White Slavery & The 100-Year-Old Moral Panic That Has Suddenly Become An All-Consuming Global Affair

White Slavery & The 100-Year-Old Moral Panic That Has Suddenly Become An All-Consuming Global Affair

In June 1906, famed architect and socialite Stanford White was shot at Madison Square Garden by Harry Kendall Thaw, the heir to a Pittsburgh industrial fortune, who accused White of abusing his wife while she was a minor. The first of two widely publicized trials of Thaw began in January 1907 and exposed a culture of corruption at the highest levels of society, including secret apartments where wealthy men entertained young women, who were often…