This week in 1920

Sitting down in the chair:
“Give her the gas, kid. I’m taking it with a smile.”

— James Cassidy, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed December 9, 1920

Cassidy, too, was part of Milano and Usefof’s gang. Though a doctor said he had “the mind of a nine-year-old child,” the diagnosis didn’t keep Cassidy from facing the electric chair. Just before his execution, he presented Warden Lewis E. Lawes with a brief from his appeal and asked him to keep it as a “remembrance.” Cassidy was illiterate but had been learning to read. He pointed to the word “remembrance,” which he’d written on his cell wall. He said, “Isn’t it hell, warden, when you get so you can write words like that to have to be bumped off?”