Louis Agassiz Shaw II (1906–1987) was an American socialite, writer and murderer.

Biography

Shaw was born to Robert Gould Shaw II and Mary Hannington; the Shaws were a wealthy and influential Boston family. His father was a cousin of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, noted for leading an African-American regiment in the Union Army during the Civil War.

He attended private school and Harvard University, where he graduated in 1929. Like Robert Gould Shaw, he was a member of the Porcellian Club, a men's-only final club at Harvard.

Upon graduation Shaw published a novel, Pavement (1929), using his nickname "Louis Second" as a pen name. He lived in a sprawling 15-room mansion in Topsfield, a town founded by the Gould family. According to Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane (a history of McLean Hospital, where Shaw spent the last years of his life) Shaw kept a copy of the Social Register next to the telephone and instructed his staff to refuse calls from anyone not listed. He often rode his horse along a bridle path from his estate, and through the area now known as the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, in order to reach the Myopia Hunt Club.[1]

Like his elder half-brother Robert Gould Shaw III, Shaw struggled with depression and alcoholism.[2] In 1964 he strangled his 64-year-old maid, who he said was plotting to murder him in his sleep. He confessed but pleaded not guilty; he was committed to Danvers State Hospital and later McLean, where he lived for 23 years.[1][3]

Much of his art collection, which he intended to donate to the Fogg Museum, was discovered to be fakes.[4]

Bibliography

  • Pavement (1929)

References

  1. 1 2 Beam, Alex (2001). "Chapter 9: Staying on: the elders from planet Upham". Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital. New York: Public Affairs. pp. 169–90. ISBN 978-1-58648-161-2.
  2. ↑ Marlowe, Derek (1982). Nancy Astor: The Lady from Virginia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  3. ↑ Ruth La Ferla, "Where the Upper Crust Crumbled Politely", The New York Times, 28 July 2002
  4. ↑ Beam (2009), p. 182
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