Q = William Travers Jerome
A = Evelyn Nesbit (Mrs. Thaw)
*** = skipped testimony ------- ***
Q. Now when did you first become aware that you had been named corespondent in the Lederer divorce case?
A. When I read about it in the newspapers late in 1904.
Q. so that was only a few months before your marriage in 1905?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you not, while you were in Paris in 1903, have a conversation with a man there in reference to your being corespondent in the Lederer divorce case?
A. No.
Q. Did you write any letters from Boulogne to persons in America?
A. Yes.
Q. To whom in America did you write from Boulogne?
A. I think I wrote one letter or perhaps two-to Stanford White.
Q. After Harry Thaw had proposed to you and before your return to America?
A. Yes. ***
Q. And you posed in, Philadelphia for three men artists who were illustrators?
A. No, two were illustrators and one-was a photographer.
Q. The posing there was-did it involve any exposure of the person at all?
A. No.
Q. I mean the breast was not fully exposed, or anything of that sort?
A. No.
Q. Or so that a portion of the.figure might be seen through the drapery?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever pose with your person exposed?
A. No.
Q. Either for any artist or photographer?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever pose where the breast was wholly exposed, nude?
A. I don't think so.
Q. Can't you remember?
A. No, I posed with low-necked dresses.
Q. Can you say whether or not the breast was exposed in any pictures you posed for?
A. No.
Q. But whether you did or did not it made no impression on your mind?
A. How do you mean, impression?
Q. You have no recollection?
A. You mean the posing without-
Q. I mean posing with the breast nude, without any cover on them?
A. No.
Q. Can you recollect whether you did or not?
A. No, I always had drapery on.
Q. At this period you are speaking of, before you went on the stage and were in hard financial straits, Holman assisted the family and afterwards married your mother?
A. Yes. *** [After introducing a series of checks from White dated after the time Nesbit claimed she had been drugged and ruined Jerome turned to the financial arrangements between the pair]
Q. Was there an understand that you were to receive $25 of Standford White's money every week that you were not acting?
A. Understanding with whom?
Q. With anybody?
A. I don't think so.
Q. Well, who did you think uas putting up the $25 a week?
A. Stanford White.
Q. Were you not informed that the amount deposited was $1,350?
A. I don't remember.
Q. It made no impression on your mind?
A. No.
Q. Who were you informed deposited it?
A. Mr. Stanford White, through Mr. Hartnett, his secretary.
Q. Who informed you of that?
A. I don't remember when I first heard it; I remember I heard it, but where and from whom I cannot say.
Q. What were you informed was it deposited for?
A. I don't remember.
Q. were you informed by anyone that its deposit had any relation to you in any way?
A. I was told that some one had put this money in the Mercantile Trust Company. ***
Q. Did you think that Stanford White told you the truth when he in substance said that all women were bad, only some were able to conceal it and were not found out?
A. I did.
Q. And you were then past sixteen?
A. I was past sixteen.
Q. And when first did you begin to doubt that proposition?
A. When I went abroad in 1903.
Q. So until you went abroad with your mother in 1903 you still were believing that all women you came in contact with were unchaste, but were simply clever in concealing it?
A. I did.
Q. So that when you told your husband this tale, this story-I mean no offense in the way I characterize it-you believed you were better than other women because you had been assaulted against your will?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. It was against your will, wasn't it?
A. Yes, sir, I didn't have any ``wll about it; I didn't have any chance.
Q. And until you were eighteen and one-half years of age you were firmly impressed by the belief that the women you were associating with were unchaste, only some of them were fortunate enough not to be iound out?
A. Yes.
Q. But you thought you were better than other women because you had been wronged by violence and craft?
A. Well, I thought I'd been imposed on.
Q. And you thought practically all the women with whom you came in contact were not virtuous?
A. Yes.
Q. Had you any kind of instruction in the Scriptures, the Bible?
A. Slightly.
Q. Had you been to church at all?
A. Slightly.
Q. Of what religious denomination were you?
A. Well, I don't know. I think I went to a Methodist Episcopal Church, and once in a while to the Presbyterian.
Q. So the night you rejected Thaw in Paris, in June, 1903-at that time you believed in the general unchastity of women?
A. I did. ***
Q. And had you come to a full understanding of the infamous character of the acts which Stanford White perpetrated?
A. Yes. Not as fully as now, but I was beginning to then. I didn't think about it as I do now.
Q. Did you think they were awlul things, those acts?
A. Yes.
Q. Didn't what he had done shock and outrage every womanly feeling you had?
A. Yes.
Q. And it was because of these awful acts of Stanford White that you made your sublime renuliciation of Mr. Thaw's love?
Mr. Delmas: I protest, Your Honor.
I protest against the sneering tone and expression of the district attorney.
Mr. Jerome: It was not with a sneer.
Mr. Delmas: There was an implied sneer in his use of the word "renunciation." If he is sincere in his attitude, I have no objection to his manner.
Mr. Jerome: I am sincere.
Q. Did you not feel in Paris 1903 that because of this occurrence you had to renounce Mr. Thaw's love?
A. Not exactly. No-because I had been found out.
Q. Who found you out? Who caught you?
A. A friend of Mr. White's
Q. Where was this?
A. In the Twenty-second Street place. He came into the bedroom where I was undressed, and saw me there.
Q. Was Mr. White with you at that time?
A. No, he was upstairs.
Q. What I am trying to get at is this-did not your act through drugs make a profound and terrible impression on your mind as an outrage to every maidenly decency?
A. I did not remember the occurrence myself; all I remember is what I felt when I woke up and I remembered that distinctly.
Q. And wasn't there anyone under God's whole blue heaven that you felt more bitter about than you did Stanford White?
A. No.
Q. You said things subsequently about Stanford White and were these things proper or improper, decent or indecent?
A.Well, I don't know whether you'd call them decent or not.
Q. How would you classify them, as decent or indecent?
A. I wasn't thinking of that sort of thing.
Q. What were you thinking of, kindly acts?
A.
I was thinking of Stanford White's extraordinary personality.
Q. Had Stanford White's extraordinary personality- between the time you were in Paris and the time you went to Boulogne-softened your feelings towards him, White?
A. It had a good deal-in a way. Not in one way, and yet in another way it had.
Q. And you felt more kindly towards your betrayer in Boulogne than you had in Paris?
A. No, sir.
Q. Now will you please tell me what you rnean about his personality that modified your feelings of enmity towards your betrayer when you were in Boulogne?
A. Because as a friend there was nobody that I could think of nicer than Stanford White, outside of that one act of his. He was as nice as he possibly could be; he was very kind, very considerate, especially to my family. He did a great many things for my family outside of this one awful thing.
Q. When you said that the recollection of Stanford White's personality changed your feelings to him, what do you mean by the expression, "personality"?
A. Why, 1 have been telling you of his personality. I had had a hard time trying to make Mr. Thaw understand. I don't know whether I can make you understand or not. I say that outside of this one terrible thing, Stanford White was a very grand man, and when I told this to Mr. Thaw he said that that only made him the more dangerous, because when Stanford White came to see me he always talked as my father, and he never made love to me up until that night, and he professed his admiration for me only in the most fatherly manner. Everybody says the same thing about him, everybody who knew him. He was kind and considerate and exceedingly thoughtful- much more thoughtful than most people. He had a very peculiar personality. People liked him very much. He made a great many friends and always kept them. They were always unwilling to believe those things about him until they actually found out, and then they could not understand; these people said they did not understand. Harry Thaw said it only made him more dangerous to have that personality. He said he would get worse in the terrible passion he had for young girls.
Q. Then why did you write a letter from Boulogne to the man who ruined you after the wickedness of his acts had been exposed to you by a man who loved you and whom you loved?
A. Because my mother gave me no peace until I did.
Q. You were coerced into writing to him?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. What did your mother say to you?
A. That I was ungrateful not to have written to Stanford White more than I had.
Q. How did you know that friends of Stanford White knew about your connection with him?
A. Because one of them saw me with Stanford White.
Q. When and where?
A. 1901, in East Twenty-second Street.
Q. At the studio of this man?
A. Yes.
Q. The studio you mentioned yesterday?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there any impropriety between you and Stanford White on that occasion?
A. There was.
Q. So, then, after that act of Stanford White you continued to maintain relations with him?
A. (sobbing) For a short time.
Q. And therefore you inferred that inasmuch as this friend knew about it, that he must have told?
A. Well, I didn't know.
Q. Did you tell your husband about this in Paris?
A. Yes.
Q. Did this gentleman leave before the occurrence took place?
A. He did.
Q. How was he to know anything about it?
A. Because he saw me in this bedroom. And then he went upstairs and talked to Standford White.
Q. And this was within a month of your being drugged?
A. It was. *** [Jerome read a joint letter of Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit sent back to the United states from Paris.] "My Dear: Your suggestion that the whole Tenderloin has migrated to Paris is true. Every corner you turn you I meet a shady lady. The other night we were at the Cafe Des Paris, when the whole bunch blew in. We got together and went out for a festive night. We took in the Dead Rat [earlier Nesbit had denied visiting this risque cafe] and a lot of other Cafes. (Nobody hurt.) - -- was along he is about fifty four years old, spry as a spring chicken, and he puts everything on the blink.-also did his share to make things hum. When we came home the markets were open. Harry bought a basket of strawberries and I have been cooking them all day. My bathrobe is all messed up with Strawberry Juice-Preserved. Harry has a new auto and in a few days when it is in good repair and ready to eat up a few tanks of gasoline or whatever they use, ue are going to Switzer (cheese) for two weeks. Then I suppose I'll be coming home to have my voice cultivated (Ahem!) Madame-(an Italian name) is at the Cafe De Paris. I don't know when she's going back to her Dago Village. Be good and hurl me another letter. Your letters are wonders. I've got --all worked up over you. Love to everybody. Yours as ever. Evelyn Nesbit." ***
Q. Who is Mr. and Mrs. Dells?
A. I don't know. ***
Q. Were not you and Thaw traveling under that name?
A. No.
Q. When you got to the Austian Tyrol didn't Mr. thaw rent a castle known as the Schloss-Katzenstein?
A. Yes
[end]