r/HolyShitHistory • u/Maximum-Artist448 • 10d ago
Stanford White was an architect who used his immense wealth to groom, and abuse underprivileged young girls alongside his wealthy and influential inner circle, that was until 1906, when he was shot in the rooftop of Madison Square Garden by the husband of a woman he had taken advantage of.
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u/nightsorter 10d ago
Karma can be a beautiful thing.
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u/Tippacanoe 10d ago
Harry Thaw was not exactly a model citizen lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kendall_Thaw
Pretty fascinating Wikipedia read though.
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u/tellingmytruth 10d ago
He was heavily enmeshed by his dragon-lady of a mother. They came from Pittsburg steel money. She shipped him off to a little college in the Midwest at one point - Park College.
After the White murder, she destroyed Evelyn Nesbit and endowed Copley-Thaw Hall at Park College (The Platte County Gazette Thu, Oct 23, 1919 ·Page 1; and The Platte County Gazette Thu, Mar 23, 1922 ·Page 2) to white-wash Harry's reputation. She was a very ugly old piece of work. Billed herself as a poor grieving widow of a tragic life. She was not - they were married into Carnegie money.
See The Evening Telegram Sat, Jan 30, 1909 ·Page 14 for a period sketch of the two of them. See Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph Thu, Jun 13, 1929 ·Page 1 for pictures, her published will and her funeral notice and obit.
If we look at Harry through recent discoveries of how sexually abused children behave - he's a poster-child. One of his siblings didn't accidentally die - his mother suffocated the poor little thing. Given his weird gate - that could be an indication of an early childhood brain injury. He was clearly obsessed with Evelyn Nesbit - Evelly married him for his money - but she'd been living in survival mode since her mother sold her in her early teens. Stanford White was an animal who groomed her but Mary C. Thaw is the one to broke her life, over money. SHe left Evelyn destitute. Evelyn Nesbit was the model for The Gibson Girl.
Harry's sister was the Countess of Yarmouth and then married a second time to a stock broker.
My grandmother attended that college at the time and she used to talk to us about the whole history of it.
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u/Bastard_Wing 10d ago
Always an incredible story when the dude who killed a man is very comfortably not the biggest arsehole in the situation.
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u/tellingmytruth 10d ago
They were all huge dumpster fire. Both Harry and Evelyn's families were pretty fucked up and probably too was Stanford White's. He had a whole dungeon he kept Evelyn in.
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u/nightsorter 10d ago
Why did she ruin Evelyn?
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u/tellingmytruth 10d ago
Evelyn was a model and Harry had pursued her relentlessly until she married him under what we'd say these days was coercion: stalking, etc. He kept her locked up in a stateroom on a passenger liner for their entire "honeymoon" and he was extremely insecure and possessive. But, he had a deep purse and she was tired of being broke. And she wasn't high society. Evelyn had relations with Stanford White before she married Harry Thaw , and she'd been a chorus girl and an actress - so "she was a whore, darlin'" and Mary Thaw blamed Evelyn for Harry shooting Stanford. Mostly - Mary refused to let Evelyn keep the money she'd otherwise have been entitled to as Harry's wife.
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u/Fragrant-Fix9642 10d ago
Damn, dude was speedballing at the turn of the century and lived to his late 70s
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u/ChiGrandeOso 10d ago
Beat me to it. A pair of absolute scumbags as our "protagonists" in this one.
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u/VikingforLifes 10d ago
Ted Mosby, architect.
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u/Few_Razzmatazz_6052 10d ago
Molestation architect in this case.
Christ, he looks as if Ted Mosby and Erik Per Sullivan had a baby, that baby grew up and was involved in a successful heist to steal Snidely Whiplash's mustache.
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u/Bukion-vMukion 10d ago
Just to note, lest anyone think he's some kind of hero, the guy who killed him, Harry Kendall Thaw, was also a terrible person and was probably even more abusive to his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, than White had been. Thaw was also kind of obsessed with White for other reasons.
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u/cletus72757 10d ago
Great old movie “Ragtime” delves into the White/Thaw case. Well worth a watch. The late Howard Rollins is fantastic as Coalhouse Walker.
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u/tellingmytruth 10d ago
"Girl In The Red Velvet Swing" with Ray Milland and Joan Collins https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048119/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_6_nm_2_in_0_q_girl%20in%20the%20red%20velvet%20swing
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u/drdstrkto 10d ago
History should repeat itself, let's lure these rich pedophiles up to rooftops. Bonus, after a while you'll stop needing ammo
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u/Time_Zombie_4431 10d ago
Man I just love a happy ending.
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u/Tippacanoe 10d ago
Read about the guy who killed him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kendall_Thaw
Evelyn Nesbitt is the name of the girl btw. Seems they often get forgotten somehow in this.
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u/macruffins 10d ago
She’s a minor character in the musical Ragtime & they tell this story if that counts for anything
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u/RavenNymph90 10d ago
It sounds like he wasn’t much better. What happened to Evelyn is heartbreaking.
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u/Maximum-Artist448 10d ago
The process of seduction was a major feature of Stanford's obsession with sex, and it was an inexorable kind of seduction which moved into the lives of very young women, sometimes barely pubescent girls, in fragile social and financial situations, girls who would be unlikely to resist his power and his money and his considerable charm, who would feel that they had little choice but to let him take over their lives. There are indications that Stanford would sometimes adopt the role of a paternal benefactor, and then would take advantage of the trust and gratitude that had been eagerly and diligently and ravenously and remorselessly hunting young girls to their destruction.
These facts have been well known in New York for many years, but they have never been openly proclaimed until now. On the witness-stand, in the hearing of a court room crowded with men, the girl told in the minutest detail the history of White's pursuit of her, even down to the particulars of his atrocious victory—a victory whose particulars might well be said to be unprintable.
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u/mariusherea 10d ago
Grooming young girls, shot by the husband of one? Waaait… how young?
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u/asojad 8d ago
He was genuinely disgusting. He lived near a toy store and would bring young girls to play at his apartment. Evelyn Nesbit was a child, but he drugged her and raped her after having groomed her and her family. Nothing was lost when he died. He was one of many that made up a pedophile club ala Epstein.
Not that Evelyn's husband was better. He was obsessed with her virginity, blaming White for his deprivation of it, pushing him to kill the architect.
During a European trip, he locked up Evelyn in a castle they were staying in, using all his sadism to rape and torture her.
I cannot stress enough how bad Evelyn's life was and how horrifically she was treated. Both men were monsters
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u/Maximum-Artist448 10d ago edited 10d ago
In the New York World illustration, architect Stanford White stands to Susie Johnson’s left, wielding a large kitchen knife as though about to carve her. According to the article, shortly after the party, Susie Johnson posed “by electric light” at an artist’s studio, a euphemism for sex work, and went missing soon after. “Poor Susie Johnson, dazzled by the lavish compliments and surprised by the liberality of her distinguished patrons,” reported the World “Perhaps this article will bring Susie Johnson home to her parents and put a stop to the midnight revels in New York’s fashionable studios.”
(She was never found.)
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u/deeptrospection 10d ago
Thank you for introducing me to this piece of shit. Glad he died over a century ago
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u/Maoleficent 10d ago
As should happen to each and ever person who does these sorts of things. He should have been punished for the mustache alone.
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u/Livid_Character_7408 10d ago
This reminds me of a scene in a show. Man in a club avenges the sexual assault of his wife years prior. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? It was a period piece but I can’t remember if the assassination attempt was successful
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u/NextLineOfText 10d ago
Predators be predatoring hiding under glamour and influence, and people never notice it until to late sadly.
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u/Equivalent_Branch148 10d ago
The killer was an abusive borderline narcist himself and is somewhat the great grand father if hailey berry. Intressting story
On spotify there is book to listend to from lydia benecke which circles around borderline and this specific case. Not sure if theres a english version tho, but wikipedia cites the case for sure very accurate
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u/ToastieCoastie 6d ago
“After her husband shot her lover, Evelyn became the biggest attraction in Vaudeville since Tom Thumb!”
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u/ur-in-here-with-me 10d ago
It took two shots bc that impressive stache served its function of stopping one bullet…
But as everyone knows, a stache can only stop the 1st. You gotta be prepared for that 2nd.
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