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
(No description added)

Felix Cherniavsky - Theo Durrant

Discover Placeholder
Description
The description of this Item
Collections
The collections that this item appears in.
Maud Allan Research Collection
Tags
Tag descriptions added by humans
Identified Objects
Description of the objects in this Item

Auto-generated content

Auto Tags
Tag descriptions added automatically
art text letter photo screenshot Black and white document
Auto Objects
Auto-generated identification of objects in this Item
Auto Description
An autogenerated description of this Item
Text, letter
Face count
Auto-generated number of faces in the Item
0
Accession Number
DCD's accession number for this Item. It is the unique identifier.
Original Filename
Extracted text
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