Dovie Blanche Dean photograph

This photograph from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus is of 55-year-old Dovie Blanche Dean, a Batavia housewife. Her formal attire suggests that the photograph was taken during her trial or sentencing. Dean, convicted of poisoning and killing her newlywed husband, was the 293rd individual (and second of three women) to be executed via the electric chair in Ohio. The caption at the bottom reads: “No. 293 Dovie Blanche Dean Clermont County, Ohio, Legally Electro-cuted, January 15, 1954, for the Murder of Hawkins Dean.” In 1885 the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, became the location for all executions, which previously took place in the various county seats. In 1896 the Ohio General Assembly mandated that electrocution replace hanging as the form of capital punishment. The Ohio Penitentiary regularly offered tours as well as souvenir photographs and postcards of the building and prisoners on death row. A total of 315 prisoners, both men and women, were executed in the electric chair known as “Old Sparky” between 1897 and 1963