Q= Delphin Delmas

A=Evelyn Nesbit

Q. Will-you please relate to the jury what, if anything, Mr. Thaw told you about his efforts to send White to Prison with the help of Mr. Comstock, of the Society for the Prevention of Vice.

A. He gave me a paper to read and said he was sending it to some society-I don't know what society it was, but it was something like the society for the prevention of sometlling.

Q. And did he tell you of his success, or his lack of success, in getting co-operation from that society?

A. He did not seem to have much success. He met with a great deal of opposition, and I told him he always would, because Mr. Stanford White had a great many influential friends, very rich men, and they would stop any work he tried to do.

Q. Was there anything said by Mr. Thaw to you upon the subject of any other young women in connection with Stanford White?

A. Yes.

Q. Were the names of these young women mentioned by him to you?

A. Yes.

Q. In that connection did Mr. Thaw speak to you of the young Woman known as the "pie girl?"

A. Yes.

Q. What was then said?

A. It began with Mr. Thaw asking me what other girls I knew who had suffered as I had from Stanford White and I mentioned this one girl. I said I had heard about it in the theatre, and then Stanford White had told me all about it.

Q. Well, what was it?

A. Stanford White said that there had been a large stag dinner or supper-I forget which. This girl, a very young girl, fifteen years old, had a very beautiful figure; and was an artist's model. He said it was the best stunt he had ever done, and he seemed very proud of it. Then he said he had a large pie, a very big pie, and had the girl put in the pie some way, and also had some birds put in the pie. The pie was brought in and sat upon the table. Then, when the pie was cut open, the little girl stood up in the middle of the table and she had a little gauze dress on-nothing else. And all the birds flew out. He said it was a great hit and the best thing of the kind he had ever done. That was what I told Mr. Thaw I knew. Then I said I asked Mr. White what the trouble was and he said they had a terrible time over this girl, that the whole thing- Jerome: Did you tell Mr. Thaw this?

A. Yes, and that Mr. White said the whole thing had come near being made public, all the newspapers had it, and he had succeeded in stopping every one of them but one newspaper in New York. They had gone to this newspaper through a friend of his and this man, through his influence, had stopped this last newspaper, and he said that the reason they had got in trouble was that they put a lot of gold pieces about her clothes, or somewhere like that, and somebody had discovered it.

Q. The gold pieces?

A. Yes.

Q. They had been the cause of the story getting out?

A. Yes, one newspaper, the American, insisted on printing the story, and Mr. White and a friend of his had to go down on their knees to the owner of the newspaper and beg him not to print the story. * * *

Q. And was there anything else that you told Mr. Thaw about this subject?

A. Yes. I said to him that I told Mr. White that he was accused of having ruined this girl that night, and he just laughed about it.

Q. And was there any more conversation about it?

A. Yes, in Pittsburgh, after we had married. Mr. Thaw told me he had found out more about this girl and he said she had been married. Afterwards her husband found out about this story, and left her or turned her away, and she had died in want. Stanford White, he said, had never bothered to do anything for her. He said that Stanford White ought to be put in the penitentiary and that was the only place he should be; and he would get worse as time went on and ruin more and more girls, not only pure girls who were on the stage, but pure girls who were not on the stage; and that he knew there were girls that had come from very good families that had suffered at the hands of Stanford White, and then he said not only that one thing but after Stanford White was through with the girls and was tired of them that they were cast aside and they either went off with somebody else or fell lower and lower. He said he not only disgraced them for life but in the end they became outcasts; that he might as well send a woman straight to hell as to make an outcast of her and that was why he should be in the peniterltiary.

Q. And was that all Mr. Thaw said about Stanford White?

A. No, he said too that I should help to do what I cou]d to put him in the penitentiary. l said, "What can I do? I can't tell about myself; I can't have a public scandal. What can I do?" And he said that I should do everything I could. When he talked so much about it it usually made me cry. And I tried to get his mind on other things; and he noticed that and he said I was trying to get out of it. And he kept saying over and over that Stanford White's place was in the penitentiary, and that was the only place he should be. Delmas then read Harry Thaw letter to Anthony Comstock: "There are places, with much obscene art and literature. First, Stanford White's place in Madison Square Garden tower. Probably it is impossible for you to reform it. Second: No. 22 West 24th street is consecrate to orgies and is habitual]y used for debauching young American girls since ten years by a rich gang of criminals. There is illicit matter there but the pictures upon the wall, though indecent, are possibly not illegally obscene. The ground floor is a toy, a wholesale toy store. Beside it, also at No. 22 West 24th , is a door that leads upstairs. . . . Workmen outside have heard girls scream-as they dare not combine other cruelties with-??????? Their custom is to drug the victim, who usually is an American girl, perfectly innocent and fifteen years. There is no escape except windows, and these rich criminals admit regret that they cannot escape from the rear as there is only a closed yard. There is a secret yard from this forest room to a room covered with mirrors. . . . And 1 think there is still a top floor with a large studio with a swing. Six or seven criminal scoundrels control this resort and three or four decent young men who do not know the goings-on and so forth, sometimes frequent it, and occasionally a stranger. However, this place was partly dismantled three years ago, when workmen got the police to inquire. It was partly closed several years ago, at the time of the 'Pie Girl,' as usual a fifteen-year old child. There is probably nothing to do here until one of the scoundrels is seen entering alone. Or two old men with a child. In a half-hour's time, if other persons do not arrive for an innocent party, a crime can be discovered. There have been thousands committed and each time one of these girls is taken there to perform a villainy beside the original crime. You may abolish another place. No. 122 East 22nd street; near the CHOR society and the Prevention of Crime, is a building that appears half-closed. It is seldom used and in a most secret manner by only three or four of the same scoundrels. . . . It contains works of art, etc., a bed and bath and, probably a vast collection of obscenity. Everything is expensive, and from the top front room a door behind a picture, and concealed itself in a wall, opens into a small room thatcan be lit by electric light. This room is built between the bathroom and attached to a bedroom in the rear and the front room. In a little room is a valuable French painting of a nude female." Delmas asked Evelyn Nesbit Thaw if the place described as having a swing was the same one which she had been swung in by White but the question was disallowed on the grounds that she had not sworn to any such occurrence, but merely had told Thaw about it.

Q. Mrs. Thaw, you will pardon me for asking the question, but in the description which Mr. Thaw gave you of the practices of Mr. White were there any unnatural sex practices referred to by him?

A. Yes.

Q. Could they be described by you?

A. No, they were unspeakable.

END OF DIRECT TESTIMONY