insanity

She looks so sad.

A sad story apparently: New York Times, 12 June 1914: Mrs. Elizabeth A.C. Holman of Waterville, Me. who is seeking in the United States Court here $50,000 damages for alleged conspiracy and abduction against two Hartford physicians and her former husband, the Rev. Cranston Brenton of Yonkers, N.Y., head of the Social Service Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York State, scored strongly this afternoon when her counsel obtained startling admissions from the star witness of the defense.

Mrs. Elizabeth Alden Curtis (Brenton) Holman was institutionalized at Brattleboro (VT) Insane Asylum in 1912, apparently in connection with their divorce. Her first husband (a professor at Trinity College) found two doctors to attest that she was insane. She sued them all for damages, accusing Brenton of using hypnotism to convince her to sign away her liberty. In June 1914, she won a verdict against Rev. Brenton and one of the doctors (Paul Waterman), and was awarded $4000. But Elizabeth Alden Curtis (Brenton) Holman (b 1879--corrected 3/20) wasn't just an aggrieved spouse; she was a writer. In 1902 she published a version of The Lament of Baba Tahir, a Persian text, under the name Elizabeth Curtis Brenton; in 1912, she and Holman (not yet married) filed for copyright for a play she wrote, based on Alice in Wonderland. Also in 1912, she published a play called The Norseman. She also published poetry in the Connecticut Magazine, The Crisis, and other literary periodicals. In 1900, she's mentioned in a Nation article as an American poet working on a "thoughtful, pure, and even pleasing" version of the Rubaiyat. books.google.com/books?id=yAYDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA264&l... As "Elizabeth Curtis Brenton," she had letters that appeared in the New York Times Saturday Review of Books in 1901 and 1905. She may have married again after Holman; I find two listings for an "Elizabeth Alden Curtis Tidd" of Connecticut, filing for copyright on plays she wrote in 1929 and 1933. She seems to have used the pseudonym "Alden Curtis" too.

She looks like she really needs a drink

I started an entry in Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Alden_Curtis_Holman

This is decidedly NOT English as the language

It's Russian, and says "Love? Forever?"

image linked to incorrect record - an oversight

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kendall_Thaw

Actually, not the courthouse, but instead the photo was taken in front of the Ludlow Street Jail, no longer standing. The sign by the front door reads "New York County Jail" (New York County is essentially Manhattan), and that is what the Ludlow Street Jail was.
Thaw, in 1915, was returned to New York City after escaping confinement at Matteawan State Hospital (He had been acquitted of the 1906 murder of architect Stanford White by reason of insanity). His lawyers successfully asked the court to move him from The Tombs to the Ludlow Street Jail, on the basis that he was not charged in a criminal matter, but that he was to have a jury trial only as to his present sanity.
query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10916F93E5D16738...
In this old print, you can see that the door was near the corner of Ludlow and Essex Market Place. [Essex Market Place ran from Essex to Ludlow Streets between Broome and Grand Streets and was closed in 1926, around the time the jail was demolished.] You can see that there was a giant gas lamp over the door, whereas in Bain's 1915 picture just the bracket remained.
digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm...

knickerbockervillage.blogspot.com/2009/10/seward-park-aer...

This was probably taken when Thaw was due to be taken from the jail to court.
He and 5 others who helped him escape the state hospital were tried in March, 1915 and acquitted. He then had a second trial in 1915 to determine if he was presently sane. He was determined sane in this trial on July 14, 1915, which is presumably about when this shot was taken.
The New York Times account describes 2,000 people gathered at the courthouse, cheering thaw after the trial:
query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0E10FC3E5A15738...

See also:

And not to forget, the Thaw trials were about Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, or more exactly Thaw's shooting of her presumed lover, Stanford White.

National Library of Ireland on The Commons - "... with boys sprinkled like raisins in a currant bun ..." A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle. Oscar Wilde

Opened in 1865, 'Enniscorthy District Lunatic Asylum for the Insane and Poor of Mind' otherwise was known as St Senan's psychiatric hospital www.buildingsofireland.ie/niah/search.jsp?type=record&... There are too many trees to get a clear Streetview www.google.ie/maps/@52.4874776,-6.5656767,3a,50.8y,53.78h... The photograph was taken from the bank of the River Slaney looking East. maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V2,697254,638429,10,9 The saplings look to be about 3-5 years old and if planted when building completed would date picture late 1860's

More about it here www.independent.ie/regionals/enniscorthyguardian/news/st-...

I was going to say these designs almost seemed to have bought off the peg. The Downshire Hospital in Downpatrick is an equally majestic building, and screened by trees like this one.

W.L and Co. was there a few years later. The same trees are well on. catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000326204