Felix Cherniavsky - Theo Durrant

Added 18th Mar 2022 by Beth Dobson (Archives and Programming Assistant, DCD) / Last update 18th Mar 2022

Maud Allan 851b 51 2008-2-57.jpg
Maud Allan 851b 51 2008-2-57.jpg
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Felix Cherniavsky - Theo Durrant

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Maud Allan Research Collection
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a The accused was Maud Allan's brother , 24 - year - old Theodore Durrant , in his last year of medical studies . From the moment of his arrest until January 7 , 1898 when he finally mounted the gallows of San Quentin Prison with a cold - blooded self control that awed even the hangman , Durrant was the centrepiece of sensational press coverage , reaching well beyond the United States . ( Maud recorded in her diary that she spent one whole day translating a cabled dispatch of the murders in the Berlin newspapers , she also read a garbled report on the front page of the Paris edition of the arch conservative New York Herald Tribune ) . Relations within the close - knit Durrant family were unhealthily intricate , with the two children as devoted to each other as both were devoted to their mother . Maud very clearly blamed herself for much of her brother's tragedy , convinced that her departure for Berlin had desolated him , unhinging his delicate equilibrium . ( “ If I had stayed at home he could have come to me , and none of this would have happened , ” she reflected in her diary . She also noted a dream in which the Police accused her of the crimes ) . Theo's behaviour in the days leading to the crimes clearly suggest that his sister's absence left an unbearable void in his life . He and his mother had planned to spend a year in Berlin following his graduation in October 1895 . The site of the murders , quite as much as the crimes themselves , incited public outrage . The murders immediately attracted [ [ [ salacious ] ] ] excessive press coverage , even though the crimes were so sordid as to lack any kind of ambiguity such as commonly captures public attention . At first sight the evidence against Theo was persuasive , only to fall short of providing the airtight case the State prosecutor had initially supposed was theirs for the taking . The State was therefore compelled to base its case on the principle of circumstantial evidence , a principle that had only recently been accepted in the law of the United States . As a result the proceedings against Theo Durrant were , at least in the legal world , at once seen as a significant test case . As extant letters from both Theo Durrant and his mother to Maud in Berlin establish , two powerful and prominent players entered the scene . Adolph Sutro , determined to save his natural grandson from the gallows , and newspaper publisher , Randolph Hearst , were truly insidious and secretly disruptive . As Theo Durrant , speaking to the local press and an invited crowd of 200 , declared in his last words from the gallows , that the press had “ hounded him to the grave ” . Hearst's skillful exploitation of the case ( which forced the local and national press to follow his lead since he already owned a number of newspapers across the country ) established him as the first and the mightiest of America's press barons . It destroyed Adolph Sutro who died , a broken man , within eight months of his grandson's execution . a Whatever the political or business reasons originally behind it , the battle evolved into a vicious personal conflict attracting the partisan , albeit secret support , of a large number of San Francisco's leading citizens . Discreet comments in the extant Durrant correspondence establish that the affair split asunder the all - powerful Masonic fraternity into two camps , committed respectively to the financial and moral support of the principal adversaries . William Durrant and his son , together with the deceased father of

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