A SHOCKING MYSTERY?

(Online Florida Photographic Collection, Florida State Archives)

This morose fellow was sitting in Florida's electric chair -- Or was he really?  The Florida State Archives confirms that this is a composite picture from 1936:  The man's image had been superimposed onto the gruesome scene at the state prison in Raiford, ... miles southwest of Jacksonville.  And the Archives seems to indicate that the person was from the River City.  It gives the subject heading "Men -- Florida -- Jacksonville."  Indeed, this picture was created by Jack Spottswood, a prolific commercial photographer from Jax.  Was Mr. Spottswood having a bit of "gallows humor" with his own image?  Or, possibly, was the image from one of the four white men electrocuted in Florida in 1936?  (Prison officials executed eleven men  -- seven African Americans and four whites -- that year.)

Florida's electric chair, often called "Old Sparky" or "Old Smokey," dates back to early 1920s.  Florida inmates skilled in carpentry built the state's first chair, according to the Florida Department of Corrections website.  However, a Jax native once told a different story to the JacksonvilleStory.com website manager while he served as the manager of the Florida Collection at Jacksonville's Main Public Library.  This man's father owned a cabinet or furniture shop in downtown Jax.  As a child during the early '20s, the man said that he would sit in the first electric chair as his father constructed it.  Perhaps this business stood on Newnan Street, for the Florida Times-Union and the Jacksonville Journal say that the chair was first built in Cooks' Cabinet Shop on Newnan Street, near today's City Hall Annex (the old city hall near the riverfront). 

Jax may've given "Old Sparky" to the state, and it definitely did furnish the first man to die in it.  Frank Johnson, an African American from the River City, met his fate at Raiford in 1924.  At the time, Florida's lawmakers favored electrocution over hanging since death by noose had sometimes resulted in decapitation.  In addition, the hangings had usually taken place in front of crowds in jail yards and courthouse yards.  As depicted in the Tom Hanks movie "The Green Mile," electrocutions were carried out indoors before relatively small groups of witnesses.

CLICK HERE for a St. Petersburg Times article about the chair's early history

CLICK HERE for an Times-Union article about Frank Johnson by the late Bill Foley