Talk:Harry Kendall Thaw

The word "brainstorm"
Removed comment from main article that Thaw may have been the first to use the word "brainstorm" at his trial in 1909. OED has two earlier cites:

1907 Daily Chron. 13 Feb. 7/5 Ordeals of mind which formed a *brain-storm or mental explosion. 1908 Westm. Gaz. 8 Aug. 4/3 In the closing years of his active life, Ruskin had suffered from recurrent brain-storms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aldiboronti (talk • contribs) 13:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The style in which this article is written is truly atrocious. Grammar and tone are god awful. This feels like satire. I plan to make in my special pet project for the weekend.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wickedxjade (talk • contribs) 16:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Article edited
This article needed major attention. I've completed re-writing, adding inline citations for the entire entry, also adding images to enhance text. Very time consuming, but well worth the effort, as I feel that what we now have is comprehensive information on the man and the era. Betempte (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Article stated that Thaw's father died in 1893 and left Thaw 3 million dollars. Thaw was born in 1871, so he was 22. Changed the article to reflect that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.180.240 (talk) 03:00, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Material for a Trivia Section?
I suggest that a trivia section be added, containing statements from the 1924 book Thirty Years Among the Dead, by Carl A. Wickland. (I realise I might be inviting ridicule, but the fact is that there is a source making claims so outlandish as to be worthy of inclusion. It also illustrates Thaw's notoriety, even almost two decades after the murder.)

Wickland used to hold seances with his wife as a medium. He claims that Thaw killed White under the influence of "revengeful spirits", two of whom he had spoken to at said seances. Wickland also writes about talking to the spirits of Stanford White and Thaw's deceased father. The latter said that both the murder and Harry's odd behaviour throughout his life had been caused by spirit possession:

"He is sensitive to spirit influence and has been all his life. [...] I did not understand the cause of Harry's queer actions while I was in the physical, but now, from the spirit side of life, I can see that Harry has been a tool in the hands of selfish, earthbound spirits most of his life."

FWIW, 80.217.127.229 (talk) 09:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

First sequestered jury?
The Lizzie Borden trial had a sequestered jury according to the History Channel. Mike Hayes (talk) 07:42, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I share the same concern, and I have good source to cite as evidence. See this article from The New York Times (January 24, 1907). It says "To lock up a jury at the beginning of a trial is unusual. It was done at the second Molineux trial and perhaps once since, ..." I believe this refers to the second trial in the case of People v. Molineux, an important case which established the practice now known as a Molineux hearing. The second trail was in 1902. So here I see a contemporaneous reliable source saying that jury sequestration had occurred before, not just in American jurisprudence, but specifically in New York jurisprudence, and just five years before the first trial of Thaw. But the article is claiming that Thaw's first trial was "the first time in the history of American jurisprudence" that a jury had been sequestered (citing Uruburu, p. 322). That statement therefore seems incorrect. I don't have a copy of the Uruburu book, but regardless of whether the book really says that or not, it seems to be wrong. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:55, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Image size
That is awesome that 225px is optimal for your screen, but we now use dynamic sizing so that everyone can choose an image size that is optimal for their own screens in the settings. If you think the default setting should be set at 225 pixels, this is not the place to make that argument by reverting to your favorite setting. You can lobby to change global Wikipedia policy at the WP:Village Pump. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't you be spending your time fixing your vast number of copyright violations?  Or do you prefer to work on writing more articles that you're not allowed to move to articlespace,  which will then join the many, many articles that sit in your userspace  because you spent your time writing them (and making stupid edits like this) instead of working on your copyright violations? BMK (talk) 20:25, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Attack the editor when the logic behind your reversion rationale fails ... --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:36, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep, you work with what you've got, and what we've got here is an extremely selfish editor who'd rather dick around making trivial edits, edit-warring, and bothering and incorrectly warning other editors (and who can't count to three either, I guess) rather than do what's right and help fix his vast number of copyright violations. To expect me to treat you as a colleague under those circumstance is asking too much, so this is how you'll be treated instead, like the pest you have become. BMK (talk) 21:20, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Article is not written in a scholarly manner
Hey, I almost never use my account on Wikipedia, and I'm not sure I'm doing this right, but I had to comment on this article. This man's story is remarkable, but the article sound like it was written by an enthusiastic tour guide, not a scholar. It strays into subjectivity and there is much that can be trimmed out, such as a sentence that begins with "The reality is..." That shouldn't be a necessary preface on an encyclopedic article. Someone clean this up! — Preceding unsigned comment added by KempsonB (talk • contribs) 08:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Susie Merrill
No where, is it documented, that Susie Merrill ran anything other then Boarding Homes. Yes, you own a building and you rent apartments out; you can not control what goes on inside of your tenants residence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.129.230.132 (talk) 14:15, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Thaw did not murder White
There are many many places in this article that say that Thaw murdered White, or similarly refer to Thaw's killing of White as "the murder". At the opening of the article, the lead section says "Thaw murdered ... Stanford White". I believe this is flatly wrong. Murder is a crime. There is a difference between a murder and a killing – between a murder and a homicide. A homicide is not necessarily a crime, but a murder is a crime. An important element of the crime of murder is mens rea, the mental state of understanding that the person is committing a crime and is knowingly intending to commit that crime. If that element was missing, there was no crime of murder. Thaw was ultimately found not guilty of the crime of murder, because a jury determined that this necessary element that would need to be established in order for the crime of murder to have taken place was missing (or wasn't sufficiently proven). According to the final disposition of the case, Thaw did not murder White (or at least there was insufficient proof that he did). Wikipedia should not be saying that a man who was found not guilty was guilty (of a murder). —BarrelProof (talk) 22:53, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The word 'murder" is not just a legal term. In Baker's book "Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White" the author states (p. 400) "White's murder on the rooftop of Madison Gardens by Harry Thaw . . . ." suggesting that if the best sources around are content to call it murder it is good enough for wikipedia. On page 367 we find "The day after the murder an autopsy of White's body . . ." Carptrash (talk) 04:02, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Also check out the difference between "murder" as a noun (the legal version) and "murder" the verb, the unlawful, premeditated killing of someone. Here, in these articles, I believe that you will find the verb being used. Carptrash (talk) 04:35, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I acknowledge that some sources may use the term informally, but I think Wikipedia should have a higher standard than that. I also don't see much of a difference between whether it is used as a noun or as a verb – if there wasn't a murder, then I think no one was murdered and vice versa. So if a person was not guilty of murder, I think they should not be called a murderer and the killing they did should not be called a murder. At least not repetitively. I also have a problem with the way the term "murder" is repeated over and over in this article – about 20 times in the article – about 12 of which are used in the way I suggest is problematic (e.g., not prefixed by "charged with" or in a suitable phrase like "murder case") – I'm not counting the uses in the titles of cited sources. I looked for some well known examples to compare to – there don't really seem to be that many. I think we are more likely to use disciplined language for more modern cases that have gotten more attention during the lifetime of Wikipedia. I notice that the articles about James Brady and John Hinckley Jr. do not use the word "murder" at all to describe Hinckley killing Brady – the word "homicide" is used, but not the word "murder". The Daniel M'Naghten article has one use of the word "murder" in a section heading. The Daniel Sickles article has the word in about 4 places. The Charles L. Meach article has one place where the word is used without qualification. The Howard Unruh article has it in two places. The Mickey Featherstone article says Linwood Willis was "shot dead", but doesn't say he was murdered. The Richard Dadd article refers to killing, but not murder. The Albert Tirrell article basically does not use the term casually. The Nikolai Dzhumagaliev article has it in about 7 places, but the article is overall rather poorly written and poorly sourced, so I don't think it counts for much. The Alice Mitchell article has it in 4 places. That's enough surveying for now. I'm stopping there. I saw one or two articles that referred to "assassination" or attempted assassination without using the word "murder". I didn't find any articles that repeat the word over and over like this article does, without any indication that the application of the word is questionable. I get the impression that the word is used somewhat more casually in cases of serial killers or "mass murder". I was looking through Category:People acquitted by reason of insanity. Not all of those are murder cases. —BarrelProof (talk) 08:31, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thaw did indeed murder White, in that he killed him unlawfully. The fact that he was found not criminally responsible does not make the act lawful. There is a difference between the characterization of the act and the characterization of the responsibility of the perpetrator.Bill (talk) 22:53, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Two trials or three?
The article has a section called "the two trials". It starts with a statement saying there were two trials. It then describes the first trial, saying it "began on January 23, 1907, and ... the twelve jurors emerged deadlocked" in April 1907. It then says "The second trial took place from January 1908 through February 1, 1908" and that he was found not guilty. So far, so good – that's two trials. But then the article goes on to describe a third trial in 1915. It says that in the third trial the jury found him not guilty again. What was the excuse for putting him on trial for a third time after he was found not guilty in the second trial? Was he was charged with a different crime in the third trial? The article doesn't say. What, exactly, did they find him not guilty of? Why did they find him not guilty of whatever it was? What defense was presented? Was that third trial really a jury trial? (I can't see the cited NYT article due to a paywall.) —BarrelProof (talk) 02:01, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * According to Baker, (see above, p. 393) the third trial, in June 1915, was a jury trial to determine whether he was then sane, and thus could be released. The jury decided that he was at that time sane, so he walked on July 15, 1915.  Two years later he engaged in some nasty stuff and again had to plead insanity. In 1924 he was declared sane and released.  Carptrash (talk) 04:27, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I suspected something of the sort, but the article really needs to be clarified. The article says "he was able to secure a new trial" (as if there had been some flawed "old trial" that needed to be retried with new evidence or a new interpretation of the law, and with no mention of the "new trial" being on a different topic, so the reader would likely assume it was another trial about whether he was guilty of murdering White) and that in the new trial he was "found not guilty". If the trial was only about whether he was sane or not, rather than whether he had committed a crime, then it should say he was determined to be sane, not that he was determined to be not guilty. If he was accused of a crime in that third trial, the article should say what the alleged crime was that he was determined not to be guilty of. (I notice that the source you're referring to does not seem to be cited in this article, although it is cited in the Stanford White article.) —BarrelProof (talk) 06:56, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Support for Nesbitt
The article suggests that but for the desire of the Thaw family to influence her testimony, Nesbitt would have been penniless. However, she was legally married to Thaw, which would have given her a right to support from his substantial funds. Do the sources explain this apparent contradiction?Bill (talk) 22:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly, it was Thaw's mother who held the primary control of the fortune rather than Harry Thaw himself, and she was not fond of Nesbitt. And Harry Thaw did not seem to want to help her either. Also, although I don't know what the law about marital property was like a century ago, it may be that if he had wealth it might not have been considered marital community property, since his wealth may have been inherited prior to his marriage. Also, remember that this was a rather patriarchal society in which she held a somewhat scandalous position. She might have had difficulty prevailing even if the written law would have been on her side. And as a possibly naïve product of that society, she may not have had sufficient understanding or access to competent counsel to pursue such a claim. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:33, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Chronology of first trial
This should even ascertainable from the text of the article without the necessity of running the footnotes, but it is not. 2600:1004:B144:8D50:0:4E:D032:EE01 (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)