Anna Vazhaeparambil - 2021 Near Scholar

2020-21 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient Beyond the Women’s Pages: The Impact of Nixola Greeley-Smith’s Coverage of the 1907 Harry Thaw Trial on Progressive-Era Journalism Anna Vazhaeparambil

Beyond the Women’s Pages: The Impact of Nixola Greeley-Smith’s Coverage of the 1907 Harry Thaw Trial on Progressive-Era Journalism

Anna Vazhaeparambil 2021 John Near Scholar Mentors: Dr. Pauline Paskali, Mrs. Lauri Vaughan April 14, 2021

Vazhaeparambil 2 “EVELYN THAW’S hour has come. Her ordeal is upon her.”

—from Nixola Greeley-Smith’s first column on the Thaw trial 1 On January 23, 1907, thousands in New York City flocked to the courtroom to witness what would later be dubbed the first “trial of the century” in American history: the case of railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw, who murdered architect Stanford White on June 25, 1906 to defend the honor of his wife Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. 2 The scandal created a media frenzy, covering the front pages of national newspapers for months and fueling heightened sensationalism in the press. 3 Among the ranks of journalists who covered this news event, four female reporters stood out. When Winifred Black, Dorothy Dix, Nixola Greeley-Smith, and Ada Patterson sat at their own press table in the courtroom, their presence alone created an unprecedented sight. 4 Women had reported on murder trials before, but never for such a long duration or for a case with so much publicity, according to professor Jean Marie Lutes, author of Front Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880-1930. 5 Not only did Black, Dix, GreeleySmith, and Patterson join many other female columnists in writing about the Thaw trial for major newspapers in the city, but they also gained national attention for their coverage from inside the

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Thaw's Manner While Under Cross-Examination by Jerome Reveals that at the Crucial Moment She Has Become Afraid of Him," The Evening World (New York, N.Y.), February 20, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-20/ed-1/seq-3/.

1

Chronicling America, "Murder of Stanford White and the First 'Trial of the Century': Topics in Chronicling America," Library of Congress Research Guides, https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-stanford-white-murder; "Harry Thaw Trial Opened up Today," Palestine Daily Herald (Palestine, TX), January 23, 1907, 1, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090383/1907-01-23/ed-1/seq-1/.

2

3

Chronicling America, "Murder of Stanford," Library of Congress Research Guides.

Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 65, https://archive.org/details/ladiesofpresssto0000ross.

4

Jean Marie Lutes, Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 65, https://archive.org/details/frontpagegirls00jean/mode/2up.

5

Vazhaeparambil 3 courtroom. 6 Still, this breakthrough that changed the course of their careers was ultimately overshadowed by overwhelming criticism, as these four women also endured a trial of their own. 7 Journalism during the 1890s was controlled by the yellow press, a term intended to denounce the news publications that promoted bold, exaggerated, and lurid content in order to drive up media consumption. 8 Because female reporters in the early 1900s were especially targeted for contributing to this trend by writing with emotion, this general critique against sensationalism no longer only applied to the style itself, but also became intertwined with the gender of the journalists involved. In her 1936 book Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider, Ishbel Ross claims that when The Evening World reporter Irvin S. Cobb saw Black, Dix, Greeley-Smith, and Patterson together in court, “spread[ing] their sympathy like jam,” he “injected a scornful line into his copy about the sob sisters.” 9 His coinage of this derogatory epithet, which continued to plague female journalists for decades after, masked the nuances of their coverage in favor of projecting a simplified, conventional interpretation about the impact of female news reporters, according to Lutes. 10 Greeley-Smith’s legacy uncovers this overlooked narrative. Her coverage of the Thaw trial, when examined within the context of her entire career and the social milieu of the time period, reveals how one woman took advantage of stereotypes like “sob sister” in order to pave her own path within the news industry. By conforming to gendered expectations, Nixola Greeley-Smith simultaneously 6

Lutes, 65.

7

Lutes, 65.

W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 6-7.

8

9

Ross, Ladies of the Press, 65

10

Ross, 65; Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 66.

Vazhaeparambil 4 built a national audience and provided a uniquely feminine perspective of the 1907 Harry Thaw trial, thereby instigating conversation about women’s issues in the American press.

Progressivism, Sensationalism, and a Trial of the Century Greeley-Smith’s status as a newswoman during the Progressive Era was influenced by the socioeconomic landscape of her time. Against the backdrop of rising urbanization and industrialization in the United States during the late 1800s, women received new opportunities to move to cities, enter the workforce, and access higher education. 11 As females from all social classes began to transition into public spaces, this subversion of the domestic sphere fueled changing social attitudes and directly challenged Victorian ideals of womanhood, which had dictated that a woman’s potential was limited to being a wife and mother. 12 These traditional gender roles had dominated society, asserting that females possessed a moral responsibility to care for their families and reject any sexual desires in order to demonstrate their respectability and purity. 13 At the same time, turn-of-the-century journalism was also transforming in content and style to reflect Progressivism and urbanization. By conducting crusades against political institutions or by exploiting human-interest stories about the plight of the poor and marginalized, editors took advantage of the public’s fascination with scandal and reform to create and magnify dramatic, thrilling news events that would capture the excitement of city life while

11

Marion Marzolf, Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977), 26.

Phyllis Leslie Abramson, Sob Sister Journalism, Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications 23 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 15-17.

12

13

Abramson, 14-15.

Vazhaeparambil 5 simultaneously boosting readership. 14 Even as yellow journalism began to decline at the start of the twentieth century, reporters from publications like Joseph Pulitzer’s the Evening World, where Greeley-Smith worked, and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal continued using emotional, sensational writing to better appeal to the masses. 15 Newspaper coverage of Harry Thaw’s trial reflects these trends and even adheres to Pulitzer’s “murder/sin/sex formula,” his philosophy to explain what constitutes the best human-interest stories for the American public. 16 When Harry Thaw murdered White in front of nine hundred people at Madison Square Garden in a fit of “jealousy, hate and revenge,” according to the Washington Times, he captured national attention immediately. 17 Yet, while he was the one on trial for the crime, the scandal primarily surrounded another individual: the woman he was defending. Evelyn Thaw was a poor chorus girl at the center of a love triangle between two rich, famous men in New York City, and her story of seduction, domestic violence, and sexual vulnerability was shocking but riveting to readers. 18 Renowned for her beauty and her talented performance in the musical Floradora, she had become White’s lover when he was 48 years old and she was only 16, having been encouraged by her mother to entertain the affections of the well-known architect. 19 Calling

Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960, 3rd ed. (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Company, 1962), 573-75; Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1955), 189.

14

15

Mott, American Journalism, 539.

Deborah Chambers, Linda Steiner, and Carole Fleming, Women and Journalism (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004), 20, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harker-ebooks/reader.action?docID=182310.

16

17 "Harry Thaw Kills Stanford White in Jealous Rage over Actress Wife," The Washington Times (Washington D.C.), June 26, 1906, 1, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1906-06-26/ed-1/seq-1/.

18

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 72.

Paula Uruburu, American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century (New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, 2008), 146, https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781594489938/mode/2up.

19

Vazhaeparambil 6 himself her benefactor, he took advantage of her youth and naivety during their relationship, placing her in sexual situations and eventually raping her in 1902. 20 After Harry Thaw married Evelyn Nesbit in 1905, he was soon driven by both intense envy for White and maddened over the crimes committed against his wife, leading him to murder the architect on June 25, 1906. 21 The first trial, which lasted from January 23 to April 12, 1907, ended in a deadlocked jury, leading to a month-long second trial in January of 1908, in which Harry Thaw successfully pleaded an insanity defense and was committed to a mental institution.22 The intense visibility surrounding this news event for nearly two years also translated to Greeley-Smith, whose unique presence in the courtroom as one of four female reporters drew attention. She had received the opportunity to cover this story for the Evening World because of her publication’s well-established rivalry with the New York Journal during the height of yellow journalism. 23 As a result, when Hearst assigned three women to report on the case for him, Greeley-Smith’s editor Charles Chapin responded by sending her to cover it with the male journalist, Cobb, already assigned. He was in charge of producing “long, detailed accounts of that day’s goings-on in court and sidebars on the courtroom cast of characters”; Greeley-Smith was needed solely “to provide color, especially the woman’s perspective.” 24 While this gendered expectation implied that females could only write emotion-driven stories, it ultimately provided an opportunity for Greeley-Smith and the other women in her position to pursue coverage of a

20

Uruburu, 136-37.

21

Uruburu, 254; Uruburu, 281-82.

22

Chronicling America, "Murder of Stanford," Library of Congress Research Guides.

23

Campbell, Yellow Journalism, 52.

James McGrath Morris, The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 186-87, digital file.

24

Vazhaeparambil 7 career-defining story by taking advantage of their editors’ requests for sensational reporting. 25 Newspapers needed to increase their female readership in order to publish more advertisements, which primarily targeted female shoppers, and thus they intentionally hired more women to write for them and published content that was traditionally considered to be more feminine. 26 A 1916 column titled “The Fair Sex in Journalism” by Laura Jean Libby, who had been writing as a syndicated reporter since 1913, corroborates this trend: “the woman’s page was the opening wedge for the feminine journalist. Soon she was asserting her right to write editorials and ‘cover’ murder trials as well as pink teas.” 27 Greeley-Smith’s journey in moving up the ranks of her newsroom and her role in documenting one of the most infamous trials of the century is a testament to how new job opportunities for female reporters in the twentieth century were influenced by this expectation to be sensational.

Playing the Game of “Sob Sister Journalism” Greeley-Smith’s coverage of the first Thaw trial began on January 23, 1907, and her writing quickly secured a regular place in the news section of the Evening World for nearly three months, the duration of the case. This assignment was a breakthrough in her career, unlike anything she had worked on previously, in terms of subject matter but also writing style. The granddaughter of journalist and New-York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, Greeley-Smith entered the news industry in 1899 when she was 18 years old and worked as a regular writer for

25

Marzolf, Up from, 33.

26

Marzolf, 20-21.

Laura Jean Libby, "The Fair Sex in Journalism," Laura Jean Libby's Daily Talks on Heart Topics, Bridgeport Evening Farmer (Bridgeport, CT), March 11, 1916, 7, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84022472/1916-0311/ed-1/seq-7/.

27

Vazhaeparambil 8 the Sunday magazine section of the New York World. 28 Upon joining the Evening World in 1901, she initially contributed relatively short columns on topics about love, fashion, and beauty for the “Home” page, otherwise known as the “Woman’s” page. 29 Her first bylined column, which was called “The Ankle Line” and published on December 9, 1902, featured the latest trend in skirt lengths for women: Fashion flaunts the long skirt again, but the short skirt—the rainy-day costume—is here to stay, all the same. Last Friday’s storm showed how the sensible, off-the-ground garment stood, when it came to a question of comfort in bad weather. Nearly every woman on the streets wore a rainy day skirt. Some of the skirts were six inches off the ground. Some were only four. 30 The straightforward, observational tone in this passage is emphasized by Greeley-Smith’s objectivity and starkly contradicts her later writing. Over the next four years, she published hundreds of columns, and as her status as a newswoman evolved, her witty, persuasive voice began to shine through and transform the impact of her pieces. By 1904, she was appearing on the editorial page, and her content had expanded into broader women’s issues: gender identity, sexism, even wife beating. 31 In her article “Wife Beating as Fine Art,” printed on October 6, 1905, she employed intense sarcasm and dark humor to express her disdain for domestic violence.

Kerry Segrave, Nixola Greeley-Smith, 1880-1919; The Life and Work of an American Journalist (Kerry Segrave, 2019), 61, https://www.scribd.com/read/436422266/Nixola-Greeley-Smith-1880-1919-The-Life-and-Work-of-anAmerican-Journalist; Abramson, Sob Sister, 41.

28

29

Segrave, Nixola Greeley-Smith, 61.

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "The Ankle Line," The Evening World (New York, NY), December 9, 1902, 13, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1902-12-09/ed-1/seq-13/.

30

31

Segrave, Nixola Greeley-Smith, 63.

Vazhaeparambil 9 In the first months of matrimony perhaps [women] prefer [attention] in the form of kisses and tender declarations of love. But after awhile these things cease or begin to pall and then Mrs. Newlywed wakes up to the fact that there is one great, unexplored ecstatic joy, that of being beaten. And thereafter, she won’t be happy till she has tried it. 32 Greeley-Smith relied on satire to effectively suggest that the concept of women enjoying abuse and finding “ecstatic joy” in being beaten by their husbands is laughable and absurd. Her decision to not directly attack the barbaric nature of this practice but to instead use humor to approach the sensitive, controversial issue allowed her to still publish intense, biting commentary. With this astuteness and journalistic prowess, she covered a wide range of stories and continued to present her opinions in a distinctive voice, up until the Thaw trial in 1907 when rather than using hyperbole to exaggerate her satire, she instead magnified the emotion and sensationalism of her columns.

Greeley-Smith was assigned by Chapin to cover the emotion in the courtroom: “to watch for the tear-filled eye, the widow’s veil, the quivering lip, the lump in the throat, the trembling hand,” according to Ross. 33 In doing so, she became associated with the “sob sister” label, which connotes unprofessionalism and hypocrisy and further fortified the gender stereotypes dominating the news industry. 34 In her article on February 8, 1907, Greeley-Smith’s description of Evelyn Thaw serves as an example of her editor’s expectation to be sensational: Her body sways forward as she talks. It wears the wilted, drooping aspect of a lily broken on its stalk. Her mouth alone affords a key to the fierce loves she has inspired. It is a full

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Wife Beating as Fine Art," The Evening World (New York, NY), October 6, 1905, 19, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1905-10-06/ed-1/seq-19/.

32

33

Ross, Ladies of the Press, 65.

34

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 66.

Vazhaeparambil 10 mouth, with ripe, curving lips that close over her slightly pointed teeth with difficulty. It is the mouth of a full-blooded woman set in the candid features of an unspoiled child. 35 Her use of rich adjectives and striking metaphors provide a stark contrast to the simple but eloquent vocabulary in her earlier article on wife beating. Not only did Greeley-Smith employ flowery language, but she also directly compared Evelyn Thaw to a flower, reinforcing the young girl’s femininity and meekness with this description. Ultimately, Greeley-Smith created a remarkable juxtaposition between the childlike, innocent nature of Evelyn Thaw’s physical appearance and the courage she later displayed during her painful testimony. The young girl had been drugged and raped by White when she was 16 years old, and she was asked to reveal the intimate details of their relationship to the courtroom, and by extension, to every major newspaper in the city. 36 Greeley-Smith’s rhetoric builds on the shocking, sensational nature of the case and convinces readers to feel pity for the couple. As the trial continued, she brought sympathy and emotion into her writing about Evelyn Thaw, as she does in her column of February 22, 1907: Justice no longer tortures the body. The rack and thumb-screw are things of the past. Yet it is difficult to imagine greater suffering than that inflicted in the name of the law in Justice Fitzgerald’s court yesterday upon Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. Here was the vivisection of a woman’s soul, the tearing from it of its profoundest secrets, a rendering, wrenching,

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Nesbit Thaw's Terrible Sacrifice in Baring Her Soul to Save Husband Without Precedent in Courts or Even in Realms of Romance," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 8, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-08/ed-1/seq-3/.

35

36

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 69.

Vazhaeparambil 11 merciless digging into its depths that by comparison made the rack seem less hideous and awful. 37 The description within this excerpt is gruesome. The powerful diction and structural parallelism of “rendering, wrenching, merciless digging” evoke anguish and torture, appealing directly to the readers’ emotions with pathos. The dramatic account, a common element of Greeley-Smith’s trial coverage, is intense, physical, and sensational.

The backlash against this specific writing style became more apparent in the years that followed. An unauthored article published in the Clarksburg Telegram in 1912 accused sob sisters of publicizing “the melodramatic side of a big happening in cheap or sickly style.” 38 Within an industry that thrived on sensationalizing the news for its audience, they were specifically targeted for “promoting immorality” in yellow papers and intentionally trying to evoke tears with their writing. 39 Yet in reality, both women and men wrote emotional articles; emotion was considered “an accepted and valued ‘tool’” by many journalists. 40 In the front page news story written by Cobb on February 8, 1907, he uses similar imagery as Nixola did to describe Evelyn: “she could never have counterfeited it—the tortured twitch of the red, vibrant lips literally shrinking away in physical repulsion from the words they must frame, the eyes crying out of their glazed depths with a mute appeal for mercy, the gasp and the choke and

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "'The Vivisection of a Woman's Soul,' Nixola Greeley-Smith Calls District-Attorney Jerome's Cross-Examination of Evelyn Thaw," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 22, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-22/ed-1/seq-3/.

37

"Flying Their Colors," The Clarksburg Telegram (Clarksburg, WV), April 4, 1912, 4, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84037844/1912-04-04/ed-1/seq-4/.

38

39

"Flying Their," 4.

Alice Fahs, Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 12, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harkerebooks/reader.action?docID=819535.

40

Vazhaeparambil 12 shudder that shook the childish voice.” 41 New-York Tribune writer Sarah Addington highlighted this hypocrisy in a 1915 article published about Greeley-Smith and other females in the industry: And so go the annals of the newspaper woman, she who used to be the sob sister, but who now is no more tearful in her writing than her ‘fellow craftsman’: in fact, isn’t the sob brother the boy who turns on the lachrymose fount these days of Becker trials and trench stories? 42 By using the term “sob brother” to point out the double standard, Addington implies that she was witnessing a gender issue: Women were associated with and criticized for a writing style that was stereotypically seen as more feminine, even though it was also employed by men and reflected the kind of content society desired. A 1911 article titled “The Sob Sisters Are on the Job,” published in Virginia’s Mathews Journal, went one step further in targeting females, claiming that the sob sisters intentionally made readers feel sympathy for a woman, even if the truth needed to be twisted to do so: “if a suffering young innocent has mauled a man’s head off with a fifty-pound boulder, they show that she meant to hit him with a pebble, but made a mistake and threw the wrong article.” 43 In doing so, the author (presumably male) explicitly discredited and undermined the work of female journalists by suggesting that anything they wrote was likely exaggerated or even falsified to favor women. Thus, the label “sob sister” was

41

Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Nesbit," 1.

Sarah Addington, "The Newspaper Woman, Who Is She, What Is She?," New-York Tribune (New York, NY), August 8, 1915, B12, https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.puffin.harker.org/historicalnewspapers/newspaper-woman-who-is-she-what/docview/575423911/se-2?accountid=618.

42

"The Sob Sisters Are on the Job," The Mathews Journal (Mathews, VA), August 10, 1911, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95067647/1911-08-10/ed-1/seq-3/.

43

Vazhaeparambil 13 not necessarily a critique of sensationalism in women’s writing but proved to be a larger attack against the presence of females in the news pages of major publications. 44 During her career, Greeley-Smith addressed some of the obstacles that women have experienced in her industry because of their gender, and her commentary provides additional insight into her thought process as a journalist. In an interview with the New-York Tribune in 1915, she asserted that The Evening World was a man’s world: Men have invented their game. We must not only play this game, which they like, but we must play it according to their own rules. We have nothing whatever to say about it. They tell us to do this and that, and we obey. We know that what they want is the only thing they will sanction. 45 By describing her sense of powerlessness in a career dictated by patriarchy and led by rules out of her control, Greeley-Smith demonstrated the extent to which she was forced to conform to the culture of her newsroom. When her editor told her to “provide color” about the Thaw trial, she met his expectations and wrote articles that were emotional, sensational, and at odds with her own journalistic style. 46 During a luncheon in 1908 at the Chiropean, a woman’s club in Brooklyn, she claimed the role of a “cream-colored journalist,” which she likened to “preferr[ing] the rich cream of fancy to the skim milk of ordinary fact,” but she also emphasized the “essential” nature of accuracy in news reporting. 47 Truly, the manipulation Greeley-Smith

44

Fahs, Out on Assignment, 12.

"Professional Women Tell of Handicaps," New-York Tribune (New York, NY), February 21, 1915, B13, https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.puffin.harker.org/historical-newspapers/professionalwomen-tell-handicaps/docview/575367352/se-2?accountid=618.

45

46

Morris, The Rose, 186.

"Chiropean Birthday Celebrated at the Pouch," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 21, 1908, 6, https://basic.newspapers.com/image/53877344.

47

Vazhaeparambil 14 performed as a sob sister did not lie within her content as the reporter from the Mathews Journal would have accused, but rather in her approach to the game that ruled the news industry. She obeyed the rules in order to gain entrance to Thaw’s courtroom, and once she was in this unprecedented situation, she created content that better served female readers, ultimately transforming both her work as a journalist and her purpose as a woman’s writer in the twentieth century.

Serving Her Readers Outside the Courtroom Greeley-Smith was one of a select few women allowed inside the courtroom during the trial. With such a conspicuous presence as a female in the middle of this media circus, she became intertwined to the sensational spectacle surrounding the Thaws, and the Evening World took advantage of her visibility.48 According to Lutes, she was expected to write in a way that would not only represent the thrill and excitement her readers wanted to experience, but would also capitalize on the national attention she was receiving as a journalist. 49 In her first article about the trial, titled “THAWS IN COURT AS SEEN BY A WOMAN,” 50 Greeley-Smith framed her coverage through the lens of her own gender, essentially eliminating the barrier that separates a news reporter from the subject they write about. 51 Her identity became an integral part in how she told the Thaws’ story.

Even the page layouts of the newspaper were intentionally designed to promote GreeleySmith, push her into the spotlight, and publicize a uniquely feminine perspective. Every story she

48

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 70.

49

Lutes, 68.

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Thaws in Court as Seen by a Woman," The Evening World (New York, NY), January 23, 1907, 4, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-23/ed-1/seq-4/.

50

51

Greeley-Smith, "Thaws in Court," 4.

Vazhaeparambil 15 wrote about the trial was placed at the top of the third or fourth page of the news section.

Whereas male reporters like Cobb could only receive bylines for editorial content, she was not only given a byline on every article, but her name also frequently appeared in the headlines, accompanied by her photograph. Her stories contained the dominant image for the page, and they were relatively lengthy compared to the other articles on it. These design elements, reflected in figure 1, indicate the impact of her presence within her publication. Greeley-Smith’s name and photograph became recognizable, enough to attract readers to the pages of her publication.

Compared to the first two years of her career with the Evening World, when she was commonly referred to as the “granddaughter of Horace Greeley,” the Thaw trial helped her secure a large audience that was her own. 52 With the influence she now held in the courtroom and in newspapers, her editors used her name to attract readers, just as they used Harry and Evelyn Thaw’s.

Greeley-Smith’s coverage of the trial shattered social proprieties: the court case featured vile, appalling crimes, and, as a woman, she was listening to every detail of them and sharing them with her readers. 53 Such content should have been considered inappropriate, according to Victorian ideals of womanhood, but the sensationalism of the trial drew females to the story and thus drew them to Greeley-Smith. Through covering this assignment from the “women’s perspective,” she purposefully incorporated her identity into her writing and used her platform to represent the desires of her female readers — something she further articulated in her February 9, 1907 article. 54

52

Segrave, Nixola Greeley-Smith, 62.

"White's Victims Confess," Los Angeles Herald (Los Angeles, CA), July 1, 1906, 1, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1906-07-01/ed-1/seq-1/.

53

54

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 78.

Vazhaeparambil 16

Figure 1: Nixola Greeley-Smith’s “Harry Thaw's Ordeal Almost Forgotten in the Terrible Tragedy Of the Young Wife Who Seeks to Save His Life by Baring Her Soul” in the Evening World on February 9, 1907.

Vazhaeparambil 17 We were no longer men and women in that room. Words fell on women's ears that they had never heard. Vice stalked in naked hideousness before them, yet they were not ashamed. They did not shrink from the men who heard it and saw these horrors too. They had forgotten them. Before that tragedy of outraged womanhood, conventions were swept away. 55 Greeley-Smith’s reflection of Evelyn Thaw’s testimony was revelatory. She claims to have “forgotten” about the men present in court, and she told readers a story of social norms eliminated in order to emphasize how the trial was a women’s issue and how it deserved to be represented as such in the newspapers.

When female spectators were officially barred from attending court on February 11, 1907 due to the graphic nature of the testimonies, Greeley-Smith’s writing became even more important to her audience. She became a source of filtered information about the couple that was specifically intended for female readers of the Evening World, whose curiosity about the trial proceedings was mocked in an editorial cartoon show in figure 2. In her February 12, 1907 article, Greeley-Smith shared what women around her had been saying about the case: “…several of them expressed to me their hopes for the defendant, and all, with only unimportant deviations, pronounced Evelyn Thaw ‘such a dear little thing.’” 56 This sentiment, a reflection of popular opinion surrounding the couple, speaks to Greeley-Smith’s awareness of her role in her coverage: To use herself and her gender to convey the emotional intensity of the case to her readers and to publish an account by a woman, for women in a major news publication.

55

Greeley-Smith, "Harry Thaw's," 3.

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Thaw Gloomy When Alienists Strengthen His Insanity Defense; Cheers Up When an Expert Gets a Legal Setback on the Stand," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 12, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-12/ed-1/seq-3/.

56

Vazhaeparambil 18

Figure 2: Maurice Ketten’s “The Eternal Enigma—Woman's Curiosity” in the Evening World on January 23, 1907.

Greeley-Smith ultimately constructed her own narrative about the Thaw case, helping female readers keep up with the events of the trial and creating content in newspapers that was intended for women but outside the traditional “Home” pages. By specifically targeting her coverage to a population excluded from the courtroom, she justified the importance of her position in fulfilling her duty to report on a news story so horrific. And as a women’s writer, she did not stop there.

Vazhaeparambil 19 A Voice for the Voiceless: Defending Evelyn Thaw By intentionally covering the Thaw trial from a woman’s perspective, Greeley-Smith primarily framed her articles around the five women closely tied to the case: Evelyn Thaw, her friend May McKenzie, Harry Thaw’s mother, and his two sisters. As she grew more sympathetic to their situation over the course of the three-month trial, Greeley-Smith’s writing served as a defense for Evelyn Thaw and would have directly influenced how readers felt about the couple.

Yet, her attitude towards the young girl had not always been positive. On the first day of the trial, she wrote a scathing comment when providing her first impressions about the key figures involved: Thaw and his wife look to me like children or young animals. Thaw, indeed, seems like a perverted Peter Pan who refused to grow up, but instead of falling out of his perambulator into the Never Never land elected to spend his perpetual childhood on Broadway. 57 Her comparison of Harry Thaw to the fictional Peter Pan to criticize flaws in his character is clever and biting, a testament to how honest and unfiltered Greeley-Smith was when sharing her opinions in the paper. Similarly, she reveals her initial lack of compassion for Evelyn Thaw on January 28, 1907: I have no illusions about Evelyn Thaw. I think merely that she was sold to one man and later sold herself to another… The miti[g]ating circumstance in considering her is the childishness that, surviving all the tragedy of the last few months, is still so apparent in her face. 58

57

Greeley-Smith, "Thaws in Court," 4.

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Nesbit Thaw Prepared to Sacrifice Herself if Need Be In the Effort to Save Her Husband from the Penalty for His Crime," The Evening World (New York, NY), January 28, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-28/ed-1/seq-3/.

58

Vazhaeparambil 20 Greeley-Smith’s censure of Evelyn Thaw starkly contradicted her admiration and respect for the other women, especially for Harry Thaw’s mother, Mary Sibbet Copley, and his favorite sister Alice Cornelia Thaw, the Countess of Yarmouth. She primarily used their physical appearances to create these class-based judgements, often referencing Evelyn Thaw’s childlike appearance against Mrs. Thaw’s silent elegance and “plain, sensible, every-day American” qualities. 59 By prioritizing these surface-level descriptions over the actual events of the trial, Greeley-Smith drew upon the gendered expectations of what a man thinks a woman would want to read and emphasized this perspective within her early coverage.

Evelyn Thaw’s testimony on February 7, 1907, in which she revealed the horrific details of her sexual relationship with White, marked a visible turning point during the trial. The morbid fascination surrounding her suffering caused the nation to pivot its attention from Harry Thaw to the chorus girl and, as a result, Greeley-Smith also drastically shifted the focus of her reporting.

On February 9, 1907, she documented what every spectator in court had experienced that week: In the hushed silence of the awful moment when Evelyn Thaw’s slain innocence rose from its tomb to bear eternal witness against her slayer all individualities were merged, all identities lost.… And each man, each woman in the court-room heard Evelyn Thaw’s story as if it were addressed to them alone. And they believed it. 60 Greeley-Smith indicated how her perception of the young girl had transformed in this moment.

Going forward, she recast Evelyn Thaw as the victim of this case, whose childlike innocence was

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Elder Mrs. Thaw, Motherly and Benign, a Fine Type of Womanhood as She Sits in Court Watching the Progress of Her Son's Trial," The Evening World (New York, NY), January 26, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-26/ed-1/seq-3/.

59

60

Greeley-Smith, "Harry Thaw's," 3.

Vazhaeparambil 21 no longer considered pathetic, but a testament to her strength and will after enduring such tragedy.

Simultaneously, as sympathy for Evelyn Thaw grew, admiration for her “savior” did as well. Because Harry Thaw was pleading not guilty on the grounds of a temporary insanity called “Dementia Americana,” which applies to men who commit violence against someone who has violated their family, he was cast by journalists as the “heroic avenger in a seduction plot,” according to Lutes. 61 On February 12, 1907, Greeley-Smith helped push this narrative forward and essentially romanticize the murder to the public: Thousands of years ago the stronger man would have killed his rival and taken the woman and kept her so long as he remained the stronger man.... This was wrong, of course, but as the Thaw trial drags its slow length along you can't help feeling that it was much less trouble. There is such a wonderful romance, such a complete tragedy involved in this already famous trial that the spectator can't help resenting the necessary legal forms that spoil its dramatic action. 62 This primitive, surprisingly conventional outlook on romance in the twentieth century relied on gender roles to further heighten the thrill and drama of a sensational event. Greeley-Smith painted a story with an obvious protagonist, Harry Thaw, and villain, White, giving the public someone to root for and in turn portraying the Thaws’ relationship in a more positive light.

Although she was not the only journalist to present this narrative, in doing so she contributed to an oversimplification of sexual politics while covering the trial. 63 She ignored the complexities

Susan Gillman, "'Dementia Americana': Mark Twain, 'Wapping Alice,' and the Harry K. Thaw Trial," Critical Inquiry 14, no. 2 (1988): 297, http://www.jstor.org.puffin.harker.org/stable/1343448; Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 91.

61

62

Greeley-Smith, "Thaw Gloomy," 3.

63

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 91.

Vazhaeparambil 22 of Harry Thaw’s own history of domestic abuse and drug addiction, in order to construct a more convincing defense on Evelyn Thaw’s behalf. 64 Greeley-Smith believed she had a responsibility to stand behind the chorus girl, and she explicitly claimed this responsibility on February 22, 1907: There was a duty of giving to the trembling, weeping woman on the witness-stand any support that the presence of members of her own sex might afford. I think all the women present felt it, and only a sense of utter mental and physical nausea made any of them forget it and fly from the flaunted shames, the dark horrors of that court-room. 65 Greeley-Smith framed the trial as a gender issue by grouping all the females present against the pain and suffering Evelyn Thaw experienced, which she took care to emphasize with dramatic, intense language.

In taking up this unique angle to not just write for the women outside the courtroom but also for the woman in it, she championed someone who could not represent themselves in the media. Evelyn Thaw’s brother and mother had publicly rejected her, but Greeley-Smith stood by her and continued growing more active and intentional in her defense. 66 In response to critics who accused Evelyn Thaw of acting during her testimony and faking her innocence, GreeleySmith addressed and subverted the argument on February 11, 1907:

64

Lutes, 91.

65

Greeley-Smith, "'The Vivisection," 3.

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Howard Nesbit, Evelyn Thaw's Brother, Just as Eager to Praise Stanford White as His Sister Was to Accuse the Murdered Man," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 13, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-13/ed-1/seq-3/; Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Remarkable Contrast Presented by the Mothers in the Thaw Trial, One Fighting Loyally For, the Other Covertly Against Her Child," The Evening World (New York, NY), March 1, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-03-01/ed-1/seq-3/.

66

Vazhaeparambil 23 It is her childlike appearance that made the foul horrors of the story she related doubly foul. She has been accused of emphasizing that childlike aspect, of “making-up” for the part. Of course she did. Why should she not? As a woman endeavoring to save her husband’s life, could she be expected to neglect any legitimate means of influencing the men who are to decide his fate. 67 No longer does Greeley-Smith use Evelyn Thaw’s appearance or childlike qualities against her.

In this piece, she did not attempt to deny the presence of any “feminine fibs” in the testimony, instead twisting the narrative to suggest that Evelyn Thaw should be using them and that she deserved to tell her story and earn justice for the pain she suffered. By doing so, Greeley-Smith gave her power and control in this situation, emphasizing her courage for choosing to give her testimony and to support Harry Thaw in a very public way. Similarly, when Evelyn Thaw’s diary was used against her by the prosecutor, District Attorney William Travers Jerome, to accuse the chorus girl of encouraging White’s sexual advances, Greeley-Smith quickly dismissed the evidence on February 27, 1907, claiming that “I could not see what it was introduced for. It is slangy and flippant, but in no sense bad.” 68 She used her columns to deflect potential arguments against Evelyn Thaw and even suggest how others should think differently about the events. This added purpose to her writing ultimately provided her with the opportunity to start interpreting the news for her readers and not just documenting it, something Lutes describes as a precursor to the first female jurors. 69 Greeley-Smith even made this same connection on April 8, 1907, when

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Thaw's Impressive Confession of Stanford White's Crime Will Likely Outweigh All the Evidence Against Her Husband," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 11, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-11/ed-1/seq-3/.

67

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Evelyn Thaw's Schoolgirl Diary Slangy and Flippant, but Not Bad, And of No Real Value to the Prosecution, Says Nixola Greeley-Smith," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 27, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-27/ed-1/seq-3/.

68

69

Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 87.

Vazhaeparambil 24 analyzing a speech given by White’s lawyer, Delphin Delmas: “If I were on Harry Thaw’s jury that address would interest and sway me more by its argument than by its oratory.” 70 With this sentence, she cast herself as a member of the jury in a time when women did not have the right to vote, imagining the decision they would be making in four days and contributing her own opinions on how they should reach that verdict.

In this position of power and visibility, Greeley-Smith used her articles to go beyond her editors’ expectations, relying on the gendered, conventional writing to not only defend Evelyn Thaw, but, ultimately, to defend herself. In response to the backlash she received for writing sympathetically about Harry Thaw, Greeley-Smith pointed out the hypocrisy in the prosecutor preaching “innocent until he is proved guilty,” while she and other female journalists were mocked for doing the same: Yet women who have ventured to do this, who have given young Thaw the benefit of this provision which the sternest juryman has to observe, and written about him as a presumably innocent and very unfortunate young man, have been termed contemptuously the “sympathy squad” by persons who seem to consider that the whole duty of newspaper writing consists in securing a talesman’s middle initial. 71 In this piece, she indicates that the purpose of her articles was not to promote whatever content would most please the jury, and it likely did not, given how they voted 7-5 against Harry Thaw

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Thaw and His Family Scrutinize Faces of Jurors, Looking for a Sign of Hope, as Lawyer Delmas Pleads for HIs Life," The Evening World (New York, NY), April 9, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-04-09/ed-1/seq-3/.

70

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Thaw's Actions in Court Those of a Normal Youth of Good Manners; No Signs of Degeneracy, but Self-Possession Without Bravado," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 1, 1907, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-01/ed-1/seq-3/.

71

Vazhaeparambil 25 on April 12, 1907. 72 By rejecting the label “sympathy squad” and these similar connotations of “sob sister” journalism, Greeley-Smith appeared to suggest a different motivation for her articles about the Thaws. She gave Evelyn Thaw ownership over her story by advocating for the chorus girl in the national media. Similarly, she stood up for her own right to be in that courtroom and report on the trial from the woman’s perspective. Through this experience, Greeley-Smith gained exposure for herself and for the women’s issues she featured in her articles, something that extended into her future journalistic work and far beyond the courtroom.

Diversifying Women’s Issues in the American Press When her very first piece was published in the Evening World in 1901, Greeley-Smith became a women’s writer for the American press, a title she embodied throughout her career as an interviewer, as a columnist, and as a suffragist. This element of her journalistic work never faltered, but the changes that did occur in her content before and after the Thaw trial reveal the influence of this event in helping Greeley-Smith grow as a reporter. Before the case, her pieces commonly relied on humor and wit to convey an insightful, thought-provoking message. She wrote about a range of topics, from beauty to sexism. Although her articles were engaging, clever, and relevant, they were also hyper-focused on the concerns of the upper class in New York City. Greeley-Smith’s coverage of the trial and her defense of Evelyn Thaw on a national stage was not only a breakthrough moment for her as a journalist, but it ultimately transformed the scope of her work. The opportunity exposed her to larger societal issues, like sexual assault, murder, and poverty, and seemed to inspire the new theme that emerged within her writing following the trial: advocacy. Although she still published her witty, satirical columns, she also

"Jury in Thaw Case Unable to Agree, Is Discharged; Second Trial Next Fall; Delmas May Not Appear," The Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA), April 13, 1907, 1, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038615/1907-0413/ed-1/seq-1/.

72

Vazhaeparambil 26 began reporting on more news stories, raising awareness of serious, widespread problems that affected women in particular. On February 7, 1912, the Evening World printed the first article of her eight-part series, “The Girl on the Firing Line,” in which she covered the struggles facing working class women in the United States and publicized several specific accounts in this interview-heavy package: There is an army of 6,000,000 working women in the United States—an industrial army fighting the allied forces of starvation and vice. Five hundred thousand of these girl soldiers of America are garrisoned in New York City.… We hear a great deal of the officers, very little of the girls making $5 and $6 and $8 a week, the girls on the firing line. 73 Greeley-Smith crafted an extended metaphor to frame her piece, comparing these females to soldiers in an army, a jarring imagery that paints a grim picture of a daily lifestyle dictated by hierarchy and status. She wrote from a supportive, sympathetic angle, yet her style is eloquent, informative, and decidedly not sensational or tear-jerking. In doing so, she effectively advocated on behalf of a large group of women who were often ignored or misrepresented by society, just as she stood with Evelyn Thaw and defended the chorus girl against accusations.

Even the sources that Greeley-Smith featured in her articles developed in a similar way: She transitioned from primarily conducting interviews with society figures (often the spouses of high-profile men) to talking to women who had independently made a name for themselves, usually relating to gender issues. 74 A 1913 article about her interviewing skills in Chicago’s Day Book corroborates this aspect of her work: Nixola Greeley-Smith, "The Girl on the Firing Line," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 7, 1912, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1912-02-07/ed-1/seq-3/.

73

74

Ross, Ladies of the Press, 86-87.

Vazhaeparambil 27 Miss Greeley-Smith, although still a young woman, is already acknowledged the foremost ‘interviewer’ in the world and easily commands a topmost niche with the few really authoritative woman writers dealing vitally with the ‘feminist’ question today. 75 On June 20, 1914, Greeley-Smith wrote the front page news story for Day Book about the only female member of the Industrial Relations Commission, J. Borden Harriman, who believed that women should be able to work and be paid the exact same as their male counterparts. 76 On March 2, 1916, she interviewed one of the youngest and most successful female lawyers in New York, Lucille Pugh, about her views on divorce, alimonies, and feminism. 77 On February 27, 1917, she profiled an executive from Wall Street, S. Eugenia Wallace, who had succeeded as a businesswoman. 78 These interviews are a testament to the people Greeley-Smith represented with her coverage and the different voices she highlighted. She championed the female experience, and according to fellow Evening World journalist Marguerite Mooers Marshall, who wrote Greeley-Smith’s obituary following her sudden death on March 10, 1919, this commitment to women was her life’s work: ‘Write me, then, as one who loved her fellow-women’—that is what Nixola GreeleySmith would have said of her to-day. For she was not merely a distinguished woman

"Nixola Greeley-Smith, Greatest Woman Reporter, to Write for the Day Book," Day Book (Chicago, IL), October 30, 1913, 15, accessed December 4, 2020, https://basic-newspapers-com.puffin.harker.org/image/77857339/.

75

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Woman's Work Worth as Much as Man's—Both Entitled to Living," The Day Book (Chicago, IL), June 20, 1914, 1, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-06-20/ed-1/seq-1/.

76

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "Women Should Hold On to Their Alimony; Their Last Legal Right, Says Woman Lawyer," The Evening World (New York, NY), March 2, 1916, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1916-03-02/ed-1/seq-3/.

77

Nixola Greeley-Smith, "'Women Who Have Won in Wall Street' The Real 'New Women' of American Life; Do Work of Men and Get Men's Reward," The Evening World (New York, NY), February 27, 1917, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1917-02-27/ed-1/seq-3/.

78

Vazhaeparambil 28 writer. She was a woman’s writer, who frankly, fearlessly, lovingly sought to interpret and express her own sex—for her own sex. 79 Marshall’s emphasis on the possessive evoked the power Greeley-Smith sought with her journalism. Within her coverage of the Thaw trial, she manipulated the expectations of her editors to report on the news for female readers excluded from the courtroom and to defend the young Evelyn Thaw, who was powerless herself.

Nixola Greeley-Smith built her platform in the pages of the Evening World from her coverage of the trial, after spending months reporting on the Thaws, subverting gendered stereotypes, and playing the game of “sob sister journalism.” With her interviewing skills, biting sense of humor, and genuine concern for gender issues, she challenged obstacles that newspaperwomen faced in the industry during her time. Her work was far greater than herself, and ultimately, Greeley-Smith’s legacy and impact—although cut short an 18-year-long career as a journalist—are defined by what she gave to the women she wrote about: a voice.

Marguerite Mooers Marshall, "An Appreciation of the Gifted Writer by a Fellow-Worker on This Newspaper," The Evening World (New York, NY), March 10, 1919, 3, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/191903-10/ed-1/seq-3/.

79

Vazhaeparambil 29 Bibliography Abramson, Phyllis Leslie. Sob Sister Journalism. Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications 23. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Addington, Sarah. "The Newspaper Woman, Who Is She, What Is She?" New-York Tribune (New York, NY), August 8, 1915, 12. https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://wwwproquest-com.puffin.harker.org/historical-newspapers/newspaper-woman-who-is-shewhat/docview/575423911/se-2?accountid=618.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle. "Chiropean Birthday Celebrated at the Pouch." February 21, 1908. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/53877344.

Campbell, W. Joseph. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies.

Westport, C.T.: Praeger, 2001.

Chambers, Deborah, Linda Steiner, and Carole Fleming. Women and Journalism. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harkerebooks/reader.action?docID=182310.

Chronicling America. "Murder of Stanford White and the First 'Trial of the Century': Topics in Chronicling America." Library of Congress Research Guides. https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-stanford-white-murder.

The Clarksburg Telegram (Clarksburg, WV). "Flying Their Colors." April 4, 1912, 4. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84037844/1912-04-04/ed-1/seq-4/.

Day Book (Chicago, IL). "Nixola Greeley-Smith, Greatest Woman Reporter, to Write for the Day Book." October 30, 1913. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://basic-newspaperscom.puffin.harker.org/image/77857339/.

Fahs, Alice. Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space.

Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harker-ebooks/reader.action?docID=819535.

Gillman, Susan. "'Dementia Americana': Mark Twain, 'Wapping Alice,' and the Harry K. Thaw Trial." Critical Inquiry 14, no. 2 (1988): 296-314. http://www.jstor.org.puffin.harker.org/stable/1343448.

Greeley-Smith, Nixola. "The Ankle Line." The Evening World (New York, NY), December 9, 1902, 13. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1902-12-09/ed-1/seq-13/.

———. "Elder Mrs. Thaw, Motherly and Benign, a Fine Type of Womanhood as She Sits in Court Watching the Progress of Her Son's Trial." The Evening World (New York, NY), January 26, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-26/ed1/seq-3/.

Vazhaeparambil 30 ———. "Evelyn Nesbit Thaw Prepared to Sacrifice Herself if Need Be In the Effort to Save Her Husband from the Penalty for His Crime." The Evening World (New York, NY), January 28, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-28/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Evelyn Nesbit Thaw's Terrible Sacrifice in Baring Her Soul to Save Husband Without Precedent in Courts or Even in Realms of Romance." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 8, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0208/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Evelyn Thaw's Impressive Confession of Stanford White's Crime Will Likely Outweigh All the Evidence Against Her Husband." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 11, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-11/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Evelyn Thaw's Manner While Under Cross-Examination by Jerome Reveals that at the Crucial Moment She Has Become Afraid of Him." The Evening World (New York, N.Y.), February 20, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/190702-20/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Evelyn Thaw's Schoolgirl Diary Slangy and Flippant, but Not Bad, And of No Real Value to the Prosecution, Says Nixola Greeley-Smith." The Evening World (New York, N.Y.), February 27, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/190702-27/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "The Girl on the Firing Line." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 7, 1912, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1912-02-07/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Harry Thaw's Ordeal Almost Forgotten in the Terrible Tragedy Of the Young Wife Who Seeks to Save His Life by Baring Her Soul." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 9, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-02-09/ed1/seq-3/.

———. "Howard Nesbit, Evelyn Thaw's Brother, Just as Eager to Praise Stanford White as His Sister Was to Accuse the Murdered Man." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 13, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0213/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Remarkable Contrast Presented by the Mothers in the Thaw Trial, One Fighting Loyally For, the Other Covertly Against Her Child." The Evening World (New York, NY), March 1, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0301/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Thaw and His Family Scrutinize Faces of Jurors, Looking for a Sign of Hope, as Lawyer Delmas Pleads for HIs Life." The Evening World (New York, N.Y.), April 9, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-04-09/ed-1/seq-3/.

Vazhaeparambil 31 ———. "Thaw Gloomy When Alienists Strengthen His Insanity Defense; Cheers Up When an Expert Gets a Legal Setback on the Stand." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 12, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0212/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Thaw's Actions in Court Those of a Normal Youth of Good Manners; No Signs of Degeneracy, but Self-Possession Without Bravado." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 1, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0201/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Thaws in Court as Seen by a Woman." The Evening World (New York, NY), January 23, 1907, 4. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-01-23/ed-1/seq-4/.

———. "'The Vivisection of a Woman's Soul,' Nixola Greeley-Smith Calls District-Attorney Jerome's Cross-Examination of Evelyn Thaw." The Evening World (New York, N.Y.), February 22, 1907, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-0222/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "Wife Beating as Fine Art." The Evening World (New York, NY), October 6, 1905, 19. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1905-10-06/ed-1/seq-19/.

———. "Woman's Work Worth as Much as Man's—Both Entitled to Living." The Day Book (Chicago, IL), June 20, 1914, 1-3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-06-20/ed-1/seq-1/.

———. "Women Should Hold On to Their Alimony; Their Last Legal Right, Says Woman Lawyer." The Evening World (New York, NY), March 2, 1916, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1916-03-02/ed-1/seq-3/.

———. "'Women Who Have Won in Wall Street' The Real 'New Women' of American Life; Do Work of Men and Get Men's Reward." The Evening World (New York, NY), February 27, 1917, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1917-02-27/ed-1/seq-3/.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1955.

Ketten, Maurice. "The Eternal Enigma—Woman's Curiosity." Cartoon. The Evening World (New York), January 23, 1907, 14. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/.

Libby, Laura Jean. "The Fair Sex in Journalism." Laura Jean Libby's Daily Talks on Heart Topics. Bridgeport Evening Farmer (Bridgeport, CT), March 11, 1916, 7. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84022472/1916-03-11/ed-1/seq-7/.

Los Angeles Herald (Los Angeles, CA). "White's Victims Confess." July 1, 1906, 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1906-07-01/ed-1/seq-1/.

Vazhaeparambil 32 Lutes, Jean Marie. Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 18801930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. https://archive.org/details/frontpagegirls00jean/mode/2up.

Marshall, Marguerite Mooers. "An Appreciation of the Gifted Writer by a Fellow-Worker on This Newspaper." The Evening World (New York, NY), March 10, 1919, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1919-03-10/ed-1/seq-3/.

Marzolf, Marion. Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists. New York: Hastings House, 1977.

The Mathews Journal (Mathews, VA). "The Sob Sisters Are on the Job." August 10, 1911, 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95067647/1911-08-10/ed-1/seq-3/.

Morris, James McGrath. The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Digital file.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960. 3rd ed. New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Company, 1962.

New-York Tribune (New York, NY). "Professional Women Tell of Handicaps." February 21, 1915, 13. https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://www-proquestcom.puffin.harker.org/historical-newspapers/professional-women-tellhandicaps/docview/575367352/se-2?accountid=618.

Palestine Daily Herald (Palestine, TX). "Harry Thaw Trial Opened up Today." January 23, 1907, 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090383/1907-01-23/ed-1/seq-1/.

Ross, Ishbel. Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936. https://archive.org/details/ladiesofpresssto0000ross.

Segrave, Kerry. Nixola Greeley-Smith, 1880-1919; The Life and Work of an American Journalist.

Kerry Segrave, 2019. https://www.scribd.com/read/436422266/Nixola-Greeley-Smith1880-1919-The-Life-and-Work-of-an-American-Journalist.

The Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA). "Jury in Thaw Case Unable to Agree, Is Discharged; Second Trial Next Fall; Delmas May Not Appear." April 13, 1907, 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038615/1907-04-13/ed-1/seq-1/.

Uruburu, Paula. American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century. New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, 2008. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781594489938/mode/2up.

The Washington Times (Washington D.C.). "Harry Thaw Kills Stanford White in Jealous Rage over Actress Wife." June 26, 1906, 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1906-06-26/ed-1/seq-1/.

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