The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1908-02-05
BELIEVES THAT HARRY THAW
is A MADMAN.
BY DOROTHY DIX.

Mr.. Littleton has riveted together
the last links in his chain of evidence
TO prove that Harry Thaw has been
practically insane all of his life,
He has brought together in dra,
matte succession four physicians and
a trained nurse, all of whom attend
ed the prisoner in some phase oil
his mental alterations.
These doctors foregathered from
many cities, from Pittsburg, from
London, from Rome, from Paris. It
did not take the most voluble of them
ten minutes to tell what he had to
say Nor was the evidence of any
one of them important, except insofar
as it swelled the chorus of testimony
as to Thaw's irratiOnality; but these
witnesses from over seas gave one
a renewed gasp of amazement at the
spectacle Of how much money and
effort is being spent to save the life
of the sallow-faced man at the bar.
Evidently the Thaws are taking no
chances this time Everything that
unlimited wealth and an astute law
yer could do to make the insanity
defense convincing has been done,
until it seems as if Littleton had
gone over Thaw's past with a magni-
flying glass and then summoned to
his aid, no matter from what dis
tance, every human being who could
throw a light on the eccentricities
of the young man. Truly, it is well
to be a millionaire when one is also
criminal.
During all this testimony which
seemed to forge the very bolts and
bars of the mad house for him Har-
ry Thaw sat with his thin, yellow
hand with it's broad finger tips with
the nails gnaWed to the quick, hid
ing his mouth, his sOmbre eyes that
grow more and more melancholy day
by day looking at the floor, the cell
ing, anywhere but at the witness that
was pronouncing his doom.
He looked winter than ever more
i'll, more wan, more staid more
frightened of that terrible future
that lies in front of him Whatever
anyone may have thought of Harry
Thaw in the days when he was pulled |
up by the arrogance of his wealth |
it is impossible to look at him now
so crushed and broken, so humbly |
submissive to his lawyer, without be- |
ing filled with something akin to |
pity.
In the light shed on his bilghted |
childhood one sees him born under
the curse of that hard law that visits |
the sin of the father upon the chill
1ren unto the third and fourth gen
7rations, and realize that he did not
have fair chance in life. The child
IF fortune, he was also the child Of
Nature handicapped
lim at the start by giving him a
eeble brain and a tangled nervous
system and added the weight cloths
hat made it impossible for him to
'un the course in too much money.
After all, in studying the Thaw
.ase one comes inevitably back 20
he starting point-parental respon-
ibility. Harry Thaw's crime against
society is not so great as the many
Unfit who should have never been
,orn, who will not be born when we
Jet wise enough to protect the prop
.gatiOn Of the human species as We
10 animals.
Every time far-seeing man offers
bib in the legislature to force men
nd women who want to marry to
ubmit to a medical test before they
re granted a marriage license it is
aughed out of existence, but if such
beneficial law did exist we would
init the number of half-crazy de-
generates who are born into the
World to curse themselves and their
leighbOrs
The day also will surely come
when we have an intelligent mother
rood, and when women will under
tand that prenatal influence upon
.hildren is the influence that really
counts and carries from the cradle
o the grave.
Then a woman who is in the nery-
JUS and melancholy state that Mrs.
Thaw was before Harry was born |
will no more bring child into the |
world TO inherit her bodily and men |
-aI Affections at the time than she |
would take a Ratchet and MAIN and
lisfigure the child already born.