The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1908-01-18
BY Associated Press.
(By Dorothy Dix.)

New York, Jan. 17.-The story of
real interest and significance in the
1naw case is not the story of the
killing of bad man by a crazy
youth. 1t is much more subtle than
that 1t is the story of the pride
and arrogance of a new-rich family,
so besotted with the vanity of wealth
that one of its members believed he
could do as he pleased, outrage de-
cency, defy the conventions and even
commit murder, and that no one
would dare to punish him. The at
tHude of the Thaw family was pre-
c1seiy that of the French aristocrats
before the revolution. They thought
themselves above the law, and so
when Harry Thaw killed Stanford
White it did not occur to them that
he would be tried like a poor man
and was in just as much danger of
having TO pay the penalty of his
crime with his life as any pauper
that ever faced the bar of Justice.
They expected to have to pay out a
lot Of money, of course, to get him
out of this scrape, as they had paid
out lots of money before to extricate
him from unpleasant escapades. But
they conceived of the trial as a violet
scented affair where the rigors of the
law would be tempered to the mil
| lions and from which Harry Thaw
would emerge with a romantic halo,
sort of ST. George rescuing maiden
from a dragon.
So they hired lawyers and indicated
to them a pleasing line of defense
that would not bring out anything
that would reflect on the Thaw OF Cop
ley families. Learned alienists were
employed to devise form of mental
irrespOnSibility that was neither
hereditory nor catching in order to
| excuse the prisoners act and then
the family sat calmly back and await
ed the verdict 1t came. Seven
men out of twelve voted to send
Harry Thaw to the electric chair.
Their verdict shook the fatuous COM
placency of the Thaw family. 1t
pierced their hearts like a pistol shot
through all the layers of their vanity
and arrogance, for they knew that to
save their pride, they had almost
doomed the son and brother that they
really loved, and whom they knew to
! be crazy 10 death.
AS Mr.. LittletOn unfolds more and
more of his evidence that Harry Thaw
J has always been weak-minded and
abnormal from the very hour of his
birth and one reflects that he has not
| told One-third that Thaw's family
have not always known, it makes
even an outsider gasp with sheer hor-
ror to think of the chances it took
with the pitfully weak defense that
was offered when it held in it's hands
| this impregable barrier that the law
| itself has raised between the mental
| ly incompetent and the consequences
of his crime.
| Mrs Thaw adores Harry with a
veritable passion of maternal love and
! tenderness. His brothers and sisters
have evinced unusual affection and
F! loyalty to him in his trouble, yet they
| risked his life that the stain upon
i their name and the faint in their
blood might not be made known to
the world
Vanity OF vanities,'' saith the
preacher, "all is vanity
Today Mrs Thaw, who has risen
from her sick bed to come to New
York, will make her final sacrifice
upon the altar of love and tell all
the things she has hid in her heart
so long of his slowness in childhood
the freaks of which he was guilty as
a youth, of the broOding melancholy
that grew on him as he became older
and of the fear and anxiety with
| which she watched him SlipIi ing over
the borders of insanity. She will tell
| that it was the fear of the conse
| quence of watching that made he1
| afraid to thwart him and induced hei
to crafty his every within in the
hope that if she kept him happy and
] cOntented she might ward off the evil
day for him