Place, Martha (1848–1899)

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Place, Martha (1848–1899)

American murderer. Born in 1848; executed at Auburn Prison, New York, on March 20, 1899; married William Place.

Despite her plea to Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, to commute her death sentence, Martha Place was the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. She had wounded her husband and killed her step-daughter Ida with an axe on February 7, 1898.

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