Old Sparky – (In)famous Texan Electric Chair

Old Sparky - Photo by Kayt Sukel

Old Sparky – (In)famous Texan Electric Chair, photo by Kayt Sukel .

Electric chairs are not my favorite subject. Alas they are a fact of life. The blog wouldn’t be complete without a couple of electric chairs.

When a friend of mine announced via twitter she was to visit a Texan Jail museum, the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas, USA, with a real electric chair in it, I asked her to make a photo of it for this blog and she gracefully obliged.

This famous (I would say infamous) electric chair was in operation for 40 years, between 1924 and 1964, and had 361 people killed in it.

Thank you Kayt!

5 thoughts on “Old Sparky – (In)famous Texan Electric Chair”

  1. Yuck, scary! But a great photo nonetheless! Were there any info on how many people died on the chair?

  2. Wow, I have no idea how this happened – I swear I read it but my mind didn’t register the number at all! Wow, weird… And embarassing!

  3. RE: Yuck, scary!

    Exactly – the purpose was to scare the bejesus out of anyone considering capital murder. Now some even complain about lethal injection. For them, I propose a gas chamber – loaded with nitrous oxide – they can laugh themselves to death. We can even bring in a clown to perform on the other side of the glass.

    Ted Bundy, for example, is what Old Sparky was made for – bring her back!

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