Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 15, 2010
Today’s Modest Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The issue of female modesty arose during the first electrocution of a woman at Sing Sing in New York in 1899. Martha Place of Brooklyn strangled her pretty stepdaughter, then attacked her husband with an axe. The National Police Gazette reported that authorities took special precautions during the execution: “The warden beckoned to two women physicians to stand close, and their gowns hid the scene of the buckling of the electrode on the woman’s leg near the knee. When the work was done one of the woman doctors pulled down the skirt so that the electrode and leg were covered.” In less than seven minutes, Mrs. Place was pronounced dead. “The execution had been successful in every way. The first woman to be killed under the law had been put to death humanely.”
Culled from: An Underground Education
Somehow the idea of electrical currents coursing through my body, singeing my skin and causing my blood to boil, doesn’t sound particularly humane… but maybe that’s just me?
Everybody knew what she’d done, knew she was a mean, spiteful lady, so worrying about her modesty seems kind of silly. I mean, what’s a little bit of leg compared to killing off your stepdaughter?
@Aimee
How do you know she was a mean, spiteful lady? Maybe the stepdaughter and husband were the mean and spiteful ones and totally deserved it? Hmmmm…???
With all the concern about modesty; One would think that electrocuting a woman would be very “un-lady like”. Why not a good old fashion burning at the stake? She seemed possessed…
Terhe’s a story about her in Crimelibrary, she was not a nice person. I can’t remember the details, it was years ago that I read it, but apparently she was what they classified “an habitual criminal.” Don’t you love it when they use “an” in front of h words?
Now that I think about it, they could have avoided the electrodes and just took her walking in a pasture, and arranged for her to slip in a cow pie and grab a live wire. Worked for the Thai sisters, didn’t it?