1912: Sing Sing’s seven successive sparks

ExecutedToday.com ^ | August 12, 2014 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

New York’s electric chair handled record traffic on this date in 1912: seven successive electrocutions.

The first two men committed unrelated and isolated crimes.

John Collins got drunk and started firing a pistol in his Manhattan apartment. Police responded, and Collins shot a patrolman through the chest when they entered his domicile and tried to arrest him. Joseph Ferrone, a violent wife-murderer who reacted to his guilty verdict by smashing a glass and slashing a juror with the jagged edge before he was restrained. The last five were the culmination of another record: six people (these were nos. two through six) executed for one homicide. More specifically, and this was their newspaper billing, “Six Italians”.

Lorenzo Cali, Santo Zanza, Vincenzo Cona, Salvatore DeMarco, Angelo Giusto and Filippo DeMarco were all Sicilians who were among the million-plus emigres to leave the island in the wake of the devastating 1908 Messina earthquake, had washed up at Croton Lake outside of New York working on the aqueducts that supplied that swelling metropolis with its fresh water.

It was backbreaking work at less than $2 a day, with tent barracks for recuperation because it was a prohibitive two-hour train ride back to the last stop on the New York subway.

In 1911, Cali caught wind of the passing of a nearby farm owner — Henry J. Griffin, whose comfortable home (usually occupied by boarders from the aqueduct’s managerial ranks) must have looked a fair sight from the muddy workers’ tents. It was said that he had left his wife not only that property but a $3,000 insurance policy...

[dangus]

They make an insurance policy of four times the pay of a manual laborer seem so extravagant that it was shameful that a single person receive such a windfall. That insurance policy was to provide for an elderly person for the entire rest of their lives. So let’s say in today’s economy, $15 an hour is what the living wage folks are demanding. That’s actually more than what we’re talking about. Any way, that’s $30,000. Imagine no social security, no pensions, nothing. That woman is supposed to live out the rest of her life on $120,000.... and he’s still working aged.

(Businesses today demand imported illegal labor because they can’t find Americans who will work for low wages... and taxpayers pick up the tab when such laborers can’t feed, shelter and provide healthcare for those wages, so I’m a bit of a heretic among right-wingers in that I support a living wage... the invisible hand of the free market has been mauled to a pulp and the flesh torn off it left on the scale.)

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Mutual confessions leading to six executions. Talk about a prisoner's dilemma! Ruth Snyder, of the infamous DEAD! headline, and dumbbell murders (referring to the perpetrators, not the instrumentality), inspiration for the book and movie, Double Indemnity, and her codefendant, who was also her lover, were executed within ten months of their crime.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Wages are lowered by illegal immigration. The correct minimum wage is $0. Actually, some people would pay to perform certain jobs, like leading an orchestra, or hitting in the Major Leagues. Minimum wage laws price high school kids out of the labor market. I am not opposed public support for people who cannot command a “living wage”, but I am vehemently opposed to policies that result in perverse incentives, like the current Biden unemployment supplement.

[NobleFree]

Businesses today demand imported illegal labor because they can’t find Americans who will work for low wages... and taxpayers pick up the tab when such laborers can’t feed, shelter and provide healthcare for those wages,

These travesties must end.

so I’m a bit of a heretic among right-wingers in that I support a living wage

No, that's not the answer - any more than you cure arsenic poisoning with cyanide.

[NobleFree]

John Collins got drunk

We need to ban this dangerous drug.

[dangus]

I’m well aware of the arguments against the minimum wage. All I’m saying is that since the invisible hand of the free market has been destroyed, with illegal immigration and benefits creating a workforce willing to work at wages far to low to be liveable except for by the taxpayer expense, we should minimize taxpayer subsidies of corrupt employers by forcing them to pay for their own employees’ costs.

Also, I don’t really care a rat’s ass about pricing high schoolers out of the labor market. From my experience seeing peers working after-school jobs, the parent’s dream that a high-school job will teach their kids responsibility is delusional; I have seen so many BAD lessons taught.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

We’ll have to agree to disagree.