Harry Kendall Thaw - Early Life

Early Life

Thaw was born on February 12, 1871 to Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron William Thaw, and his second wife, Mary Sibbet Copley Thaw. The elder Thaw fathered eleven children from his two marriages. Thaw had five siblings, Margaret (born 1877), Alice Cornelia (born 1880), Edward (born 1873) and Josiah (born 1874). A brother born a year before Harry, died an accidental death in infancy, smothered by his mother’s breast while he lay in her bed. There was a history of insanity on his mother’s side of the family, and Thaw’s mother herself was known for her abuse of the servants, and episodes of ungovernable temper.

In childhood Thaw was subject to bouts of insomnia, temper tantrums, incoherent babbling and, notably baby talk, a form of expression which he retained in adulthood. His chosen form of amusement was appropriating heavy household objects as weaponry to hurl at the heads of servants. The misfortune of others brought on fits of giggling. He spent his childhood bouncing from private school to private school in Pittsburgh, never doing well and described by teachers as unintelligent and a troublemaker. A teacher at the Wooster Prep School described the sixteen-year-old Harry as having an “erratic kind of ziz-zag” walk, “which seemed to involuntarily mimic his brain patterns.” Still, as the son of William Thaw, he was granted admission to the University of Pittsburgh, where he was to study law, though he apparently did little studying. After a few years he used his name and social status to transfer to Harvard University.

Thaw later bragged that he had studied poker at Harvard. He reportedly lit his cigars with hundred dollar bills. He also went on long drinking binges, attended cockfights, and spent much of his time romancing young women. In 1894, he chased a cab driver down a Cambridge street with a shotgun, believing he had been cheated out of ten cents change. He claimed the shotgun was unloaded. Thaw ultimately was expelled from Harvard for “immoral practices,” and intimidating and threatening fellow students and teachers. His expulsion was immediate; he was given three hours to pack up and move out.

Thaw’s father, in an attempt to curb his son’s narcissistic excesses, limited his monthly allowance to $2,500. This still was a great deal of money in an era when the average workingman earned $500 a year and a lavish dinner at the famed Delmonico's restaurant cost $1.50. The elder Thaw died in 1893, leaving his 22 year-old son three million dollars in his will. Upon the death of her husband, Thaw's mother increased his allowance to $8,000 enabling him to indulge his every whim, however outrageous, and gratify his sadistic sexual impulses. Thaw was the beneficiary of this monthly income for the next eighteen years. In addition, he held the distinction of being heir to a fortune estimated at some forty million dollars.

Early on and for years into the future, his mother and a cadre of lawyers dedicated themselves to the business of damage control, shielding Thaw’s transgressions from any public scandal that would dishonor the family name. Monetary pay-offs became the customary method of assuring the required silence. One such notorious example occurred in Thaw’s London hotel room, where he purportedly devised a lure for an unsuspecting bellboy, whom Thaw proceeded to restrain naked in a bathtub, brutalizing him with beatings from a riding whip. Thaw had to pay out five thousand dollars to keep the incident quiet.

With an enormous amount of cash at his disposal, and reserves of energy to match, Thaw repeatedly tore through Europe at a frenetic pace, frequenting bordellos where his pleasure involved restraining his partners with handcuffs and other devices of bondage. In Paris in 1895, Thaw threw an extravagant party, reputedly costing $50,000, which drew wide publicity. Thaw had reserved an entire floor in the luxurious Hôtel George-V. The attendees were Thaw himself and twenty-five of the most beautiful showgirls/bordello prostitutes he could assemble. John Philip Sousa and his famed band were hired to provide musical entertainment. For Thaw, Sousa’s military marches were the favored party music as "they lifted the roof off the place." Each of the Parisian beauties found a unique party favor at the end of the meal. The dessert course was a $1,000 piece of jewelry wrapped around the stem of a liqueur glass. Although widely traveled, Thaw’s sophistication was bogus. He perpetually saw the world through the eyes of a child, maintaining his juvenile mentality and behavior through adulthood.

Exhibiting the classic characteristics of the skilled, manipulative sociopath, Thaw was able to keep the more sinister side of his personality in check when it suited his purposes and furthered his current agenda. He had the facility, when required, to impress upon others that he was a gentle, caring soul. "He was part gentleman, part boor, part prude, part playboy." The term "playboy" entered the popular vernacular, it is alleged, inspired by Thaw himself— a vivid encapsulation of the lifestyle he so vigorously pursued.