CHAPTER XXIII.

“Thou Shalt Not Kill”--Jerome.

PROSECUTOR IN TERRIFIC DENUNCIATION OF HARRY THAW AS A COLD-BLOODED MURDERER--ATTACKS CHARACTER OF EVELYN, THE “ANGEL CHILD WHO WAS ALWAYS READY TO GO TO THE HUMAN OGRE” WHOM THAW KILLED--SNEERS AT THE YOUNG WIFE--WARNS JURY AGAINST “DEMENTIA AMERICANA,” PLEA--“NOTHING TO SHOW DEFENDANT WAS INSANE; EVERYTHING TO SHOW HE WAS SANE.

In his supreme effort to send Harry Thaw to the electric chair, District Attorney Jerome in his closing speech savagely lashed the defendant as a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer. He bitterly attacked the characters of Thaw and his wife, referring to Evelyn as “the angel child,” who was “always ready to go to the human ogre who stripped her of her virtue,” and declared her story of her ruin by White was absolutely false.

Mr. Jerome lost no opportunity to sneer at the little wife’s tragic story and at the chivalry of her husband, and he paid his respects to Delmas’ sensational “Dementia Americana,” or unwritten law plea, by asking if it was the higher law under which a man may flaunt the woman through the capitals of Europe for two years as his mistress--and then kill.

The prosecutor warned the jury that it would be a violation of their oaths to consider “Dementia Americana,” declaring it had no status on the Atlantic seaboard.

Mr. Jerome said: “This is simply a common, vulgar, everyday, tenderloin homicide.” He denounced the plea of Attorney Delmas as “an appeal to the passions.” There could, he said, be but one of four verdicts--murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, or “not guilty because of insanity.”

The prosecutor also made a stirring appeal in behalf of the slain architect, declaring that he had been villainously maligned. Mr. Jerome said it seemed to him that the voice of the murdered Stanford White was crying out to him, “Can’t you say one word for me? Must I go down to the fires of hell unheard--undefended.”

William Travers Jerome, elected district attorney of New York on November 5, 1902, won a great reputation as a reformer and a foe of vice, gambling, crooked politicians, and every other evil. Before being elected prosecutor, on a fusion ticket which overwhelmed the corrupt Tammany hall machine, he was a justice of the court of special sessions in New York City.

As a private lawyer he was favorably known for the intense earnestness he put into the cases of his clients. As a platform orator; a campaigner and a hustler for votes he had his name to make, and he made it. He was the bright, particular star of the campaign, and drew larger crowds and excited more enthusiasm from immense assemblies than any other speaker during the campaign.

William Travers son of the well-known Larry Jerome, grew from a puny baby to a boy too delicate to meet the rough-and-tumble life of public schools. He had a private tutor, and after he left the tutor’s care he entered Amherst College. He remained there three years, and at the end of that time he left on account of poor health.

But it was not in the Jerome blood to stay downed. Next year William Travers Jerome entered Columbia College Law School, and was graduated in 1884.

After that he traveled considerably, practiced law a little and amused himself a little. By 1888 he was ready to settle down, and in that year three important things happened in his life. He was appointed Assistant District Attorney. He married Miss Hart, of Sharon, Conn. Lawrence Jerome, his father, died.

In the District Attorney’s office Jerome made a reputation among the other assistants as a man who never gave up in the most thankless task, and as an embryo politician who never worked for his own pocket. Jerome has his failings and his friends, as well as his foes, know this well. His chief weakness is a desire to say startling things. He has said several, the most remarkable being an attack on William C. Whitney and Boss Platt and the declaration that there was a plot hatched to either kill him or scratch him at the polls. Jerome was called to time on these propositions, and he retracted--but he did it without crawling. Jerome is too outspoken to be a successful politician. His aggressiveness and his fearlessness are admirable.

Mr. Jerome’s speech was as follows:

“If it please your honor and gentlemen of the jury, you seem, as far as I can judge, to have been wandering through a weird deal of romance in the past few days. It is not on statements such as you have listened to that the life of a human individual on the one hand nor the safety of the community on the other depends.

“And important as it is that no human life shall be put out except justly, yet it is equally important that it be put out if justice demands it.

“As to this ‘dementia Americana,’ which ‘prevails from the Canadian line to the Gulf of Mexico’--and mostly on the Gulf of Mexico--does it wait three years and glare at its enemy and then kill?

“Does this ‘dementia Americana’ flaunt the woman it loves for two long years through the capitals of Europe and then kill? ‘Dementia Americana’ never hides behind the skirts of a woman; ‘dementia Americana’ never puts a woman on the stand to lay bare her shame to protect it; no woman could in the category where ‘dementia Americana’ prevails.

“‘When I discharged those shots into his head,’ said Thaw, ‘I didn’t know I was discharging shots. I didn’t know it was Stanford White. I didn’t know I was killing him, nor did I know it was wrong.’

“It was wrong under the law. When the anarchists threw the bombs in Chicago they had no personal grievance against any of the four policemen who were killed. It is not a question whether the slayer justified himself, not the form of his own conscience. It is the law of the land that must be satisfied.

“Let me first deal with the dead man. A middle-aged man, care-gray already, a man with a wife and children, a man of position in the community, a man of genius. He comes into the life of this girl. He assists her and her family. Does he make a single insidious advance until the night mentioned here?

“Does he give her a single rich gift? Why, it was stipulated here that the gifts were trifles--a hat, a coat. Did he try to dazzle her with rich gifts? Did he try to see if she would yield to drink? No. Night after night at dinners he would tell her she could have but one glass of champagne. In the company of actresses, and those miserable persons about town who seem to think that the society of a chorus girl is the only one for them, did he not seek to protect her from them?

“This angel child, as Delmas depicted her--this chaste, good being, cannot recall the time within three months of it when this brute ruined her.

“When she could not fix the time of her life’s wreck my learned friend from the Pacific slope concluded, ‘Why don’t you prove an alibi for Stanford White? The doors are thrown wide open.’ When the people called Wittans to testify that there was no such drug as she described the door was closed. When Eichemeyer, the photographer, was called to fix the date of the event--it occurred the night of the day after this picture was taken--the door was closed.

“The learned judge ruled justly. I offered this not as new evidence, but to call the story of the ‘angel child.’

“Maidens know well enough to appreciate the distinction between right and wrong--their blushes, their reserve, their shrinking would impress upon them indelibly the time when any such attempt is made to destroy their purity. Was she brought up more carefully than your own daughters?

“And yet she meets him again and again and again. She meets him eight or ten times at the tower. She meets him in the Twenty-fourth street place because she believed others would be there. And then all these subsequent attacks were attacks with liquor. After all these, there was marked for identification, with greatest ostentation, a number of letters written by Stanford White--this great ogre!

“And yet you will recall that on one occasion a Mr. P. called at the Twenty-fourth street house and found the angel child downstairs undressing.

“Was there one of these letters put in evidence! Is it credible that if a single one of these letters contained the slightest intimation of indecency that it would not have been put in evidence?

“Could there have been these successive ill-treatments month after month and yet not a single line in all those letters except words of tender appreciation? Contrast those letters with this, for instance: ‘Men celebrated for licking toes,’ the letter of this most modern St. George, who leads the angel child up to the true light. After days of description of the baseness and debauchery of Stanford White, it seems as if the spirit of Stanford White itself would have come here to say to Evelyn Thaw: ‘What! Not one word of kindness--not one word to say for me?’”

Here Jerome’s voice broke, his chin quivered, and he sobbed for a moment. Drying his eyes, he continued:

“The law will not allow it.” (Jerome, still talking of the spirit of White, added: “I am not on trial. I have no one here to speak for me.”)

Jerome’s eyes filled with more tears as he went on:

“‘Can you not say one word for me? Only one word for me,’ the spirit seemed to say.”

The tears started down Jerome’s face. He faced the jury, holding aloft the photograph taken by Eichemeyer--the one on the bear rug. Then he cried with evident feeling:

“Can’t you say for me something? On the stand she said, ‘I know no one who was nicer or kinder than Stanford White, except for this one awful thing. He was exceptionally kind to me and to my family.

“‘Outside of this one thing he was a grand man. And when I said so to Mr. Thaw he said that only made Stanford White the more dangerous.

“‘He had a strong personality and had many friends, and they believed in him and could not believe anything bad about him. And even when they believed, they said: “Too bad. He is so good.”’

“Can there be any grander, better panegyric, uttered than this by this girl on the stand. I am here not to defend Stanford White. That he had his faults, his gross faults, no one will deny.

“But there is a difference between the brute, and the unchaste. Her own words have ruined this Jekyll and Hyde theory.

“Can it be possible that now, at twenty-two, she could look back to the time when she was fifteen and pronounce so grand a panegyric upon a brute?

“A wealthy man, finding, God only knows why, enjoyment in her company--see how young she seems today (pointing to Evelyn Thaw)--think how young she must have been then--that a rich man should have tried to help her is consistent with his conduct.

“That when she was told by the manager of the ‘Florodora’ company, to whom she had applied, that they were not ‘running a baby farm’--that a man like Stanford White should have taken care of her and protected her--is certainly not inconsistent with the belief that her relations with him were pure.

“Again, it is consistent that their relations were not pure. This girl alone knows. But I submit this girl is not telling the truth. There is no proof of the wrongdoing.”

At this point Jerome asked that a recess be taken. At the reconvening of court, Mr. Jerome resumed as follows:

“I have carefully laid out to you what we are here for in our respective duties. I have presented briefly as I could the facts that I have adduced.

“The head on which I am now dwelling is, ‘What is the defense that the defendant makes to this formal charge?’ I deem it necessary to dwell at some length on the character of the three persons who figure most in this case. However, much as we may disagree, we come back to the issue: ‘Did he know the nature and quality of his act?’

“‘I did not know it was a self-cocking revolver and I did not know I walked toward Stanford White and I I not know it was against the law of the land to fire the shots.’

“In regard to the girl, we may esteem her, however much or little we may think of her veracity. Nothing can go out to her except our pity. If these things did not occur, if she perjured herself it seems even more that she needs our pity.

“What chance did she ever have in life? Her father died early, her mother led a life of shifting about from place to place. We all know what life on the stage is. We all see some of it. Why do you suppose Garland, a married man, was following this girl about; why do you suppose even Thaw was pursuing her with flowers? This little girl knew something of life before she met Mr. White.

“Counsel for the defense speaks of her fatal gift of beauty. It is ever thus. We are all men of the world and we all pass along the great white way of this city and see its effects daily.

“Why do you suppose Garland was paying her attention? Why was Thaw sending her American Beauty roses? Why did he pursue her even to her home? I don’t wish to speak too harshly of this mother. I will read what she says of Garland.

“‘My mother was not entirely pleased with the relations of Mr. Garland.’

“What were the relations that caused the mother to make objection? They were very poor and the acquaintance of White and Garland was desirable. The girl, you know, was sent to school. The whole situation centered about the girl. It was she who, in the long run, brought about all these occurrences.

“Next time, Mr. Hartridge, that you take things and papers belonging to Evelyn Thaw out of a storage warehouse, take good care that you do not leave behind such a book as this.”

Mr. Jerome displayed a flexible leather-bound book in which there appeared a good deal of written matter. Jerome then raised the diary, or book, and shook it before the jury. Mr. Hartridge objected at this point and said that there was no evidence that he had taken the documents from the warehouse. Mr. Hartridge was overruled by Justice Fitzgerald. Jerome then read the one entry of the diary which had been admitted in evidence. It was:

“‘I jumped right in and proceeded to be good. The first thing I saw was my virtuous couch. I wonder how far I am from Rector’s--Rector’s and the Great White Way.’

“Significant, I consider that, indeed I do,” said Jerome, and then continued reading from the girl’s school diary.

“‘These things have always been of that kind. Not one of them will ever be anything. Mrs. De Mille was very nice and agreeable.

“‘I was taken into the house and shown all the celerity of a soubrette and proceeded to get shy. When we drove up to the house Mrs. De Mille’s son came out smoking a pipe, and I must admit he is a pie-faced mutt.

“‘I was taken into the house and shown to my room. It is neither large nor small; has Japanese paper on the walls. There is a virtuous white bed, a girl’s bureau and a washstand.’”

Then Jerome went on:

“This shows that this child played one man against the other. She went to Paris on Thaw’s money with White’s letter of credit in her pocket. This child that believed not at all in the virtue of women--this child who had been in the ‘Florodora’ company--this child who had been yachting with Garland--this child who had been to the late suppers where risque stories and intoxicated women prevailed. This child thought it was nothing to be a good mother--that she would rather become a great actress first, and she arrived in Paris fully convinced that there is no virtue in womankind, she being eighteen and a half at that time.

“This is the angel child described by Mr. Delmas. And then we are told that in Paris the child loved Thaw and in the greatness of her love renounced him and was willing to come back to the chorus and the studios. She made this renunciation and when she had done so she traveled about Europe with this St. George who had revealed to her that there was chastity in women, and then she leaves him for some reason, which I will dwell upon later, and comes to New York with his money.

“She arrives in this city on October 24, 1903, and is found a few days later in the office of Abraham Hummel in the company of Stanford White, the man who had so dreadfully ill-used her. If not another thing was found in that affidavit than the signature of Evelyn Nesbit, this date, which appears opposite that name, would be significant.

“The significant thing is that within twenty-four hours before she saw him on Sunday her great love had been undermined so that she deserted this man for the monster who had wrecked her life.

“By stories too evil to repeat, she says, she was turned against Thaw. And then, when he returned, she tells him of what she had heard about him, and he says, ‘Poor little Evelyn. Somebody has deceived you.’

“And when I call her renunciation of this young man sublime I did not do so with a sneer. Such a renunciation, if it really occurred, is unparalleled in history.

“Great actress, indeed! She thought she could play on you like so many children. Look at those pictures taken when she was sixteen years old--does she look anything like the way she appeared in court?

“She appears in these early photographs in a way which you could not allow a daughter of yours of sixteen to appear.

“She comes here in her little school-girl dress--her little white, turned-down collars, which cover all but the flowing ends of a pretty childlike bow-tie. She sits in the witness chair and tries to impress on you this assumed, youthful childishness.

“There she was a poor, wronged, orphan child, whom Thaw would take to his arms and protect. Sir Galahad took that angel child--took her from her mother and flaunted her through every capital of Europe. ‘Dementia Americana’--the higher, unwritten law! Why, you may paint Stanford White in as black color as you wish, but there are no colors in the artists’ box black enough to paint this Sir Galahad. Why should this Sir Galahad be abandoned by this girl? Why should she leave him? For some reason she did leave him. Why? Let us go into the Hummel affidavit.

“What do we find Thaw doing? We find him wrapping $50 around American Beauty roses and sending them to her. Is that the course of honorable courtship?

“‘Rector’s, I know, is not the proper place for an innocent young person, but I always had a weakness for it.’ (Mr. Jerome read from the diary.)

“‘It is my ambition to see things and then settle down; but I want to be a good actress before I settle down to a humdrum existence.’”

Jerome again read from the diary of the girl, Evelyn Nesbit.

“You have heard what took place in Paris--mother, daughter and Thaw were living together. Thaw asked her there to be his wife and she refused, and when he asked her why she said:

“‘Because.’ And he asked. ‘Is it Stanford White?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ And then we are told she gave him the entire story.

“She had nothing ahead of her. There was a man she saw she loved. He offered her his wealth in return for that love. She laid it aside--all the comforts of life. Wasn’t that a sublime resignation?

“He offered her a haven of rest--rest for the wanderer. And yet so great was that love for him that she would not accept him. Those were noble words for this man to say. This girl’s renunciation was truly sublime--if true. She might not have known how Stanford White, like the brute negro of the South, would look upon his victim with passion, but she did not know that it was wrong.

“I don’t think Hummel is an upright man, and he is in the position he is in just because I put him there. He will go to jail and he will stay there just as long as I can keep him there. He has lived as a blackguarding blackmailer for twenty years and anything coming from his hands must be viewed by you justly with suspicion.

“But Abraham Snydecker swore that he took that affidavit to Evelyn Nesbit there in the Madison Square tower and that she read it and signed it. Let us see what she herself says about that affidavit. The itinerary set down in the affidavit corresponds exactly with her description of it. Were all these things put in there by Hummel? Strange touches for this old blackmailing, blackguarding scoundrel to have put into that affidavit--such little touches as reference to a watch and to a hypodermic needle used for morphine, which she says she found in Thaw’s trunk.

“I will concede that this story may have been dressed up by the lawyer. Can we think of the suggestions in her own testimony of the Ethel Thomas suit? Can we think of the rumors of Dillingham’s story? Can we fail to remark upon that passage in his letter in which he says, ‘He will never hurt you,’ referring to himself?

“Snydecker says that affidavit was taken to the Twenty-seventh street studio and her signature appears exactly opposite the date.

“Strange that after her return from Europe--from Thaw--she should immediately have gone to him, to White.

“A knight of old, redressing the wrongs of injured maidens, would not have gone to Rector’s at 2 o’clock in the morning, would not have gone to cakewalks and cafes, to the Dead Rat in Paris and resorts in other places, to remain there all night and go home when the market wakes.

“Almost within earshot of his wife he asked Smith--this knight of old asked:

“Would you like to meet a nice, buxom brunette? Are you much married? I am going abroad and I can put you next.

“Every element, gentlemen, in this case is simply an ordinary, mere, vulgar, every-day, Tenderloin, low, sordid murder.

“If this rich young man instead of being Harry Thaw, the son of a millionaire of Pittsburg, had been a poor Italian and his victim, instead of a man of artistic temperament, a maker of plaster casts, and a girl whom they quarreled about was a chorus girl in the London Theater, how long would brainstorms and paranoia have prevailed?

“Simply a mere, ordinary Tenderloin homicide. Because she has a pretty face and a child-like manner, she is coming here to tell a tissue of lies to prevent you gentlemen from putting a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer under ground.

“Will you gentlemen acquit a cold-blooded, cowardly, deliberate murderer on the ground of ‘dementia Americana’?

“Thaw himself, the girl swore, accused her of having resumed relations with White after she returned from Paris. Where does this man’s conduct show aught that he did not know the quality and nature of his act? We have the letters A to I. The girl says that at times in 1903 Thaw was drinking heavily.”

Jerome argued that neither Thaw’s letters nor his will indicated insanity, but rather showed that he possessed a knowledge of legal limitations. His letters he described as “erratic and vulgar, the product of a rich illiterate.” Jerome continued:

“He knew enough to automobile through Europe with this girl. He knew enough to warn Longfellow to be on the lookout for legal actions, and yet he did not know that when he shot White he was doing wrong. Even the codicil drawn in his own language runs in the legal way.

“Everything shows a sane mind. There is not a thing to indicate a crazy mind. There is evidence here that he consulted Roger O’Mara before he carried a revolver. He was afraid of the Monk Eastman gang.

“Is it such an unknown thing that a man should be followed by a gang of hirelings? Was the arrest and trial of the Monk Eastman gang in Jersey a few years ago a figment of imagination? Where was the delusion in that? How easy it is for a man of this kind to store away his ‘dementia Americana’ for three years! Where is the delusion in a man’s believing that he is in danger from a gang?

“Don’t let’s blow hot and cold at the same time. In one breath we are told that there was such a gang hired, and then we are told it was all a delusion.

“There was such a gang--and I am sorry to have to admit there was.

“Why did he leave his money to the Society for the Suppression of Vice? Was that a delusion?

“And he says in a letter that they could find pictures in White’s studio which were lewd, but perhaps within the law. Was that a delusion?

“Will you gentlemen acquit a cold-blooded, cowardly, deliberate murderer on the ground of ‘dementia Americana?’

“If the only thing that lies between every man and his enemy is a brainstorm, then let every man pack a gun. There are two things I want to say. They are: ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ and that other law that was thundered from Mount Sinai:

“‘Thou shalt not kill!’”