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Simon Baatz

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Born

London, The United Kingdom

Member Since

December 2013

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Simon Baatz received his PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania. He now teaches legal history at John Jay College in New York.

Q & A with Simon Baatz about Girl on the Velvet Swing.
What attracted you to this subject?
It’s a sensational story that resonates with recent events in our own time. A sixteen-year-old girl arrives in New York and meets a wealthy, influential man three times her age. Stanford White lures Evelyn Nesbit to his apartment on a pretext, drugs her and sexually assaults her. Four years later she marries a millionaire playboy, Harry Thaw, who shoots and kills White in a crowded theatre. What could be more sensational than that?

What was most enjoyable about your research?
There were 14 daily newspapers in New York Simon Baatz received his PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania. He now teaches legal history at John Jay College in New York.

Q & A with Simon Baatz about Girl on the Velvet Swing.
What attracted you to this subject?
It’s a sensational story that resonates with recent events in our own time. A sixteen-year-old girl arrives in New York and meets a wealthy, influential man three times her age. Stanford White lures Evelyn Nesbit to his apartment on a pretext, drugs her and sexually assaults her. Four years later she marries a millionaire playboy, Harry Thaw, who shoots and kills White in a crowded theatre. What could be more sensational than that?

What was most enjoyable about your research?
There were 14 daily newspapers in New York at the time and they all fastened on the scandal to boost circulation. The reporters interviewed everyone who had something to say about the affair and the newspaper articles were invariably written in a lively, engaging style. I have included many quotations in the book and I should say here that these quotations, including the dialogue, were always taken verbatim from contemporary newspaper accounts. I have taken great care to be faithful to the sources listed in the endnotes. Nothing has been invented or imagined.

What is new and noteworthy about The Girl on the Velvet Swing?
Previous authors have written about the murder, but their accounts have all relied disproportionately on Evelyn Nesbit’s 1934 autobiography, Prodigal Days. But Nesbit’s book, written three decades after the murder, is not entirely reliable; she confuses some details and she occasionally contradicts herself. The newspapers of the day were generally trustworthy – their accounts corroborate each other – and Girl on the Velvet Swing, because it is based on those contemporary accounts, is, I believe, the most accurate telling of the murder and its aftermath.

What relevance does this story have today?
There have been many scandalous revelations in the last decade about the behavior of well-connected, influential men – the allegations against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are only the most recent – and this book is a reminder that predatory behavior is not something new but has existed, unfortunately, throughout American history. The difference between our time and the last century is that everyone now has access to the Internet and it has become correspondingly more difficult to conceal sexual crimes against women. If Evelyn Nesbit, for example, had not married Harry Thaw and if Thaw had not shot Stanford White, no-one would ever have known about the sexual assault. This is not to say, of course, that our society is perfect in this regard – far from it – but only that many more people now have a way to publicize crimes against women and children.
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Average rating: 3.62 · 5,833 ratings · 641 reviews · 8 distinct works • Similar authors

	For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago 3.71 avg rating — 3,705 ratings — published 2008	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century 3.47 avg rating — 2,123 ratings — published 2018 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Crime: Its Cause and Treatment by Clarence Darrow, Simon Baatz (Goodreads Author) (Foreword) 3.66 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 1972 — 131 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Simon Baatz (Goodreads Author), Christine Lakin (Narrator) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Knowledge, Culture, and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817-1970 liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1990 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Venerate the Plough: A History of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 1785-1985 liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1985 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	"A very diffused disposition": Dissecting schools in Philadelphia, 1823-1825 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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“He wondered how Nathan felt about the killing. Granted that Richard had struck Bobby with the chisel, nevertheless, he asked, how had Nathan felt about the boy’s death? It didn’t concern him, Nathan replied. He had no moral beliefs and religion meant nothing to him: he was an atheist. Whatever served an individual’s purpose—that was the best guide to conduct. In”
― Simon Baatz, For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago

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“Machinery. His former belief that crime was a matter of choice, a willful act freely taken, was now replaced by its opposite, the conviction that environmental circumstances—poverty, unemployment, illiteracy—determined criminal behavior. Indeed Darrow went farther than Altgeld in his determinism. An individual, Darrow believed, could not choose not to commit crime if circumstances dictated otherwise—free will was an illusion and a chimera,”
― Simon Baatz, For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago

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Polls

What non-fiction book would you like to read for January's book of the month?

Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern by Joshua Zeitz

11 votes, 32.4%

The Coming of the Fairies by Arthur Conan Doyle

8 votes, 23.5%

The Rare and the Beautiful: The Art, Loves, and Lives of the Garman Sisters by Cressida Connolly

4 votes, 11.8%

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz

4 votes, 11.8%

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent

4 votes, 11.8%

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

2 votes, 5.9%

Encounter With an Angry God: Recollections of My Life With John Peabody Harrington by Carobeth Laird

1 vote, 2.9%

34 total votes

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