On this day, April 8, in 1899, Martha Place became the first woman to be executed in an electric chair. She was sent to Old Sparky in New York’s Sing Sing prison after she force-fed her stepdaughter acid and smothered her.
William Place, a widower, married Martha to help raise his teenage daughter, but at least on one occasion police were called to their Brooklyn home to arrest Martha for threatening to kill the girl.
On Feb. 5, 1898, an ax-wielding Martha Place chased her husband from their home. Police found Place passed out from the gas from burners seeping into the room. Upstairs they discovered 17-year-old Ida. She was bleeding from the mouth, and her eyes were disfigured from the acid.
On April 8, 1899, authorities sat Place in the electric chair, slit her dress and put an electrode on her ankle. She died at age 44.
