I state without fear of contradiction that Harry Thaw was crazy. That some of the highest paid psychiatrists in America testified under oath that he was sane and that a court agreed is merely verification that in America money can buy anything. His own father, coal baron and railroad owner William Thaw, was so suspicious of Harry’s mental stability that in his last will and testament he limited Harry’s access to the family fortune, valued at $25 million dollars (the equivalent of $400 million today). Harry was to receive just $200 a month until “…the majority of executors shall believe he has shown discretion and fitness.” It seems that besides railroads, William Thaw knew something about crazy.
As a three year the old “Prince of Pittsburgh”- as young Harry would become known - would throw screaming temper tantrums until he got his way. His private tutors called him “unintelligible” and noted that when confronted Harry would crawl under his school desk. He became known about town for sudden violent outbursts. When sent to private boarding schools in Pittsburgh the “Prince” was thrown out of one after another. When William Thaw died, Mother Thaw (above, with Harry) raised her son’s allowance to $80,000 a year. It did nothing to improve Harry’s personality problems.
Harry always claimed that at Harvard he majored in poker, with minors in cockfighting and drinking binges. He did not stay there long. After he chased a cab driver through the streets of Cambridge with a shotgun he was expelled. On biographer noted that after his expulsion “…he became particularly well known for overturning the tables of fine restaurants.” He was an habitual cocaine and morphine user, and there were rumors that Harry occasionally used a dog whip on some of the chorus girls he was often seen escorting, but Mother Thaw’s fortune usually got him out trouble. And then Harry met Evelyn Nespit.
Evelyn was one of the most beautiful, vivacious women of the gilded age, a famous artist’s model, a featured chorus girl and a mistress to famous and wealthy men, such as actor Lionel Barrymore. When Harry first met her, Evelyn was sleeping with architect Stanford White. But White was getting bored with Evelyn and Harry was ardent and showered her with gifts, including an all expense paid trip to Paris. Eventually, with Mother Thaw’s approval (she had been a chorus girl in her own day), Evelyn and Harry were married on April 4, 1905.
From day one of the marriage Thaw was obsessed with Evelyn’s relationship with Stanford White, who he referred to as “The Beast!” Harry would beat Evelyn viciously and then apologized to her. He continually questioned her about the details of her sex life with Stanford White. And then in the summer of 1906 Harry suggested they take a trip to New York City.
On the night of June 25, 1906, during a musical review in the crowded Roof Garden Theatre atop Madison Square Garden - which Stanford White had designed - Harry Thaw walked up to Stanford White’s table and in front of literally hundreds of witnesses, Harry shot White three times in the face. As they say, at least Stanford White died doing what he loved; drunk and leering over the chorus girls. During the ensuing pandemonium Harry told Evelyn “I probably just saved your life.”
Evelyn was one of the most beautiful, vivacious women of the gilded age, a famous artist’s model, a featured chorus girl and a mistress to famous and wealthy men, such as actor Lionel Barrymore. When Harry first met her, Evelyn was sleeping with architect Stanford White. But White was getting bored with Evelyn and Harry was ardent and showered her with gifts, including an all expense paid trip to Paris. Eventually, with Mother Thaw’s approval (she had been a chorus girl in her own day), Evelyn and Harry were married on April 4, 1905.From day one of the marriage Thaw was obsessed with Evelyn’s relationship with Stanford White, who he referred to as “The Beast!” Harry would beat Evelyn viciously and then apologized to her. He continually questioned her about the details of her sex life with Stanford White. And then in the summer of 1906 Harry suggested they take a trip to New York City.On the night of June 25, 1906, during a musical review in the crowded Roof Garden Theatre atop Madison Square Garden - which Stanford White had designed - Harry Thaw walked up to Stanford White’s table and in front of literally hundreds of witnesses, Harry shot White three times in the face. As they say, at least Stanford White died doing what he loved; drunk and leering over the chorus girls. During the ensuing pandemonium Harry told Evelyn “I probably just saved your life.”There was no mystery. The headlines the next morning blared the entire story. Harry plead insanity, so the prosecutor called for a “lunacy commission” to examine him. Harry explained his motive this way; “After ten years during which a crew of moneyed libertines had made life almost as unsafe for virgins as did the Minotaur, a revolver made New York safer for other girls.” The commission came to the conclusion that, “Harry K. Thaw was and is sane and was not and is not in a state of idiocy, imbecility, lunacy, or insanity …” Any faith in the “science” of psychiatry should vanish in the presence of that judgment. It certainly confused the jury who deadlocked seven to five for conviction.
At the second "Trial of the Century" Doctor Britton Evans, Alienist for the defense, testified that he “observed a nervous agitation and restlessness, such as comes from a severe brain storm,” in Harry Thaw, which “…is common in persons who have recently gone through an explosive or fulminating condition of mental unsoundness”. And Defense Attorney Delphin Delmas argued on April 9, 1907, in his summation, “…call it Dementia Americana…the species of insanity which makes every American man believe his home is sacred;…the honor of his daughter is sacred;…the honor of his wife is sacred;…that whosoever invades his home, that whomever stains the virtue of this threshold, has violated the highest of human laws…“
At the second "Trial of the Century" Doctor Britton Evans, Alienist for the defense, testified that he “observed a nervous agitation and restlessness, such as comes from a severe brain storm,” in Harry Thaw, which “…is common in persons who have recently gone through an explosive or fulminating condition of mental unsoundness”. And Defense Attorney Delphin Delmas argued on April 9, 1907, in his summation, “…call it Dementia Americana…the species of insanity which makes every American man believe his home is sacred;…the honor of his daughter is sacred;…the honor of his wife is sacred;…that whosoever invades his home, that whomever stains the virtue of this threshold, has violated the highest of human laws…“Yes, the defense managed to make any sensible juror want to believe that Harry was sane and evil. Luckily for Harry there were no sensible men on the jury. They adjudge Harry Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity. He was ordered confined in Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane until the doctors there judged him to be sane, which they did in 1915. Harry had served just seven years for a cold blooded murder. The lawyers, the publicity machine and the verdict had cost Mother Thaw at least $900,000.
It might have cost Mother Thaw even more except she never paid Evelyn the million dollars she had promised her, in exchange for Evelyn's perjured smearing of Stanford White. But Evelyn was no longer a problem since the first thing Harry did as a legally sane man was to divorce Evelyn. However, Harry was still a problem, because the second thing Harry did was to sexually assault and horsewhip a teenage boy, Fred B. Gump Jr. Again a jury judged Harry to be nuts, and again he was sent to a hospital, and yet again for seven years.
When he was finally released in 1924 Mother Thaw was mercifully dead. Perhaps that had some connection to Harry’s rages, because there is no record he ever had another. Harry bought a farm in Frederick County, Virginia near the small town of Clearbrook. He even joined the local volunteer fire company, marching in all their parades in his full regalia.
It might have cost Mother Thaw even more except she never paid Evelyn the million dollars she had promised her, in exchange for Evelyn's perjured smearing of Stanford White. But Evelyn was no longer a problem since the first thing Harry did as a legally sane man was to divorce Evelyn. However, Harry was still a problem, because the second thing Harry did was to sexually assault and horsewhip a teenage boy, Fred B. Gump Jr. Again a jury judged Harry to be nuts, and again he was sent to a hospital, and yet again for seven years.When he was finally released in 1924 Mother Thaw was mercifully dead. Perhaps that had some connection to Harry’s rages, because there is no record he ever had another. Harry bought a farm in Frederick County, Virginia near the small town of Clearbrook. He even joined the local volunteer fire company, marching in all their parades in his full regalia.In 1927 Harry invested in a film company on Long Island, and attempted at one point to film the story of his own life. No film was ever produced and like so many other film companies this one ended up in court, with the final judgment in 1935 ordering Harry to pay $7,000 to his partners. Harry Thaw died of a heart attack in Miami, Florida in 1947. He was 76 years old and by all accounts still crazy after all those years.
- 30 -
The Royal Observatory was founded by Charles II in 1765 as part of his restoration and “re-scientific-ication” of government after the religious fanaticism of that great Puritan villain Oliver Cromwell. The observatory was to use the stars to perfect “the art of navigation.” But the builders, despite going over budget by all of twenty pounds, went cheap on the materials, and the observatory, which was to house the most accurate telescopes of the day, was constructed 13 degrees out of alignment. The Royal astronomers, like the NASA astronomers dealing with the orbiting Hubble telescope, have had to make mathamatical adjustments from that day to this.
But besides powerful telescopes, the scientist at the Greenwich observatory also needed accurate clocks. In order to say a particular star was at a particular point in the sky at midnight, they had to know precisely when midnight was. So they also installed two pendulum clocks, built by Thomas Tompion, each accurate to within seven seconds a day. By 1833 (sixty-four years later) the observatory had done its job so well that ships’ captains and navigators had come to rely on the precise time to follow charts provided by Greenwhich. That year the observatory began a practice they follow to this day.
At exactly 12.55 p.m., (they do it then so as not to interfere with the weather observations made at noon) a large red “time ball” is raised half way to the top of a mast erected atop the observatory. At 12.58 the time ball is pulled all the way to the top. And then at 1:00 P.M., exactly, the ball quickly falls to the bottom of the mast. (If you have ever wondered why they use a ball to mark midnight on New Years Eve in Times Square, New York City, this is it.) Any ship’s captain waiting in the Thames River to set sail could now coordinate their onboard watches and clocks with the official time as they set off from the “prime meridian” or “longitude naught” - "0" degrees, "0" seconds and "0" minutes east/west, because Greenwhich is where longitude starts - and time.
Two years later, in 1835, the observatory got a new boss, George Biddle Airy. He figured his primary job was to perfect the astronomical observations for those ships, and he hired more “computers”, which in the 19th century were actually men who did the dull and boring math required to confirm and correct the stellar charts used to navigate on voyages to the far flung corners of the empire. So when the London merchants appealed to Mr. Airy to share in the time service he saw them as an annoyance. He asked one of his assistants, a man not qualified to be a “computer”, Mr. John Henry Belville, to handle the problem.
Airy gave Mr. Belville a pocket watch to use. It had been originally owned by Prince Augustus Frederick, the Duke of Sussex (above), the sixth son of George III, the favorite uncle of Queen Victoria and the man who gave her away at her wedding. The watch had been made by Mr. John Arnold & Sons in 1794 and was accurate to within one tenth of a second per day. Each Monday John Henry (he rarely used his last name because of the anti-French public bias in the post Napoleonic years) would present himself and “Faithful Arnold”, the watch, to a clerk at the observatory time desk. The clerk would set the watch and then hand John a certificate asserting to the watch’s accuracy for that day. Then John Henry would make his way by carriage and rail to London, where he would literally deliver the time to some two hundred customers; shops, factories and offices. For most of the people in London, John Henry Belville was the face of official time, and he was earning four hundred pounds a year doing it when he died in 1856.
After John’s death his widow, Maria, still had a daughter to support. She begged the observatory to allow her to continue the time service as a private business, and they agreed. By now (1852) Charles Shepherd had designed and installed a “Galvano-Magnetic” clock (above) at the Observatories’ gate (now called Shepherd’s Gate) where anyone could get the time at any time day or night, for free. But still the London merchants continued to pay for Maria’s direct door service. Every Monday she strode up the observatory hill, watched while Arnold was synchronized with the official time, and then went on her rounds by rail and on foot. To those who saw her trudging across the streets of London, she became known as the Greenwich Time Lady.
Maria retired in 1892, and her daughter Ruth now took over the employment (above), carrying the tool of her trade, Faithful Arnold, in her handbag. By now (1884) 25 counties had agreed to set their watches by Greenwich time, and every clock at every railroad station in England was connected directly via telegraph lines with the Royal Observatory. And still, the time delivered by Ruth Belville was more accurate, if slightly less convenient.
Beginning in 1924 the BBC Radio began broadcasting “pips” before each hour announcement and in 1936 the Royal Observatory set up a “talking clock” which anyone could dial at any time to get the correct time to within a hundredth of a second. And still Ruth Belville was making her rounds, still serving more than fifty paying customers over a hundred years after her family business had begun.
Finally, in 1940, Ruth celebrated her 86th birthday and decided to retire.
In effect, she ran out of time.
The proper tone was firmly set by this year’s grand prize winner when he opened his front door on the morning of December 9, 2008 and found himself facing a team of F.B.I agents. The first words out of his mouth were “Is this a joke!” And it is that question, more than the bribery, the shakedowns or the spousal supported profanity which earned this twice elected political hack - who was he running against, Kevin Federline?
This prize has not been awarded to Mr. Blogoiejevich for trying to sell a senate seat, or for threatening to pull funding from a children’s hospital, for the federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and “play-for-pay” charges, nor even for committing his alleged crimes over his official phone lines even after the press told him the feds had them bugged , an act Jon Stewart has described as “a new low in dumb.” The day before he was arrested, Blagojevich told reporters, “…anybody who wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it…” Did he think they wouldn’t? Yes, to be this crooked and this stupid deserves a prize – just not an Ides of March prize.
All these offenses might violate criminal, civil and moral codes in any number of societies worldwide. But practical politics is not judged against a legal or moral scorecard, but by only one measurement. Can you get re-elected? And the answer here is unequivocal. 
The Ides of March 2009 prize has been awarded to a man who has never lost an election, who won his last (2006) election as Governor by 11 percentage points, but a politician who, by October of 2008 (two months before he was arrested) could find barely 10% of registered voters who wanted him re-elected. The same poll showed that 0% of voters rated his job performance as excellent, and only 4% rated him “good” while 64% rated his job performance as “poor”. As Jay Leno pointed out, Blagojevich’s approval rating was so low, he even disapproved of himself. Rod Blagoeijevich has managed to give crooked politics a bad name in Illinois. That ranks as an historic achievement.
The farce of his senate appointment collapsing post swearing in, in a haze of conflicting testimony by now Senator Burris, was followed by the announcement of Blogoiejevich’s six figure book deal. This inspired Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roper to imagine what the finished book might offer up as a protagonist. “Blago…just like Batman… a misunderstood superhero who roams the streets of Chicago in a black outfit…painted as an outlaw. Maybe they can just call (his) book “He’s Batty.”
While the ex- Governor has compared himself to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart, David Letterman said that Blagojevich resembles “…a producer of an adult entertainment awards show….”. And then there is the helmet hair. Jay Leno suggested that not only should Blagojevich go to jail but his hairdresser should be given the death penalty. Jon Stewart has suggested that Rod himself be indicted for beaver pelt smuggling. Letterman observed that Blogo spoke for 47 minutes at his own impeachment trial in the Illinois senate. Afterward, Letterman said, “They had to rush him to the emergency room at Supercuts.” Worse; “…next month his hair goes digital.” And Jimmy Kimmel suggested, “They nabbed him with a butterfly net and some Aqua Net.”
So there is no contest for this year’s award. The other competitors are simply not in the same game, not working down to the same shockingly low standard of behavior and illlogic as Rod Blagojevich, ex-governor of Illinois and charter member of the “Future Felons of 21st Century America”,...winner of the 2009 Ides of March Award!
After Mary chased Mr. Soper out of the Bowen family kitchen, it would appear that he was no longer welcomed in the house by Mr, Bowen - which makes me wonder if he was as “diplomatic” as he claimed to be. We know that the next time he tried to talk to Mary Mr. Soper approached her at the rooming house where she lived. This time he even brought along an actual medical doctor, Doctor Raymond Hobbler. But this did not strengthen his argument. Again Mary refused to hand over her urine, blood or feces. Defeated yet again, the Health Department decided to dispatch Doctor Sara Josephine Baker (above), an assistant, an ambulance and five police officers.
Mary was not a complete fool. She had consulted a chemist – what we would call a pharmacist. He had examined her and assured Mary she was clear of the disease. So she felt it was the health officials who were crazy. Doctor Baker explained later what happened when Mary answered the knock on her rooming house door. “As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman, and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared.” They turned the tiny house upside down, and five hours later found Mary hiding in the supply closet of a neighboring house. Wrote Dr. Baker, “(Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor…she was maniacal in her integrity…The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to (Willard Parker Hospital)…it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.”
But throughout that time Mary continued to fight back. The hospital's tests showed 120 out of 163 of her stool samples tested positive for typhoid. So Mary sent her own samples to a private lab and consulted her own physicians. They reported her as free of typhoid. As she wrote the courts, “I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast - - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems to me incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.” Clearly this was not an ignorant woman. A photo of patients taken from the hospital on North Brother Island is dominated by a glaring Mary Mallon from the first bed. No wonder she is glaring becuase it is a staged photo. Except for her first few days there, Mary was not confinded to a bed. She was not ill. She lived in a small shack (below - called a "cottage" by the officals ). But she was still not a woman to be ignored.
In 1910 a new commissioner of the NYC Board of Health agreed to release Mary if she promised to no longer work as a cook, and checked in every three months with the board. Mary immediately agreed, and on February 20th 1909 she stepped off the ferry from Brothers Island and blended into the city of New York. She reported to the Health Department a few times and then simply disappeared. She was not heard again for five years.
She was. She returned to her cottage, and eventually a job helping in the laboratory. That is Mary above, on the right, wearing glasses now, standing next to bacteriologist Emma Sherman. Mary must have been lonley. She had few visitors, usually staff, and never admitted she might be responsible for any illness or deaths. For twenty-three years she was identified to all as “Typhoid Mary”. Then, in December of 1932 she suffered a massive stroke. In 1938 she died. An autopsy revealed her liver heavily infected with Typhoid bacteria. Mary Mallon is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.
George Soper built a career on public health, becoming director of the American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928. He died on June 17, 1948, at the age of 78, in relative obscurity. He must have known that his subject, the woman he built his career upon, would be better remembered than he was; which was odd. She wanted no fame, while he hungered for it. No cause of death for Mr. Soper was given. Again, that seems a little odd, to me.
George A. Soper graduated from Columbia University in 1899 with a doctorate in the new field of “civil” engineering. He was described as a man of “average build, high wide forehead and hooded eyes that seem foreboding,” which I suppose came from staring down disaster day after day. 
George was hired by the city Department of Health, and tasked with answering a basic question; what happens to all that human waste dumped into the Hudson and East Rivers? Conventional wisdom was that it all floated out the bay. But by releasing floats into the rivers and tracking their journeys over three years, George came to the stunning realization that because of the tides, neither river actually flows very much. The floats meandered back and forth for weeks before eventually escaping into the bay. Since the river did not flush itself, it was not a very good toilet. As George explained to the New York Times, “…immense quantities of poisonous sewage floats for days in the river and bays close to public baths, bathing beaches and the oyster beds of Jamaica Bay, from which 1 million bushels are brought to New York markets every year.” (p. 20, NYT March 14, 1911 Sports) George was obviously preparing the public for the expense of building a new sewage system.
George knew there would be resistance to the idea - “No new taxes!” is not a new battle cry – and he knew opponents to the expense would be nit-picking every word he said. And if you listened carefully you could hear Dr. Soper soften his absolutes, even in that same interview with the Times. He continued, “Only recently there was an outbreak of typhoid at the Rockaway Peninsula…In one case we traced the oysters to a dealer who was to have put them into fresh water before selling them. We could not assertion whether or not he kept his promise…” In other words, George knew the sewage was killing people but he did not yet have the individual case histories or the laboratory work that would establish it to a scientific certainty. And that was why, when landlord George Thompson asked Dr. Soper to investigate a house he was renting in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Dr. Soper jumped at the chance.
Banker Charles Warren and his family had rented the Thompson guest house for the summer. On August 27 one of the Warren daughters had suddenly developed a fever of 105 degrees F, a headache, diarrhea, nausea and a heavy cough. When she also developed a skin rash the doctor diagnosed her with typhoid fever. Quickly Mrs. Warren, a second daughter, two maids and the gardener also came down with the fever. A Board of Health investigator quickly ascribed the source to a contaminated water supply, but the Thompson family drank from the same supply and they were all fine. Mr. Thompson was convinced the cause could not be the water, in part because, if it was, he would have a very hard time renting that house again.
Dr. Soper agreed with Mr. Thompson, and began his own investigation, but this time in New York City where he interviewed the Warren family intensively. George had noted that there were eleven people in the Warren household that summer, but only six had developed typhoid. What was different about those six people? What had they done that the five other occupants had not done? Eventually, after hours of interviews, the family remembered a special treat they had eaten for desert one night; peaches. George realized now he had to locate the cook, who everyone was certain, had not developed typhoid.
All the family knew about her was that she was middle aged, had dark hair, and was named Mary. She had been provided by an employment agency, which had checked her letters of reference but had not kept them. So George found himself tracking “Mary” the cook through other servants used by the same agency. He ran into suspicion and secrecy, and had to travel to Boston, but eventually he discovered that her name was Mary Mallon, and she had cooked for seven families over the last seven years. In those families 22 people had developed typhoid fever, and one young girl had died. Soper was now certain he had found a carrier for typhoid, something that been only a theory up to now; Which explains why Dr. Soper was so excited when he found Mary, working as a cook for Walter Bowen and his family, on Park Avenue.
Soper appeared before Mary in the Bowen kitchen and, “I was as diplomatic as possible, but I had to say I suspected her of making people sick and I wanted specimens of her urine, feces and blood.” Mary would later claim that Soper also told her he was going to write a book about her and offered to split the royalties with her. But whether such a deal was offered or not, Mary’s reaction was swift and definitive. According to Soper, “She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction.” Soper says he ran from the house, feeling lucky to have escaped.
And to be honest, I do not blame Ms. Malone. A strange man has approached her and asked for a sample of her bodily fluids. And worse, she was accused of being a typhoid Mary; in fact, the original Typhoid Mary.
