, in 1908, resulted in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Thaw was committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

He had escaped execution. But he remained confined.

After the Trial

Evelyn's life after the trial was a long, slow decline from fame.

She visited Thaw during his confinement, maintaining the appearance of a loyal wife. But his family—the Thaws of Pittsburgh, with their millions—treated her poorly. They had never approved of the marriage and blamed her, in some sense, for the scandal that had engulfed the family name. When it became clear that the Thaws would not support her financially, Evelyn left.

She toured Europe with a dance troupe. In Germany, she gave birth to a son, Russell Thaw. The boy's paternity was disputed—Harry Thaw, still confined to an asylum, claimed he could not possibly be the father and eventually denied paternity entirely.

Evelyn divorced Thaw and moved to Hollywood, where she attempted to reinvent herself as a silent film actress. She appeared in numerous pictures, trading on her notoriety if not her talent. She wrote two memoirs, published in 1914 and 1934, offering her version of events that had made her famous.

The fame itself never entirely faded, but its nature changed. She was no longer the Gibson Girl, the idealized American beauty. She was a curiosity, a relic of a scandal from another era. She struggled financially for much of her later life, the millions of the Thaw fortune forever out of reach.

The Legacy

Evelyn Nesbit died on January 17, 1967, in Santa Monica, California. She was eighty-two years old.

Her life had spanned an extraordinary period of American history—from the Gilded Age to the Space Age, from the era of horse-drawn carriages to the era of jet planes. She had been a pioneer of modern celebrity, one of the first women whose face was reproduced millions of times to sell products to a mass audience. She had been the central figure in what many considered the first true media circus surrounding a criminal trial.

But what did her life mean?

Evelyn Nesbit's story can be read as a cautionary tale about the exploitation of young women by powerful men—a theme that feels painfully contemporary more than a century later. Stanford White, whatever his architectural achievements, pursued teenage girls. Harry Thaw was a violent abuser who happened to be rich enough to escape consequences for most of his life. Evelyn herself was, in many ways, a victim of both men and of a society that offered young women few paths to economic security beyond their appearance.

It can also be read as a story about the emergence of modern celebrity culture and its costs. Evelyn became famous for her beauty, then more famous for her trauma, then most famous for her connection to murder. Each stage of fame brought less dignity and more exposure. By the end, she was famous simply for having once been famous.

In 1939, decades after their youthful romance, Evelyn Nesbit and John Barrymore—by then one of the most celebrated actors of his generation—met again. What they said to each other, what they thought about the paths their lives had taken, remains unknown. Barrymore died three years later. Nesbit lived on for another twenty-five years, the last survivor of a scandal that had once consumed America.

The red velvet swing. The mirror room. The shots on the rooftop. The girl in the kimono who woke up to blood on the sheets. These images persist, frozen in time, while the people who inhabited them have long since turned to dust. What remains is the question—always the question, like the curl of hair in Gibson's famous portrait—of who Evelyn Nesbit really was, and whether anyone, including Evelyn herself, ever truly knew the answer.