The Girl on the Velvet Swing
Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
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Narrated by:
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Christine Lakin
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By:
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Simon Baatz
About this listen
From New York Times best-selling author Simon Baatz, the first comprehensive account of the murder that shocked the world.
In 1901 Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl in the musical Florodora, dined alone with the architect Stanford White in his townhouse on 24th Street in New York. Nesbit, just 16 years old, had recently moved to the city. White was 47 and a principal in the prominent architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. As the foremost architect of his day, he was a celebrity, responsible for designing countless landmark buildings in Manhattan. That evening, after drinking champagne, Nesbit lost consciousness and awoke to find herself naked in bed with White. Telltale spots of blood on the bed sheets told her that White had raped her.
She told no one about the rape until, several years later, she confided in Harry Thaw, the millionaire playboy who would later become her husband. Thaw, thirsting for revenge, shot and killed White in 1906 before hundreds of theatergoers during a performance in Madison Square Garden, a building that White had designed.
The trial was a sensation that gripped the nation. Most Americans agreed with Thaw that he had been justified in killing White, but the district attorney expected to send him to the electric chair. Evelyn Nesbit's testimony was so explicit and shocking that Theodore Roosevelt himself called on the newspapers not to print it verbatim. The murder of White cast a long shadow: Harry Thaw later attempted suicide, and Evelyn Nesbit struggled for many years to escape an addiction to cocaine.
The Girl on the Velvet Swing, a tale of glamour, excess, and danger, is an immersive, fascinating look at an America dominated by men of outsize fortunes and by the the women who were their victims.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Simon Baatz (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.
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Great for history buffs!
- By LibertyHillbilly on 02-09-23
By: John Wood Sweet
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The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals
- By: Michelle Morgan
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.
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Doesn’t question it’s sources enough
- By Emily Stoneking on 11-27-18
By: Michelle Morgan
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American Brutus
- John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies
- By: Michael Kauffman
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 21 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Brutus, popular historian Michael W. Kauffman delivers a history that reads more like a best-selling novel. This definitive masterwork dispels commonly held myths and reveals the truth about John Wilkes Booth. Luring Southern sympathizers into a “noble” presidential kidnapping, Booth stunned his puzzled pawns by murdering Lincoln. From Booth’s early life and acting career to his escape and death, this meticulously researched book re-examines it all using a wealth of primary sources.
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informative
- By Sue Ogle on 11-27-20
By: Michael Kauffman
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Butcher's Work
- True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness
- By: Harold Schechter
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America.
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Another necessary work by Schector
- By Brandon on 12-27-22
By: Harold Schechter
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The Girls of Murder City
- Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago
- By: Douglas Perry
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Chicago, 1924. There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper".
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Some books should be read
- By zoomcity on 07-31-11
By: Douglas Perry
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A Secret Life
- The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland
- By: Charles Lachman
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The child was born on September 14, 1874, at the only hospital in Buffalo, New York, that offered maternity services for unwed mothers. It was a boy, and though he entered the world in a state of illegitimacy, a distinguished name was given to this newborn: Oscar Folsom Cleveland. The son of the future president of the United States - Grover Cleveland. The story of how the man who held the nation’s highest office eventually came to take responsibility for his son is a thrilling one that unfolds like a sordid romance novel....
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Are the charges true?
- By Jean on 02-16-13
By: Charles Lachman
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Duel with the Devil
- The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery
- By: Paul Collins
- Narrated by: Mark Peckham
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.
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The Trial of the Century
- By Jean on 09-06-15
By: Paul Collins
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Death in the City of Light
- The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
- By: David King
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.
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Too many facts too little story
- By Caitanya on 09-27-11
By: David King
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American Lightning
- Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.
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very interesting popular history
- By D. Littman on 11-28-08
By: Howard Blum
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Emmett Till
- The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Devery S. Anderson
- Narrated by: Brandon Church
- Length: 21 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Emmett Till offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement.
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An important story narrated with power and warmth
- By R. Nance on 10-04-16
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American Scoundrel
- The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles
- By: Tom Kenneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the last, cold Sunday of February 1859, Daniel Sickles shot his wife's lover in Washington's Lafayette Square, just across from the White House. This is the story of that killing and its repercussions. Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era.
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Interesting Good Listen
- By Kindle Customer on 01-10-24
By: Tom Kenneally
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Bringing Down the Colonel
- A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington
- By: Patricia Miller
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In Bringing Down the Colonel, journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely 19th-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined”, Pollard brought the man - and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality - to trial. And, surprisingly, she won.
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Stay with it. It is amazing.
- By Living Downeast on 09-29-19
By: Patricia Miller
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Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
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Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
What listeners say about The Girl on the Velvet Swing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-29-18
strange and interesting tale
Fewer adverbs would improve style.
Story held my attention. More discussion of the large legal and moral questions involved, such as the insanity defense, and whether murder is ever justified, would have been interesting.
Good reader.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 05-06-24
Excellent
Very well done. Great story telling. So much to this story I was unaware of. The author and narrator was amazing.
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- Dennis Lamkin
- 01-30-18
Fact based and interesting story
Well researched and very interesting book. I’d always heard bits and pieces of the story, but felt I got the rest of the story here.
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- Etoile NEOhio
- 09-07-22
A detailed account
The true story of Evelyn Nesbit is told in novel form from original source material. Narrator needs to learn to pronounce a few words correctly, but in general had a pleasant reading voice and good diction.
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- John
- 01-26-18
It Proves Truth Is Stranger than Fiction
This book is a very thorough re-telling of the "crime of the century." Evelyn Nesbit, a beautiful teenager who had come to New York to make a living as a model and a chorus girl, caught the fancy of Stanford White, the most prominent architect of the day. She later married a rich man with a trust fund, Harry Thaw. Thaw then gunned down White at point blank range at a performance at Madison Square Garden, which White had designed.
Was it murder? Was Thaw insane due to believing that White had raped his wife? To reveal any more would spoil the story, but this tale has more twists and turns than you can believe. The book is well written, and reads like a drama, not a history. It is quite well done.
I thought the narration detracted from the story. I suppose the decision was made to have a woman narrate the book on the theory that the story is about Evelyn. More accurately, the first 40 percent or so focuses on Evelyn, but the balance of the story is about Harry Thaw. The actors in the legal dramas are mainly male. I found Ms. Lakin's efforts to imitate male voices (there is much dialogue in the book) to range from off-putting to laughable. Her effort to effect a French accent from a Canadian official in Quebec sounded a lot like a bad Russian accent from a cartoon character.
Overall, though, well worth a listen.
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3 people found this helpful
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- brenda a
- 11-10-20
Guaranteed, you don't know the whole story .
The murder of Stanford white was only the beginning. What follows is stranger than fiction.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lady of Avalon
- 02-18-19
Pronunciation & Content Distracting
Pronunciation of anything not English was very poor & distracting. Many of the American accents used were also problematic. The book focuses more on Harry Thaw towards the end, & I really wanted to hear more about Evelyn’s life, since the book’s title was in reference to her.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Polly L. Mccall
- 07-12-18
"The Girl" is barely in this book
I got this book after being introduced to the story through "Ragtime." I hoped to learn more about Evelyn Nesbitt, but this was not the boik for that. She disappears from the narrative for chapters at a time as the author focuses on the legal journey of her husband, Harry Thaw.
Moreover, the story the author chose to tell was told in a very repetitive manner. For example, the story of Evelyn's rape at the hands of Stanford White is told in a virtually identical manner several times. Was the author trying to get his word count up?
We get a taste of what I wanted in the book in the epilogue, as he finally gets to Evelyn's post-Thaw life, but it is perfunctory.
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8 people found this helpful