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1866: Frank Ferris, a Portuguese ax murderer in New York
New York Times, Oct. 19, 1866: FRANK FERRIS, the unfortunate man who is condemned to be executed to-day for the murder of his wife, has been positively refused a further respite by GOV. FENTON. No...
View Article1919: Not Joseph Cohen
This day in 1919 was the closest Joseph Cohen came to the electric chair in Sing Sing. His walk may have been 7 minutes, or possibly 11 minutes, away, but Cohen was not to die this day at the hands of...
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1927: Robert Greene Elliott conducts six electrocutions in one day
On this date in 1927, Robert Greene Elliott — the “state electrician” who wired the majesty of the law to condemned men and women from Rockview, Pa. to Windsor, Vt. — had the busiest day of his...
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1899: Bailer Decker, Theodore Roosevelt’s first
This report of the New York Times, Jan. 10, 1899, concerns the forgettable murderer whose electrocution was approved on his first day in office by New York’s new governor — Theodore Roosevelt, soon to...
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1888: Danny Driscoll, Whyo
On this date in 1888, New York City crime lord Danny Driscoll went to the gallows in the Tombs. (Co-)leader of the Irish gang the Whyos — so named for a distinctive signaling hoot that once echoed...
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1873: John Gaffney, hanged by a President
On this date in 1873, John Gaffney hanged in Buffalo — the last of two executions conducted by future U.S. President Grover Cleveland. The man whom future foes on the national stage would deride as the...
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1803: Cato, slave of Elijah Mount
The following confessional and its exhausting run-on sentence arrive courtesy of a pamphlet published at the time and reprinted in Free Blacks, Slaves, and Slaveowners in Civil and Criminal Courts: The...
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1854: John Hendrickson, junk science victim
On this date in 1854, an Albany, N.Y. man named John Hendrickson hanged for the murder by aconite poisoning of his wife, Maria. “He has suffered the highest penalty of the law,” New York’s Weekly...
View Article1756: Owen Syllavan
Colonial counterfeiter Owen Syllavan (Sullivan) was executed in New York on this date in 1756. An Irish runaway, Syllavan followed an indenture to the North American colonies and wound up enlisted in...
View Article1741: Caesar and Prince, leaders of a plot to burn New York?
The first executions for New York’s 1741 fires took place on this date in 1741, several weeks before any others. They were two slaves of regal name: Caesar, the property of a baker named John Vaarck,...
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1741: Cuffee and Quack, “chained to a stake, and burnt to death”
This date in 1741 marked the first official execution for the alleged New York slave conspiracy of 1741. Nineteen days before, two slaves named Caesar and Prince had hanged, nominally for theft but...
View Article1741: Cook, Robin, Caesar and Cuffee
On this date in 1741, four black men were burned in New York City. This is the third execution date in that year’s great suppression of a purported slave conspiracy, and it is here that its wantonly...
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1741: John Hughson, Sarah Hughson and Peggy Kerry, “so abandoned to...
On this date in 1741, “John Hughson, Sarah his wife, and Margaret Kerry, were executed according to sentence” for the slave conspiracy to burn New York. They were the first white people executed in the...
View Article1741: Five “inferior Agents” of the plot to burn New York
On this date in 1714, “the Negroes Cato (Cowley’s) Fortune (Vanderspeigle’s) Cato alias Toby, Ben and Quash, were executed according to their respective Sentences.” That’s the entirety of the text in...
View Article1741: Prince, Tony, Cato, Harry and York
On this date in 1741, according to Daniel Horsmanden’s relentless chronicle of his pursuit of the great New York slave conspiracy “Duane’s Prince, Latham’s Tony, Shurmur’s Cato, Kip’s Harry, and...
View Article1741: Will, Ward’s Negro
(Thanks for today’s guest post to Daniel Horsmanden, the former judge whose account of hunting down a slave conspiracy in New York in 1741 has been so crucial to our running series on the affair. This...
View Article1858: Isaac Wood
From the Livingston Republican of July 1858, by way of Murderpedia: On this day..1861: Robert Thomas Palin, under Ordinance 17 Victoria Number 7 - 20151944: Ferruccio Nazionale, Ivrea partisan -...
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1860: Albert Hicks, the last pirate hanged by the US?
The hanging of Albert Hicks on Bedloe’s Island on this date in 1860 marked perhaps the last execution for piracy in U.S. history.* This was a century and more past the Golden Age of Piracy. By the...
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1741: Othello, Doctor Harry, and five other New York slaves
New-York Weekly Journal, July 20, 1741. On this date in 1741, six slaves named Othello, Quack, Venture, Frank, Fortune, and Galloway were hanged, and a seventh, “Harry the Negro Doctor”, burned — all...
View Article1741: Not Sarah Hughson, “stubborn deportment”
Supreme Court: WEDNESDAY, 29th JULY. PRESENT, The Chief Justice, The Second and Third Justices. The KING, against Sarah Hughson, the Daughter. THIS Criminal Convict being set to the Bar, the Court...
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