#ruth snyder

[disease]

RUTH SNYDER ELECTROCUTION DAILY NEWS – JANUARY 14, 1928

Candid photo by Tom Howard via a hidden ankle camera.

[funeral]

Tom Howard, Execution of Ruth Snyder, clandestine photograph made at Sing Sing Prison, January 12, 1928. Published in the New York Daily News the following day.

[magg0t]

ruth snyder (1928)

first known image of an execution by electric chair.

snyder, alongside her lover judd gray, murdered her husband albert and staged a buglary scene.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Ruth Snyder/Judd Gray trial in April and May of 1927 was one of the biggest sensations of the time. They were tried for, and eventually convicted of, murdering Snyder's husband for the insurance money. Journalists fought for entrance to the courtroom in the Queens County Courthouse in Long Island City. One, Sophie Treadwell, used the story as the basis of her hit play, Machinal,* which played on Broadway the following year, with Zita Johann in the Snyder-inspired role and a young actor making his Broadway debut, Clark Gable, in the Gray role.

*Note: If you click on the link above, which discusses the trial and the play in more detail, be prepared for a shocking photo of Snyder in the electric chair. It ran on the front page of the Daily News on January 12, 1928.

Photo: NY Times Photo Archives

[midnights-wish]

"The photographer had a camera strapped around one leg, attached to a cable that ran up his trouser leg and into a pocket. He could squeeze a bulb in his pocket to take one picture which would be unnoticed in the glare of sparks and the horror generated by the chair."

Deborah Blum, 'The Poisoner's Handbook' - how a photographer secretly took a picture of Ruth Snyder's execution.

[supermusicallee]

rip ruth snyder, you would have loved chicago the musical

[unexplained-events]

The Execution of Ruth Snyder

Ruth Brown Snyder was the first ever woman executed at Sing Sing and this is the first ever execution caught on film. It was snapped at the moment electricity was running through her body, with the aid of a miniature plate camera strapped to the ankle of Tom Howard, a Chicago Tribune photographer working in cooperation with the Tribune-owned New York Daily News.

[introvertguide]

This week’s movie is based on one of my favorite mystery noir novels. The movie is Double Indemnity (1944) and based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain. The author is considered to be a “hard-boiled” crime novelist, although he often stated that he disapproved of labels. Cain was originally an American journalist but found that the idea of the common man, the bored worker, had a lot more potential for complex crimes than hardened thugs. He took the idea of a bored insurance salesman and added it to the story of the real life murder committed by Ruth Snyder and Henry Gray of Snyder’s husband Albert. Snyder and Gray were convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. Both were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York in the spring of 1928 (see picture above). 

Double indemnity refers to the clause in a life insurance policy that pays out extra if the insured dies in a particular way. The trick is to set up a situation in which the person dies in a certain way without getting caught. Snyder successfully set up the situation, but was caught and executed. Cain’s book altered and sensationalized the story. Hollywood took that story and changed it even further so that only the skeleton of the original tale is evident. It is similar to a Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale vs. a Disney Movie. Same name and general goals, but almost all of the details are different. This is the kind of story where you can have fun comparing all of the different versions. I highly recommend it.