Harry Thaw later in life

Thaw’s first act after being declared sane was to file for divorce from Evelyn. He continued to live a rowdy life full of his trademark fits of rage and tantrums until he died in 1947 at the age of seventy-six.

Evelyn, who’d given birth to a child during Thaw’s confinement, never got her million-dollar payment from Mother Thaw.  She named the child Russell Thaw, but her husband vehemently denied paternity.  The financially strapped Evelyn returned to Vaudeville and Broadway. Despite a second and nearly as short marriage to Jack Clifford, she was always booked as Mrs. Harry K. Thaw.  Her later years were marred by alcoholism, drug addiction and a transitory lifestyle.  Thaw occasionally took pity on her and offered monetary support, but the kindness never lasted. Evelyn’s life was a constant struggle.

Evelyn with Jack Clifford

Those who met her during her lucid periods described her as beautiful, charming and possessing talent as a visual artist. Evelyn herself spoke of “Stanny” as the lucky one for having died young.  She lived to see a young actress named Joan Collins portray her in a Hollywood movie called “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing” and died in 1966 at age eighty-one.  Less than a decade after her death, the novelist E.L. Doctorow used Evelyn’s story as a symbol of the dawning century in his masterpiece Ragtime. 

However, the real tragedy of White’s murder has been often overlooked. In her book The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family, Suzannah Lessard, White’s great granddaughter describes the lasting effect White’s murder had on his family.  In addition to losing a beloved husband and father, the publicity of the murder brought to light truths about White that humiliated his Victorian family and caused his name to be spoken in hushed whispers and vehement denials fifty years after his death. Lessard, a relative born forty years after White’s death, recounts wincing in “pride and shame” when she heard the name Stanford White spoken aloud. The ghosts of scandal, violence and sexual impropriety still haunt the memory of a brilliant architect and generous father whose faults should be by now forgiven, if not forgotten.