April 8

If you are unfortunate and are arrested and brought to trial for a heinous crime, there are a number of things that your attorney will do on your behalf. The first is to try to get the terms and conditions of your bail straightened out so that you may await trial in your home rather than a prison. In the event that effort fails, your counsel will then move the court to allow you to make your appearances in the courtroom without handcuffs, shackles or clothed in a bright orange jumpsuit that has Department of Corrections emblazoned on the back. You attorney will do this because the jury’s verdict should not be prejudiced by your appearance. How do you think the jury looked at Martha M. Place? Newspapers of her time described Martha as being “rather tall and spare, with a pale, sharp face. Her nose is long and pointed, her chin sharp and prominent, her lips thin and her forehead retreating. There is something about her face that reminds one of a rat’s, and the bright but changeless eyes somehow strengthen the impression.” Martha was a very troubled woman. Unfortunately, Ida, Martha’s stepdaughter,[i] bore the brunt of those troubles. Martha, all the while proclaiming her innocence, was convicted on March 20, 1899 of her stepdaughter’s murder. On the 8th in 1899, in New York’s Sing Sing prison[ii], Miss Place became the first woman executed by the use of an electric chair[iii].

[i] On February 7 1899, when Martha’s husband William arrived home Martha met him at the door wielding an ax and tried to kill him. His daughter was already dead.
[ii] Albert Fish, whose culinary tastes were widely frowned upon (He was in the habit of kidnapping, cooking and eating children) was executed using Sing Sing’s electric chair on January 16, 1936. He had told his executioner that the execution would be “the supreme thrill of my life.”
[iii] Miss Place’s executioner was Edwin F. Davis, the State of New York’s first state electrician. He apparently enjoyed his work and had been awarded patent number 587,649, for his "Electrocution-Chair", on August 3, 1897. Davis was also William Kemmler’s executioner. Kemmler was toasted on August 6, 1890 and was the first person to be executed with an electric chair.