30 Amazing Photos of a Young Evelyn Nesbit in the 1910s

Florence Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884, or 1885 – January 17, 1967) was an American artists’ model, chorus girl, and actress. She is best known for her career in New York City, as well as her husband, railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw, whose obsessive and abusive fixation on both Nesbit and the prominent architect Stanford White resulted in White’s murder by Thaw in 1906.

In the 1910s, Nesbit’s life was defined by a transition from being a passive figure in the “Trial of the Century” to an independent, though struggling, performer. After her husband was committed to an asylum for the 1906 murder of architect Stanford White, Nesbit found herself cut off from the wealthy Thaw family and forced to rebuild her life.

Between 1910 and 1912, Nesbit was a headliner on the Keith vaudeville circuit. While critics often noted her act relied more on her fame than raw talent, she drew large crowds as people flocked to see “the girl in the red velvet swing.” In 1913, she began a successful dancing partnership with Jack Clifford. Their popularity surged particularly after Harry Thaw escaped from his insane asylum that same year. In 1914, she published her first memoir, The Story of My Life, to capitalize on public interest and tell her side of the scandal. 

Nesbit gave birth to her only child, Russell William Thaw, in October 1910. She maintained that Harry Thaw was the father, though he vehemently denied it and the Thaw family used the dispute to cut her off financially. She finally divorced Harry Thaw in 1916. That same year, she married her dancing partner Jack Clifford, though the marriage was short-lived and he abandoned her by 1918.

Toward the end of the decade, she moved into the emerging film industry. She appeared in nearly a dozen silent films, including Redemption (1917), in which she acted alongside her son.

Despite earning significant money in vaudeville, she faced constant financial pressure as the Thaw family withheld her expected inheritance. During this decade, she also began a lifelong battle with morphine addiction and alcoholism. Evelyn Nesbit in the 1910s was essentially America’s first modern “famous for being famous” celebrity, trying (and often failing) to find a stable identity outside of the tragedy that made her a household name.