1844: Hester Foster and William Young Graham
1 comment February 8th, 2014 Meaghan
(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
At 1:30 p.m. on this date in 1844 at the Columbus Penitentiary in Ohio, William Young Graham, aka William Clark, and Hester Foster, aka Helen or Esther, were hanged together for their respective crimes.
It was an integrated execution: Graham was a white man, and Foster was black.
Foster was the first woman to be executed in Ohio. (There have been just three more … so far.) The previous spring, while incarcerated for some offense lost to history, she beat a white female prisoner to death with a fire shovel. As this history of Franklin County notes, Foster admitted to her actions, but claimed the murder wasn’t premeditated and therefore not a death penalty crime.
Graham’s crime was somewhat similar; within a few months of the murder Foster committed, he killed a prison guard with an ax. He claimed insanity by way of defense.
The pair’s public execution was attended by thousands. In the atmosphere of “noise, confusion, drunkenness and disorder,” one attendee, a Mr. Sullivan Sweet, was accidentally trampled to death. Many more Ohio men would face the death penalty in coming years, but Ohio’s next execution of a woman would not be until almost a century later, with the electrocution of serial poisoner Anna Marie Hahn in 1938.
On this day..
- 1943: Lepa Radic, Yugoslav Partisan - 2020
- 1723: Charles Weaver, John Levee, Richard Oakey and Matthew Flood - 2019
- 1804: Ann Hurle, forger - 2018
- 1943: The five martyrs of the lycee Buffon - 2017
- 1721: William Spigget, after peine forte et dure - 2016
- 1527: Georg Wagner - 2015
- 1804: Little Harpe and Peter Alston, Mississippi pirates - 2013
- 1942: Icchok Malmed - 2012
- 1924: The first electrocutions in Texas - 2011
- 1910: George Reynolds and John Williams - 2010
- 1924: Gee Jon, debuting the gas chamber - 2009
- 1587: Mary, Queen of Scots - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Electrocuted,Execution,Guest Writers,Milestones,Murder,Ohio,Other Voices,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,USA,Women
Tags: 1840s, 1844, february 8, hester foster, william graham
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