"He slashed his left wrist and throat with a razor this morning in a room where he was hiding in a little two-story brick boarding house."

Last week, I posted old print articles about Harry K. Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit, in the years after the murder of the third member of their twisted love triangle, architect Stanford White. In the story about Thaw, he was sought for horsewhipping a very unwilling participant in his sadomasochistic fantasies. Thaw was eventually returned to a mental asylum where he would remain until 1922–after a failed attempt at paying off his victim’s family. But first he had to be apprehended. The story of Thaw’s arrest courtesy of a couple of passages from a story in the January 12, 1917 New York Times:

“Philadelphia–Harry K. Thaw, slayer of Stanford White, added attempted suicide to his escapades today. Hunted down by detectives with a New York warrant that charged him with whipping Fred Gump Jr., the nineteen-year-old schoolboy, and depressed by the effects of heavy drinking, he slashed his left wrist and throat with a razor this morning in a room where he was hiding in a little two-story brick boarding house run by Mrs. Elizabeth Tacot at 5,200 Walnut Street, West Philadelphia.

Thaw’s wounds, while severe enough to make it probable that he actually attempted to end his life and was not simply courting sympathy because of the new ordeal he faced, will not cause death unless unexpected complications arise. He was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in the Kensington section, seven miles from the house. There several bichloride of mercury tablets were found in one of his pockets, but there was nothing in his condition shortly before midnight to indicate that he had swallowed any of them. He was very weak from loss of blood and he was unable to make a statement. He is under arrest in the hospital, not on a charge of attempted suicide, but on the New York whipping charges. 

Landlady Discovers Thaw’s Plight

Mrs. Tacot, who said she knew Thaw only as ‘Mr. West,’ and did not realize his identity, was the first to learn what Thaw had done. At about 10:15 o’clock this morning she knocked on the door of the parlor which she had fitted up as Thaw’s bedroom and got no response. She pushed open the door a few inches and saw Thaw fully dressed, lying on the bed. He had pulled his overcoat up above his throat. He was moaning and blood was running from his left hand, which was extended over the side of the bed. The landlady phoned to the local branch of the O’Farrell Detective Agency to Maloney, a former policeman, Harbor Master and Republican boss of the Fifth Ward, who is in charge of the branch. Dr. E.A. Bateman, who lives near the house, was notified, and he summoned in turn Dr. A.F. Shiezle.

"Several bichloride of mercury tablets were found in one of his pockets."

While this was going on at the Tacot house Maloney was telling Chief Tate that he was prepared to surrender Thaw. The chief sent Lieutenant Theodore Wood and two detectives to the house in a taxicab, with instructions to call Dr. John Wanamaker 3d, the police surgeon. Magistrate George A. Persch also went into the house. Thaw seemed to be in a daze.

‘Have you anything you want to say?’ the Magistrate asked him. ‘Do you know that you may die? Will you make a statement of any kind?’ Thaw’s body shook but he made no response.

At the hospital Thaw was placed in comfortable quarters. He was arrested on the charges made in New York and not for the attempt upon his own life. As soon as his condition permits, the police plan to return him to New York.”