May 28, 1846 - Edwin Davis
As New York's first official state executioner, Davis carried out over 240 electrocutions between 1890 and 1914, operating at a moment when the electric chair was itself a contested new technology. His role was bureaucratic as much as it was lethal — a salaried state employee who refined the method enough to hold a patent on the chair's design. The inventor-executioner combination places him in an unusual position at the intersection of Progressive Era penal reform and the mechanics of state-administered death.
From Wikipedia
Edwin F. Davis (May 28, 1846 – May 26, 1923), of Corning, Steuben County, New York, United States, was the first "state electrical engineer” (executioner) for the state of New York. In 1890, Davis finalized many features of the first electric chair used. Davis performed 240 executions between 1890 and 1914, including the first person to be executed by electric chair, William Kemmler, and the first woman, Martha M. Place, as well as William McKinley's assassin, Leon F. Czolgosz.
Davis held a patent on certain features of the electric chair. He received U.S. Patent No. 587,649 for his "Electrocution-Chair" on August 3, 1897.
He died two days before his 77th birthday, and is buried in Barnard Cemetery in Corning, New York.
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