Evelyn Nesbit: The Girl on the Velvet Swing and the Gilded Age Scandal That Shook America
- dthholland
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Evelyn Nesbit was one of the most recognisable faces of early 20th-century America – a model, actress, and chorus girl whose beauty helped define the “Gibson Girl” era. But her legacy became inseparable from one of the most sensational scandals of the Gilded Age: the 1906 murder of architect Stanford White by her husband, millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw. Thrust into the public eye from a young age, Evelyn’s life was shaped by fame, trauma, and the pressures of a society that both idolised and exploited her. From posing for calendars and magazine covers to starring in courtrooms and silent films, Evelyn Nesbit’s story is one of early celebrity, survival, and the darker side of the American dream.
From Small-Town Pennsylvania to New York’s Art Circles
Florence Evelyn Nesbit was born on Christmas Day in either 1884 or 1885, in Natrona, a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The exact year of her birth remains unverified – a fire had destroyed local records, and Evelyn herself admitted uncertainty. Her mother occasionally added a few years to her daughter’s age to skirt child labour laws, a common tactic among working-class families struggling to make ends meet.
The Nesbits’ middle-class comfort was short-lived. Evelyn’s father, Winfield Scott Nesbit, an attorney with literary inclinations, died suddenly when she was around ten. The family’s financial security collapsed. Their possessions were sold off, and Evelyn, her mother, and younger brother Howard moved between boardinghouses, relying on charity and whatever work her mother could secure. Eventually, they settled in Philadelphia, where Evelyn began working at Wanamaker’s department store aged just fourteen.
It was here her life changed. An artist customer was struck by her beauty and asked her to pose. With her mother’s approval, Evelyn modelled for a dollar – the beginning of a modelling career that would soon catapult her into the highest echelons of artistic and theatrical society.
The Rise of the “Gibson Girl”
By 1900, Evelyn and her mother had moved to New York City. Her mother, lacking both connections and success as a seamstress, turned to artists she had met in Philadelphia for introductions. One of them, painter James Carroll Beckwith, opened doors for Evelyn. Soon, she was modelling for well-known names including Frederick S. Church and Charles Dana Gibson.
It was Gibson who cemented her image in popular culture. His stylised portraits of fashionable young women – with their upswept hair, elegant postures and refined features – came to represent the ideal feminine beauty of the era. Evelyn Nesbit became one of his primary inspirations, the archetypal "Gibson Girl", most famously captured in his 1901 work Woman: The Eternal Question, where her hair subtly forms a question mark.
At the same time, the world of advertising and photography was evolving. Evelyn modelled not just for paintings but also for photography, calendars, and advertisements for products from Coca-Cola to Prudential Insurance. Her image adorned sheet music, postcards, chromolithographs and magazine covers – Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. She was one of the first true American pin-ups.
Entering the Theatre: From Model to Chorus Girl
Despite her immense success as a model, Evelyn longed for the stage. After some hesitation, her mother relented. At sixteen, she joined the chorus of Florodora at the Casino Theatre on Broadway, donning a Spanish maid’s costume and earning the nickname “Flossie the Fuss” from her castmates – a moniker she detested.
She later adopted the stage name Evelyn Nesbit and quickly moved from the chorus line into featured roles. Her performance as Vashti, the gypsy girl in The Wild Rose, won her press attention and made her a sought-after stage personality. Her face became synonymous with the allure of Broadway, though her acting skills were rarely mentioned in reviews – it was her beauty, charm, and on-stage magnetism that drew crowds.
Stanford White: Mentor, Lover, Controversial Figure
Amidst her growing fame, Evelyn met Stanford White – a celebrated New York architect behind Madison Square Garden, and 32 years her senior. Introduced by a fellow Florodora performer, she and her mother were quickly drawn into White’s lavish world. He arranged for them to live at the Wellington Hotel, paid for Howard’s school, and cultivated an air of paternal generosity.
White, however, was not simply a benefactor. During one of Mrs. Nesbit’s absences, Evelyn said she was invited to dinner at his apartment. There, he served her champagne, asked her to change into a satin kimono, and – according to her later testimony – drugged and raped her while she was unconscious. Although the assault was never prosecuted, it remained a defining moment in Evelyn’s life.
Nonetheless, she continued her relationship with White, describing it as an ongoing affair, even as she learned he kept a "little black book" of underage lovers. The complexity of their relationship – a mix of manipulation, dependence and companionship – would cast a long shadow over the events to come.
The Courting of Evelyn by Harry Kendall Thaw
Among Evelyn’s many suitors was Harry Kendall Thaw, a volatile and mentally unstable millionaire from Pittsburgh. Thaw had long resented White, viewing him as a decadent libertine and obstacle to his own social ambitions. Obsessed with Evelyn, he arranged to meet her under a pseudonym, showering her with gifts before revealing his true identity.
Thaw’s behaviour was erratic. On a European trip in 1903, he pressured Evelyn to marry him and, after hearing of her past with White, became abusive. At his rented castle in Austria-Hungary, he locked her in a room and beat her with a whip for two weeks. Despite the trauma, Evelyn later returned to him, feeling trapped by her past, her fading reputation, and the few options available to women in her position.
They married in 1905. Evelyn, now the wife of a railroad heir, moved into the rigid Presbyterian household of Thaw’s family in Pittsburgh. It was a joyless existence, made worse by Thaw’s delusions that White had hired gangsters to stalk him.
The Murder of Stanford White – June 25, 1906
Everything came to a head on a warm summer evening in 1906. At the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden – a building designed by White himself.
Thaw had obtained tickets for the premiere of Mam'zelle Champagne, written by Edgar Allan Woolf, at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. He and Evelyn first stopped at the Cafe Martin for dinner, where they happened to see White, before going to the theatre. Despite the heat, Thaw wore a long black overcoat over his tuxedo and refused to remove it.
At 11:00 pm, as the stage show was coming to a close, White appeared and took his place at a table customarily reserved for him. Spotting his arrival, Thaw approached him several times, each time withdrawing. During the finale, "I Could Love A Million Girls", Thaw produced a pistol and, from two feet away, fired three shots into White's head and back, killing him instantly. Thaw addressed the crowd, but witness reports varied as to his words. He said (roughly): "I did it because he ruined my wife! He had it coming to him! He took advantage of the girl and then abandoned her! ... You'll never go out with that woman again!" In his book The Murder of Stanford White Gerald Langford quoted Thaw as saying, "You ruined my life", or, "You ruined my wife".
The crowd initially thought the incident might be a practical joke but became alarmed upon realizing White was dead. Thaw brandished the pistol and was taken into police custody. Nesbit managed to extricate herself from the ensuing chaos on the Madison Square rooftop. Not wanting to return to their hotel suite, she took refuge for several days in the apartment of a friend. Years later, Nesbit said of this time:
"A complete numbness of mind and body took possession of me ... I moved like a person in a trance for hours afterward."
The Trial of the Century
What followed was one of the most sensationalised trials in American history. Dubbed the "Trial of the Century", it was covered in lurid detail by newspapers across the country. Thaw’s mother funded a legal team costing $500,000 to argue he was temporarily insane – a "brainstorm" defence.
Evelyn Nesbit, at the centre of it all, became both a media sensation and a scapegoat. She testified in graphic detail about her abuse by White. Her story was met with a mix of empathy and moral condemnation. Female journalists – the so-called “Sob Sisters” – highlighted her tragedy while also questioning her choices. Male editors, meanwhile, revelled in the salacious details.
The first jury deadlocked. The second trial found Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to Matteawan State Hospital, where he lived in relative comfort until his escape in 1913. He was ultimately released in 1915, declared sane, and never served time in prison for the murder.
Later Life, Films and Memoirs
In 1910, Evelyn gave birth to a son, Russell William Thaw, in Berlin. She claimed he was Thaw’s child, conceived during a conjugal visit while he was institutionalised, though Thaw denied paternity. Russell later became a pilot and even raced against Amelia Earhart.
Evelyn attempted to restart her life, appearing in silent films such as Threads of Destiny (1914) and The Woman Who Gave (1918). She later married her dance partner, Jack Clifford, in 1916 – a marriage that eventually collapsed.
She worked in vaudeville, opened a tearoom, and later performed in burlesque shows, also briefly lending her name to several clubs, including the Evelyn Nesbit Club in Atlantic City and Chez Evelyn in Manhattan. Through this time, Evelyn struggled with chronic financial problems, alcoholism, and morphine addiction. On New Year's Eve 1925, after concluding a six-week engagement at Chicago's Moulin Rouge and before a scheduled appearance in Miami, Nesbit went on a bender and attempted suicide by swallowing disinfectant. For days, headlines across the country once again turned Nesbit's tragic life into front-page news. Later, doctors stated that Nesbit might have died if her stomach had not been full of gin.
Final Years and Legacy
Evelyn Nesbit’s later years were spent quietly. She studied sculpture and ceramics in Los Angeles and even taught art classes. In 1955, she served as a technical adviser for The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, a film loosely based on her life. She suffered a stroke the following year.
She died on January 17, 1967, aged 82, in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California. She was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.
Evelyn Nesbit’s life offers a stark reflection of a time when beauty was currency, youth was easily exploited, and women had limited means of agency in a man’s world. She was a muse, a symbol of the Gilded Age, and the face behind one of the most scandalous trials of the 20th century. But behind the headlines and courtroom sketches was a woman shaped by hardship, fame, tragedy and survival.
