Inside infamous ‘Sing Sing’ prison where 614 inmates executed by ‘Old Sparky’

The phrase “being sent up the river” refers originally to getting sentenced to a spell at the infamous “Sing-Sing” slammer.

Located on the banks of the Hudson River, about 30 miles north of New York City, the prison is one of the oldest in the US to still be operative. Up until the state’s death penalty was abolished in 1972 614 men and women have been put to death via Sing Sing’s electric chair, a piece of deadly equipment bearing the alarmingly affectionate nickname “Old Sparky”.

Sing Sing was constructed in 1825 after the State of New York purchased an 130-acre site on the Hudson River. Its first residents were 100 incarcerated men who were transported from New York’s Auburn Prison to the new site, at the time named Mount Pleasant.

READ MORE: Inside ‘Slaughterhouse’ death row prison where ‘humanity steps back’ and inmates ‘boil alive’

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However when the lags arrived there were no cells to hold them, meaning the hapless blokes were forced to build their own prison walls. Under the supervision of law enforcement officials, marble was excavated from a nearby quarry and the prisoners got to work on their home-to-be.

Each of the 800 cells were reportedly 7ft deep, 3 feet 3 inches wide and 6 feet 7 inches high.

Early inmates at Sing Sing were forced to spend their incarceration in total silence (dubbed ‘the Auburn method’), which was enforced by guards brandishing whips. During the day, labour groups made up of ‘lockstepped’ lags would spend hours in the baking heat working on the site.

Although the prison is still very much in use today, the 1825 cell block is defunct with plans to turn it into a museum.

Over the first hundred years of the prison, several inmates on death row managed to forge daring escapes from Sing Sing’s ‘Death House’, leading to a new one being built in 1920.

High-profile executions at the hand of Sing Sing’s ‘Old Sparky’ electric chair include Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 for being involved in espionage for the Soviet Union on nuclear weapon research. In 1954 Gerhard Puff was executed for the murder of an FBI agent, while the last person executed in the state was the murderer Eddie Lee Mays.

Following the abolition of the death penalty in 1972, ‘Old Sparky’ was moved to Green Haven Correctional Facility in working condition, but never used again. Finally put out to pasture, the electric chair was transferred to a museum in Albany, where it was displayed as an artefact.

In the current era, Sing Sing appears to be a far-removed place from the site which saw over 600 people fried to death over its history. In November 2023, a USA Today visit to the penitentiary included meeting with a peer-support group made up of inmates who called themselves “Voices from Within”.

The group is reportedly attempting to change the culture in prisons by shedding light on the mistakes they’ve made and “keeping young people from heading down the same path”.

“I don’t want life to end the day we are sentenced,” said one Sing Sing inmate. “That’s not the end of us as humans and as men. We have so much we can share with everyone, if we are given that chance.”

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