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The Traitor
Being The Untampered With Unrevised Account Of The Trial And All That Led To It.
271 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1926
2 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Harry K. Thaw
4 books1 followerHarry Kendall Thaw (February 12, 1871 – February 22, 1947) was the son of Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron William Thaw, Sr. Heir to a multi-million dollar mine and railroad fortune, Harry Thaw had a history of severe mental instability and led a profligate life. His historical legacy rests on one notorious act: on June 25, 1906, on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden, Thaw murdered renowned architect Stanford White who had been the lover of Thaw's wife, model/chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit.
Plagued by mental illness since childhood, Thaw spent money lavishly to fund his obsessive partying, drug addiction, and the gratification of his sexual appetites. It is alleged that it was at this time that the term "playboy" entered the popular vocabulary coined to describe the lifestyle that Thaw so energetically pursued. The Thaw family wealth allowed them to buy the silence of those individuals who threatened to make public the worst of Thaw’s reckless behavior and licentious transgressions. Throughout his life, however, he had several serious confrontations with the criminal justice system, which resulted in his incarceration in mental institutions.
Thaw shot and killed Stanford White as a result of his jealousy over the relationship between his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, and White. After one hung jury, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Years later, Stanford's son Lawrence Grant White would write, "On the night of June 25th, 1906, while attending a performance at Madison Square Garden, Stanford White was shot from behind [by] a crazed profligate whose great wealth was used to besmirch his victim's memory during the series of notorious trials that ensued."
Source: Wikipedia.
Plagued by mental illness since childhood, Thaw spent money lavishly to fund his obsessive partying, drug addiction, and the gratification of his sexual appetites. It is alleged that it was at this time that the term "playboy" entered the popular vocabulary coined to describe the lifestyle that Thaw so energetically pursued. The Thaw family wealth allowed them to buy the silence of those individuals who threatened to make public the worst of Thaw’s reckless behavior and licentious transgressions. Throughout his life, however, he had several serious confrontations with the criminal justice system, which resulted in his incarceration in mental institutions.
Thaw shot and killed Stanford White as a result of his jealousy over the relationship between his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, and White. After one hung jury, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Years later, Stanford's son Lawrence Grant White would write, "On the night of June 25th, 1906, while attending a performance at Madison Square Garden, Stanford White was shot from behind [by] a crazed profligate whose great wealth was used to besmirch his victim's memory during the series of notorious trials that ensued."
Source: Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 31, 2010
First, some background: Harry K. Thaw was the son of a wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist. He was squirrely all his life, mean and paranoid and addicted to drugs (in fact, on Wikipedia, it says he is credited with having invented the speedball). Stanford White was a brilliant architect (probably his most famous work still around is the Washington Square arch) with a fondness for deflowering underage chorus girls. Evelyn Nesbit was an underage chorus girl, deflowered by White and married to Thaw. Thaw had already developed an obsessive mania about White (which may have been why he wooed Nesbit in the first place), ending when he walked into a nightclub and shot White in the face. Thaw avoided the electric chair by declaring insanity (and his mother bribed Evelyn into giving dramatic testimony to support it), and this is supposed to be his memoir of the events that made him infamous.
What it is, however, is a rambling, nonsensical mess, a rant-filled, paranoid shambles. Discounting the obvious change in writing style that has occurred since the twenties, when this was written, I frequently couldn't even tell what Thaw was talking about; sentence fragments were nothing more than complete gibberish. Evelyn Nesbit doesn't really come into it until page 100; the first section of the book tries to be a carefree accounting of Thaw's youthful travels in Europe, mountain climbing being a favorite hobby. There are long, boring chapters about his mountaineering, as if the reader is reading this book for that--imagine if the first third of O.J. Simpson's If I Did It was all about the "Naked Gun" movies and Hertz commercials. The rest of the book kind of talks about Evelyn, White, and the trial, but skips around and introduces people by name while assuming the reader knows who they are (85 years later, I don't).
And the Traitor of the title? Not Thaw, not White, but rather Thaw's trial attorney, who saved him from death but still earns his insane enmity.
If you're a "fan" of this early Trial of the Century, this is a must-read, I suppose. But it won't be an entertaining one.
What it is, however, is a rambling, nonsensical mess, a rant-filled, paranoid shambles. Discounting the obvious change in writing style that has occurred since the twenties, when this was written, I frequently couldn't even tell what Thaw was talking about; sentence fragments were nothing more than complete gibberish. Evelyn Nesbit doesn't really come into it until page 100; the first section of the book tries to be a carefree accounting of Thaw's youthful travels in Europe, mountain climbing being a favorite hobby. There are long, boring chapters about his mountaineering, as if the reader is reading this book for that--imagine if the first third of O.J. Simpson's If I Did It was all about the "Naked Gun" movies and Hertz commercials. The rest of the book kind of talks about Evelyn, White, and the trial, but skips around and introduces people by name while assuming the reader knows who they are (85 years later, I don't).
And the Traitor of the title? Not Thaw, not White, but rather Thaw's trial attorney, who saved him from death but still earns his insane enmity.
If you're a "fan" of this early Trial of the Century, this is a must-read, I suppose. But it won't be an entertaining one.
October 30, 2020
So bad, odd and confusing that it is, in fact, really enjoyable. Also, it gives a little more insight into the Nesbit/White/Thaw case, at least from Thaw's perspective. My copy of the book is very old and has quite a few absolutely beautiful rare photos of Evelyn in it.
August 14, 2022
It’s the author sporadically referring to himself in the third person for me
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews