By Tim Lambert
Martha Place was the first woman to be executed by the electric chair. She murdered her stepmother and attempted to murder her husband.
Martha was born on 8 September 1849 in New Jersey, USA. Her birth name was Martha Garrettson. Martha married a man named Wesley Savacool and they had a son. But the marriage was short-lived. Wesley left and Martha could not look after her son. So she agreed to have him adopted.
In 1893, she married a man named William Place. He had a teenage daughter named Ida from a previous marriage and it seems Martha was very jealous of her. She resented the girl because she was very popular and she was close to her father. She also wanted her son to come and live with them but Place refused, much to Martha’s annoyance. The couple grew apart.
On 7 February 1899, Martha had a row with 17-year-old Ida. Martha threw carbolic acid in Ida’s face. She then killed the girl by suffocating her. attacked William Place with an axe when he came home from work. Place managed to escape and summon help.
When William Place came back from work, Martha attacked him with an axe. Fortunately, William survived. Martha ran upstairs, perhaps thinking William was dead. He managed to stumble outside, where neighbours saw him and called the police.
The police found Martha unconscious. She had attempted to kill herself by turning on the gas taps. The police also found the dead body of Ida Place. Martha was, at first, taken to a hospital but when she recovered, she was charged with the murder of Ida and the attempted murder of William.
At her trial, Martha claimed to be innocent. However, not surprisingly, the jury did not believe her and she was found guilty. Martha was sentenced to death. The governor of the state of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, refused to commute her sentence to life imprisonment. On 20 March 1899, Martha Place was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison.