Thread by @marinamaral2

Evelyn Nesbit was the most sought-after fashion model in America’s Gilded Age.

She was involved in a relationship with railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw and architect Stanford White, which resulted in Thaw killing White at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden.

The press called the resulting court case the "Trial of the Century", and coverage of these well-known figures was sensational. Nesbit testified that White had befriended her and her mother, but had sexually assaulted her when she was unconscious.

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Harry Thaw was a multi-millionaire with a history of mental instability and abusive behavior.

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Nesbit was the star witness in a trial so full of shocking details about her relationships with the men that a church group attempted to ban reporting of the gory details. Evelyn’s mother was accused of prostituting her daughter to White.

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"We find the defendant not guilty on the ground of insanity at the time of the commission of his act." Justice Dowling declared that Thaw's discharge would be "dangerous to public safety" and ordered him sent to the Matteawan State Hospital for the criminally insane.

Seven years later, in June 1915, a jury convened in the Supreme Court of New York to determine whether Harry Thaw was now sane enough to be released from Matteawan.

Two days later, Harry Thaw was a free man.

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In 1916, Thaw was charged with the kidnapping, beating, and sexual assault of nineteen-year-old Frederick Gump of Kansas City, Missouri. He was arrested and returned to the insane asylum, where he stayed until 1924. He died in 1947.

Nesbit showed resilience and made a life for herself after these traumatic events – as a mother, a silent-screen actress, a vaudeville performer and the writer of two memoirs.

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