North Carolina's Electric Chairs

1910 - 1938

166 Executions

North Carolina - 2 electric chairs, placed side by side, in the execution chamber at Central Prison from 1908 to 1938.  One retired and the other used on for gas chamber duty until the state outlawed lethal gas as means of execution.

One of my readers sent me the following information. North Carolina didn't have side by side electric chairs from 1908 to 1938.   Rather, this occurred between 1936, when lethal gas was introduced (and one chair was converted to that purpose) and 1938 (when the last electrocution occurred).   The two chairs remained in the original chamber up until the early 1980's, when Central Prison was renovated and a new chamber was constructed.   At this point, only the "original" gas chair was placed in the new chamber and kept there until being legislated out of use in 1998.  The original gas chamber itself, is in the possession of a private citizen, whose husband was the contractor responsible for its removal.   She trucks it around her region as part of a campaign to raise awareness of child abuse.