Decidedly Grim

Today’s State-Of-The-Art Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Built on the banks of the Hudson River in Westchester County, New York in 1825, Sing Sing Prison already had become internationally famous by 1831. Much of the institution’s early success was due to brutal slavery, which helped make it profitable for a short time. By the late 19th century hundreds of convicts had perished, with causes of death ranging from consumption to starvation, suicide, and physical abuse, including water torture in the infamous shower bath, a non-electric and, usually, nonfatal precursor of the electric chair. Legal executions at Sing Sing did not begin until 1891, using the new method of electrocution that recently had been tested at Sing Sing and first was used at another New York prison, Auburn, in 1890. During the first four decades of executions at Sing Sing, the death house consisted of a section of the prison that was appropriated as the Condemned Cells. But a rash of daring escapes, including the violent breakout of condemned murderer Oreste Shillitoni, who killed a prison guard and serious wounded another before he was quickly recaptured and executed in 1916, prompted the construction of a special state-of-the-art prison within a prison: the Sing Sing Death House.

Culled from:  Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House

Facts