William Francis Kemmler was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania back in 1860. He dropped out of school when he was 10, having learned neither to read or write. He started working in his father’s butcher shop. His father and mother were alcoholics, his father died after a drunken brawl with his mother.
Sadly, he was also an alcoholic and was well known around the saloons in his Buffalo neighborhood. To make a living he peddled vegetables in the slums of Buffalo, New York. On march 29, 1888 as he was recovering from a drinking binge he accused his common-law wife Tillie Ziegler of stealing from him. He calmly went to the barn, grabbed a hatchet returned to the house and struck her repeatedly, killing her. He went to a neighbor’s house announcing he had just murdered his girlfriend.
He was sentenced to death for first degree murder. On January 1, 1888 he became the first person to be executed by the electric chair. Not something I would want to be known for.
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