This week in 1899

“God help me.”

— Martha Place, convicted of murder, electric chair, New York.
Executed March 20, 1899

The first woman to be executed in the electric chair by the state of New York, Place had been savagely jealous, according to newspaper accounts. While her husband was away, Place threw sulfuric acid at her seventeen-year-old stepdaughter Ida during a quarrel, then smothered her with a pillow. That day Mr. Place came home to find his wife wielding an ax, with which she struck him twice in the head but failed to kill him.