Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Mulholland Books.
In 1901, Evelyn Nesbit, a New York society darling, dined with Stanford White in his decadent 24th Street apartment. Evelyn was given champagne, lost consciousness, and woke, nearly naked, in bed next to White. An acclaimed architect and notorious womanizer, White was 47. Evelyn Nesbit was just 16.
Four years later, Evelyn married Harry Thaw, a playboy millionaire rumored to be mentally disturbed. One night in 1906, a vengeful Thaw shot and killed White before hundreds of theatre-goers at Madison Square Garden—a venue designed by Stanford White himself. The murder and ensuing trial were the scandal of the century, perhaps the nation’s first tabloid murder.
