L’affaire Harry K. Thaw : Un criminel à Coaticook

An account of a period in the early twentieth century when the Eastern Townships village of Coaticook became the centre of international news for harbouring escaped American multi-millionaire Harry K. Thaw (1871-1947), who had killed the well-known architect Stanford White in New York City in front of hundreds of witnesses on June 25,1906. After two trials, Thaw was found not guilty of White's death by reason on insanity. In 1913, he escaped the hospital for the criminally insane where he was incarcerated and fled to Canada. He was arrested and held for several weeks in a cell in the basement of the Coaticook town hall, while a decision was being considered whether to extradite Thaw back across the border for violating the Canadian Immigration Act. Reporters and prominent lawyers from across North America swarmed the tiny Eastern Townships village, where the townsfolk come to see Thaw as an unjustly persecuted victim of American justice. Thaw was then transferred to the Sherbrooke Street Prison in Sherbrooke, where he remained for several months until he was returned to the United States. The author speculates as to whether Thaw's popularity was the result of the people in the Eastern Townships, with a certain amount of anti-American bias, seeing it was up to British law to protect him.

Le Confluent : Bulletin d'information de la Société d'histoire de Sherbrooke

No. 74

6-7

Octobre 2013

fr