Talk:Stanford White

"Womanizing," rape, and Me Too

May I request that this article receive a recasting?

The final entry in Mark Twain's autobiography (the current complete edition) addresses the Thaw trial, and shows Twain to have been so shocked by the actual testimony that it made me curious to read this WIKI article. What I find here resembles what Harvey Weinstein's article may have looked like in 2007. If we are to listen to, and consider believing, Nesbit's testimony, we are presented with a man who got a 16-year-old girl drunk to the point of complete unconsciousness, and when she woke, she found herself naked on bloodstained sheets. He raped her and took her virginity, after having groomed her. (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9k3pez/evelyn-nesbit-gilded-age-starlet-sexual-assault-trial-century?fbclid=IwAR0mrpNm2_xL3PnlCmNEO7dbQdi4cBsXXib_mE6WvTBWjUx-RDhS1TtUQWk)

(https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2018/02/13/historian-writes-true-crime-account-of-evelyn-nesbit-scandal/)

How on earth can a fact like this, absolutely stipulated and documented, be missing from this article?

The ONLY hint we have of this is a description of White, by a pal of his, as an innocent and boyish enthusiast of women's beauty. Otherwise the article claims White was merely defamed by tabloid journalism. Yet Nesbit calls him a predator; Simon Baatz points out that the brutal reality has, over the years, been modified to a "seduction"; Mark Twain says that New York society knew for years preceding the incident that the married White was "eagerly and diligently and ravenously and remorselessly hunting young girls to their destruction. These facts have been well known in New York for many years..." I take it as quite serious that this article may be allowing a famous and powerful figure in American history to remain untouched by his own actions. We are not here to libel anybody, of course, but on its face this reputation and the court-testified facts around it should surely be here under "Personal Life." 69.117.207.56 (talk) 11:20, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I see that the third paragraph of "Murder" does give a quick and somewhat buried sentence describing the rape of Nesbit; I don't know if that line was here when I posted the above. I've unburied that line to restore chronology to "Murder" and added three items to "Personal Life." As this material is a bit startling I've included short quotes from Twain and the historians of the incident, to provide specific detail and authority beyond just the reference.

I get the sense, looking back through Talk, that this article has been cleansed bit by bit until there were no more references to any of these issues; I hope my solution will both resist further whitewashing edits and restore balance. Thanks all. Chip (talk) 16:44, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

One thing we must keep in mind is that what we know about what White is alleged to have done to Nesbit is entirely or almost entirely based on what Nesbit said years later about a man who had been killed and thus never had an opportunity to defend himself against the allegations. The fact that he was dead means that Nesbit didn't have to worry about how he would feel and how he would react to what she said. I'm not saying White had an unblemished moral character, but Nesbit had good reason to tell a story about her life in which she was a perfect victim. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:00, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

No, what we know about this incident is also based on what the modern biographies of White and Nesbitt state, along with such ancillary evidence as White's documented membership in an underground sex club, as well as his his address book with dozens of teenage girls' addresses, plus the White family historian's own evidence as to White's long-term behavior. When you say darkly "years later she claims..." please remember that we are talking about a span of only five years, during which the memory of being drugged and raped would not fade into the mists of time, that she only spoke about it, to her husband, when he forced her to, and that (as you quite rightly point out) her story probably never would have been told while White lived--but the reason for this is simply that a random teenager cannot accuse a famous millionaire and get away with it even now, let alone 120 years ago. He held her career in the palm of his hand, and could have ruined her entire life as a matter of routine if she had ever so much as hinted at what he did to her. Powerful men used get away with these things, and it's unwise to take their word for the bad stuff in the face of good evidence. I intentionally invoked "Me Too" in the header of this talk piece in order to put some of these facts in a modern context, and to encourage us to remember to not automatically believe famous powerful men until we've first learned to believe women.69.117.207.56 (talk)

I have reverted your changes. Please get a consensus on this talk page before you make such changes, not afterwards. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I note that your first comment above dates from almost a year ago. There was no consensus at that time for the "recasting" you suggested, and yet you went ahaead and made changes to the article, only commented here after you did so. As I posted out above and on your talk page, this is backwards. Get a community consensus first, and then make the changes the consensus approves of. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:03, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

The "ancillary evidence" in question may show that White had a sexual interest in teenage girls, which may be reasonably well established, but it does not prove White's guilt in a drugging and forcible rape. Nesbit's memory may not have faded, but her motivations and circumstances definitely changed, and White's ability to respond to the allegations certainly stopped with his death. No matter how many people have studied the question and picked over the available fragments of evidence, there is basically no way to get around the fact that our knowledge of exactly what allegedly happened in private between him and Nesbit comes exclusively from Nesbit, after his death, under circumstances where she would be highly motivated to make these claims and in an era when it was socially unacceptable for her to say anything other than what she said. White was never tried or convicted of anything. Even if he had survived, the totality of evidence that has surfaced about him would be insufficient for a conviction and we should not declare his guilt based on what some other creep did and our recent social movement and desire to put right some great wrongs a century later. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:50, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Understood, and I'm sorry if I've revised various pieces of softening and waffling tone without proper respect to the editorial standards regarding consensus (which I didn't fully understand until now). I don't see much consensus here since I started the conversation, so I'll let the article stand as it is. Just want to add that there ought not to be the slow chipping-away at *all allegations and negative facts*, as was done in years past, until the result is the total whitewash we had here a year ago. As for the quotes from actual historians, which as far as I understand the rules I had the right to add, I'm cool with the present state of the article since those quotes have yet to be refuted with other legitimate scholarly sources, which of course would be the right way to carry the dispute forward.

But I do want to make one request: where the article says "years later" Nesbit made the allegation, and "years later" she got married, is it acceptable to improve this to "five years later" and "four years later" respectively? I believe the original intention was to impugne Nesbit's story, but by adducing the actual number of years in question, we are not imbalancing the narrative in her favor, but merely replacing a vague and misleading phrase with a more accurate one. Can somebody tell me that those two changes (that've now been reverted) could be accepted? 69.117.207.56 (talk)

I fully support clarifying the time periods. If you happen to also know how long her period of active close companionship with White lasted, that would also be nice to clarify (along with a citation, of course, preferably with page numbers). I think the current wording of "a period of at least six months" was from me, as I simply couldn't remember how long it lasted. As for the current state of the article, I am somewhat bothered by the use of "rape" in the lead as an apparent statement of fact. It may be justified if interpreted as statutory rape, but I don't know what the age of consent was in New York in the early 1900s. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:31, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the discussion; I've changed the two mentions of "years" to the number of years. I noticed that the article says that in 1906 Nesbit claimed the rape had taken place; I think her statements would have to have been the year earlier, to Thaw and then authorities, but I can't be sure. For now I changed "claimed" to "testified" in order to place it at the 1906 trial, but if this is inappropriate on my part, please feel free to revert it. As for the length of their relationship, I don't know either, but maybe I can find and document that one. Finally, I take your point about the word "rape" unadorned in the opening. While it would seem just as dubious to call it "relationship" without clarification, could we find a short phrase encompassing a rape allegation? Now excuse me, Barrelhouse, while I go research some good whisky based on your postings! 69.117.207.56 (talk)

"Testified" is much better than "claimed". (IIRC, Nesbit operated a tearoom establishment in the 1920s that has been alleged to have involved extensive whisky research as well.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Second Paragraph Sentence

The second paragraph contains the sentence "By the time of the killing, Nesbit was a famous fashion model who was performing as an actress in the show." This is misleading in the way it describes the timing of Nesbit's fashion model fame. It makes it sound as if she were modeling at the time of the murder. In fact, she was a famous fashion model well before the murder and before she had ever met Stanford White, and by the time of the murder, she was no longer modeling.

As far as "was performing as an actress in the show", that is just inaccurate. She had performed in Broadway shows earlier in her life, but she was not performing in and never had performed in "Mam'zelle Champagne", the show which was being performed at the time of White's murder. I think the sentence should be removed. Jersey Jan (talk) 00:16, 29 September 2023 (UTC)