Lou’s View – March 27, 2014
Lunatic in Flemington
By Lou Bernard
Flemington is celebrating an anniversary this year. Two anniversaries, actually. Originally laid out in 1814, Flemington was incorporated as a borough in 1864. So, this year, it’s simultaneously turning both 150 and 200 years old. Which I think is pretty cool; it’s the only community I know of that’s doing that.
Flemington has a lot of fascinating details in its history. There’s the two famous baseball players who grew up there, both nicknamed “Rube”. There’s Samuel Porter, son of a governor, who came to Flemington and settled. There’s the school fire of 1914. There’s the escaped homicidal lunatic who passed through. There’s the time they tried to tax the telephone poles….
Oh, the escaped lunatic? You didn’t know about that one, did you?
Harry Kendall Thaw was born on February 12, 1871. He was born into a wealthy family, and from the beginning he showed signs of emotional instability. He was abusive and cruel to his servants, often throwing heavy objects at them. He lashed out, he used drugs, he often talked in ways that made no sense.
In 1905 Thaw married Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl. On June 25, 1906, he shot and killed Stanford White, another wealthy man whom Thaw suspected of having an affair with his wife. Thaw publicly shot White during a show in the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden. A trial found him not guilty by reason of insanity, understandable enough for a guy who thought nothing of shooting someone in a theater, and Thaw was committed to the Matteawan State Hospital in New York.
Thaw’s lawyers began working to get him freed, but Thaw himself took matters into his own hands, escaping in 1913. He was captured again in 1914, and in 1915, a new trial declared Thaw not guilty and set him free.
It was one year later when he came through Flemington, according to the Clinton County Times.
The incident happened on June 27, 1916, a quiet Tuesday afternoon.
“If our people had only known, but they didn’t,” lamented the newspaper on June 30, 1916, in the Flemington column. “The famous Harry Thaw passed through our burg Tuesday and you can bet your last cent the larger part of our populace would have been out to take a squint at the man who stood before the public as a notorious escaped lunatic.”
Nobody realized it was Thaw, however. He wasn’t immediately identified even when he was involved in a minor accident.
Thaw was driving his touring car through town—No idea where, exactly, he was going. At the corner of High and Huston Streets, he bumped into a buggy driven by a local man, whose name the newspapers sadly did not record.
You’d expect an escaped homicidal lunatic to come out guns blazing during this incident, but somehow Thaw managed to restrain himself. Instead of going completely nuts, he calmly got out of his car and looked over the damage, chatting with the local man. Thaw paid for the damage reasonably enough.
“They didn’t know of his passing this way until he bumped into a buggy with his touring car at the corner of High and Huston Street,” reported the Times. “He handed the owner $15 to settle the damage and with it his card. He then resumed his journey like an ordinary citizen.”
After which, I assume, the Flemington citizen realized whose name was on the card, and had to sit down and take some deep breaths for a while.
The word spread, after the incident, and made its way to the newspapers. The community was talking about the famous escaped mental patient who had passed through, and the Times reported it by the end of the week. It caused quite a sensation in Flemington.
Not long after, Thaw was arrested again for kidnapping and assaulting a nineteen-year-old boy. He was sent to a mental hospital again, this time in Philadelphia. Without a doubt, this caused more talk in Flemington, where he had just recently passed through.
As Flemington celebrates its anniversary, we’re looking back on all of the history it has. Let’s re-enact this one, just for fun. Who’s willing to play an escaped mental patient?
