Peter Treadway portrait   Save
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections
Description: Before the Ohio Penitentiary’s closing in 1979, the execution chamber within the facility housed and displayed photographs of many of the prisoners sentenced to death throughout the state’s history. This portrait of Peter Treadway is one of them. The caption at the bottom of the photograph reads, “No. 189, Peter Treadway of Cuyahoga County, Electrocuted June 1st, 1935, for the Murder of Mrs. Ruth Steese of Cleveland, Ohio.” Treadway had worked as a gas station attendant before his conviction. He was executed at the age of 38. From 1897 to 1963 there were a total of 315 people in the state of Ohio, both men and women, who were legally put to death on the electric chair, or “Old Sparky” as it was often referred. Before this time the main method of execution had been hanging. However, the electric chair was considered to be a more humane way to carry out death sentences. So in 1896 the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill mandating that electrocution was to replace hanging as the state’s sole method of execution. It was not until 2001 that lethal injection replaced electrocution as Ohio’s only method of execution. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL08221
Subjects: Ohio History--State and Local Government--Law; Ohio History--State and Local Government--Corrections; Capital punishment--Ohio--History; Electrocution; Death row; Ohio Penitentiary (Columbus, Ohio)
Places: Cuyahoga County (Ohio); Cleveland (Ohio); Columbus (Ohio)