Old Sparky

by Anthony Galvin

  The second demonstration, also in the School of Mines, involved the electrocution of three animals. A sixty-one pound mongrel and a ninety-one pound Newfoundland were quickly dispatched, the deaths taking only seconds. Then they came to the third animal, a fifty-three pound setter-Newfoundland cross. They ran the 300 volts AC through the dog for a full four minutes before it finally collapsed, tongue lolling out and a smell of burning flesh filling the hot and fetid room. Brown smiled afterward and said, “All of the physicians present expressed the opinion that a dog had a higher vitality than a man, and that therefore a current which killed a dog would be fatal to a man.”

  Brown was confident that his efforts would result in AC being limited to 300 volts, which would completely eliminate its advantage over DC when it came to power transmission. If this happened, Edison would win the War of the Currents.

  Some time before the War of the Currents had begun, the New York Commission had started looking for alternatives to hanging and other methods of execution. Although he was personally opposed to the death penalty, Edison knew that the findings of the commission could make a powerful propaganda tool. Although he did not invent the electric chair or personally work on creating it, he backed those who did. Edison’s key message—his only real message—was safety. On every other front, alternating current had him beaten. But if condemned prisoners were executed with alternating current, what greater statement of its dangers to human life would be needed? He made his equipment and research available to Brown, but it was his last desperate throw of the dice. Eventually economics dictated that AC was the most practical way of transmitting power over long distances. In 1890, the DC power station in Willamette Falls, Oregon, was destroyed by a flood and the company replaced their dynamos with AC ones from Westinghouse, paving the way for the first proper long-distance transmission of electricity. The same year, a station was built in Niagara Falls to supply New York with affordable AC power. The war was over; Edison had lost. In 1892 his company, General Electric, had to switch to AC.

  One of the legacies of this turbulent era was Old Sparky.

  5

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

  The death penalty commission had reported back to the New York State Legislature, recommending electrocution as the most modern and humane method of executing prisoners. But how was it to be done? You could not ask convicts to urinate on live wires or to touch a non-insulated spot and hope for the best. Some mechanism was needed. The Legislature sought advice from the Medico-Legal Society of New York. The society’s chair was Dr. Frederick Peterson, who had assisted Harold Brown in his dog-killing experiments. So from the start he leaned towards AC. He contacted Brown.

  The two men retired to Edison’s laboratory in West Orange and began to experiment in earnest on how to kill animals with AC. On November 15, 1888, they reported back to the society, and their report was honest. Either current would kill. But they said they would prefer to use AC. The society postponed a decision for a month.

  Brown knew he had to pull off a spectacular stunt to ensure AC triumphed over DC and would become known as the killer current. So he decided to scale up his experiments, electrocuting, or “westinghousing,” large animals closer to humans in size. On December 5, he conducted a public demonstration before doctors, reporters, and two members of the New York State Death Commission, including the Buffalo dentist Dr. Southwick, long a proponent of electrocution. This time, Edison himself attended, lending the macabre proceedings a veneer of respectability.

  They began by leading a calf onto a sheet of tin. The calf was cut on the forehead and the upper spine, and wet sponges were applied. Wires from the sponges ran via an alternator back to the tin base. After thirty seconds of applying 700 volts, the calf fell heavily to the floor, dead. A second calf took just five seconds to collapse. But this was merely the appetizer; the entrée was yet to come.

  A large horse weighing 1,230 pounds was led forward. Copper wires were tied around its forelocks, and everyone stood back. If this went wrong, no one wanted a broken shoulder from the flailing hooves. When everyone was well clear of the animal, the current was turned up. As it reached 700 volts, the horse slumped forward to its knees and keeled over, dead. The following morning the New York Times proclaimed: “The experiments proved the alternating current to be the most deadly force known to science, and that less than half the pressure used in this city for electric lighting by this system is sufficient to cause instant death. After January 1, the alternating current will undoubtedly drive the hangman out of business in this State.”

  A few days later the Medico-Legal Society gave their verdict: it was a thumbs up for AC. It recommended that prisoners be electrocuted in “a recumbent position, on a table covered with rubber, or the sitting position, in a chair especially constructed for the purpose.”

  Brown and Peterson got to work immediately. Dr. Southwick was a dentist and was used to dealing with patients in a chair, so that is what he wanted. They began working on a chair that would electrocute someone to death quickly and with the least possible drama.

  George Westinghouse was furious; he did not want his transmission system associated with killing prisoners. He fired off a letter to the newspapers, pointing out that many people had received shocks of 1,000 volts or more from AC and had not only survived, but had been uninjured. He accused Harold Brown of carrying out misleading experiments for publicity.

  Brown responded by challenging the industrialist to an electric duel! He suggested that he be wired to a DC generator while Westinghouse was attached to an AC generator. Both men would be given an initial shock of 100 volts. Then the voltage would be increased in steps of 50 volts until one or other passed out or admitted that their system was more dangerous. It was getting preposterous.

  Westinghouse wisely ignored the challenge and the duel of the currents never happened. But Brown was employed by the New York State prison system as their first electrical expert. He was officially the man who would build the first electric chair. It was a solid oak affair, with sturdy legs and arms with straps, so that a prisoner could be held in place. Most importantly, it would be connected to one of Westinghouse’s generators. It would be a spectacular PR coup. Criminality and AC linked in one very public death. Edison was delighted. Westinghouse was horrified.

  Brown constructed and tested the apparatus until he was sure it would kill a human infallibly. Then he sold the chair and its accoutrements to the State of New York for $8,000. Old Sparky was ready for the first victim to be sacrificed to the progress of science.

  Of course, it had not been a smooth development. For one thing, George Westinghouse refused to sell a generator to Brown. He might not have been able to prevent AC from being used, but he was under no obligation to help it. Eventually Brown had to turn to his benefactor Edison, writing in March 1889: “I have been trying for the past week to buy, borrow, or steal a Westinghouse dynamo, but have been unsuccessful. I am afraid therefore that we shall have to trespass again upon your good nature.”

  He proposed that Edison modify one of the Siemens AC dynamos in the laboratory so that it could produce a continuous stream of 1,000 volts AC. Edison agreed and experimentation continued. After watching the progress, the state finally agreed that they would purchase three AC generators for $7,000, but only if the first execution went smoothly. The generators were for Sing Sing, Auburn, and Dannemora prisons.

  At this point, Brown got a break. A competitor of Westinghouse’s, Charles Coffin of the Thomson-Houston Company, secretly agreed to acquire three second-hand generators and sell them to Brown. With the chair built and the generators secured, they were now ready for the first modern execution.

  6

  WILLIAM KEMMLER, THE POOR PEDDLER

  William Francis Kemmler was an illiterate son of German immigrant parents, raised in near poverty in Philadelphia. He was one of only two children who survived out of a family of eleven. Born on May 9, 1860, he had finished with his education within the first
decade of his life and was out on the street hustling for a living. For seven years, he shined shoes, sold newspapers, and helped out in his father’s butcher shop. But at the age of seventeen, he got a job in a brickyard and began putting money aside. Within two years he had purchased a horse and cart, allowing him to set up as an independent trader, peddling fruit and vegetables.

  Once he could afford to, he developed a taste for whiskey. He became a heavy drinker, and like many a drinker before him, he did not display his best judgment when under the influence of the bottle. After one spectacular bender he woke up to find that he had married Ida Forter in Camden, New Jersey. Two days later he came to his senses when he realized that she was already married and had not divorced her first husband. He left her and ran back to Philadelphia, where he immediately moved in with another married woman, Matilda (Tillie) Ziegler. She had left her husband because of his fondness for drink and lewd women—that could have described her new man, Kemmler, to a tee. She had a young daughter, Ella.

  A little over a week after moving in with Ziegler, Kemmler sold his fruit and vegetable business and the little property he had; and the couple, with Ella, moved to Buffalo, where they lived together as husband and wife. He even used the name John Hort to further the deception, and he applied locally for a peddler’s license. He began working with a partner, John de Bella.

  But all was not rosy in the new household. Kemmler was regularly drunk and Ziegler was regularly unfaithful. A year and a half passed in constant bickering and Kemmler was convinced that his lover was cheating on him with his business partner. He was drinking more than ever but still managed to run and grow his business. That all came to an abrupt end on the morning of March 29, 1899. That morning, he entered the barn where he stored his horse and supplies, and he seemed sober and in control, according to his employees. But as he was giving them their instructions for the morning, Tillie came out of their apartment and asked him to fetch her some fresh eggs. She then turned and walked back into the building.

  Instead of getting eggs, Kemmler picked up a hatchet and followed her into the kitchen. She was at the sink, clearing away the breakfast crockery. Ignoring four-year-old Ella, who stood by watching with horror, he walked up behind Tillie and struck viciously at her back with the hatchet. As she staggered and turned, he continued to rain blows down on her head and shoulders. He struck her twenty-six times in all, leaving her in a bleeding pulp on the floor. Tossing the hatchet aside, he turned and rushed from the room, leaving Ella still paralyzed with fear.

  Kemmler made no effort to conceal what he had done. He walked straight to the front of the house, which was the part occupied by his landlady Mary Reid. His hands and arms covered in gore, he calmly told her, “I have killed her. I had to do it; there was no help for it. One of us had to die. I’ll take the rope for it.” A moment later, Ella rushed in, confirming the grisly news, saying, “Papa has killed mamma.”

  Kemmler calmly picked up his stepdaughter and placed her on a chair before cleaning his hands and arms and leaving the house. He was accosted by a neighbor who demanded that he fetch a doctor. Instead, he went in search of a public house. He banged on the counter and called for a drink, but the neighbor, who had followed him, told the barman not to serve him. While the two men quarreled, the first police officer, John O’Neill, arrived on the scene.

  “Have you been licking your wife?” he asked.

  “Yes—with a hatchet,” said Kemmler.

  They returned to the bloody kitchen where, unbelievably, Tillie Ziegler was still alive. Her arms were moving ineffectually and she was moaning in pain. She died a number of hours later in the hospital.

  Kemmler was unrepentant, blaming the killing on his quick temper, and telling investigators that the sooner he was hanged the better.

  Five weeks later, on May 6, the trial opened. The accused was subdued, and one newspaper described his appearance as that of “mild-eyed imbecility.” He was accompanied by his brother Henry Hort. Henry’s feelings must have been mixed. The two brothers had ended up with two sisters; Henry’s wife was the sister of Kemmler’s lover and victim. Henry’s wife also attended the court, but she was definitely not on William Kemmler’s side. She was there for her sister.

  The prosecution painted a picture of a man who was a heavy drinker and prone to violent outbursts of temper. He was jealous of his business partner, whom he suspected of sleeping with his wife.

  The defense case was simple. Kemmler was a habitual alcoholic and was incapable of premeditated murder. That required a clear and calculating mind. He had killed while his judgment was befuddled with drink. While he was not actually drunk at the time of the killing, habitual drinking had left his mind deeply affected.

  Alcoholic insanity is a difficult case to prove. At best, Kemmler could hope to escape the rope. His defense knew there could not be an acquittal for a man who had hacked his partner to death in front of her daughter.

  Defense witnesses established that Kemmler had been drunk every day for two months prior to the killing. He often spent four or five dollars a day (the equivalent of over a hundred dollars today) on drink and was frequently incoherent. Several medical experts testified that continued abuse of alcohol rendered a man less capable of rational decisions

  The jury took over two hours to reach a decision, long for those days. But at 11:18 a.m. on May 10—just one day after Kemmler’s twenty-ninth birthday—they returned a verdict of guilty.

  The Buffalo Courier reported that as Kemmler rose to receive the verdict, “There was a sharp clap of thunder. Rain dashed against the windows, and as Kemmler turned to face the jury there was a flash of lightning typical of his coming fate … The moment was decidedly prophetic.”

  Sentencing was put back to May 14, and the courtroom was packed. Everyone was wondering if Kemmler would be the first person sentenced under the new Electrical Execution Act. The peddler, who had remained calm and sullen throughout the trial, was suddenly looking nervous.

  Judge Henry Childs turned to the prisoner and pronounced the dreaded sentence: “Within the week commencing Monday, June 24, 1889, within the walls of Auburn State Prison or within the yard or enclosure thereof, that you suffer the death punishment by being executed by electricity, as provided by the code of criminal procedure of the State of New York, and that you be removed to and kept in confinement in Auburn State Prison until that time. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  Kemmler went pale and sank to a chair before being escorted from the courthouse.

  Though the execution was scheduled for six weeks later, it would be more than a year before the appeals procedure had been exhausted. William Bourke Cockran, a young Irishman who had moved to America at the age of seventeen, took up the cudgel for Kemmler. He was a rising star of the Democrat Party, a noted orator, and a highly skilled lawyer. There is some suspicion that his hefty fees, which were beyond the purse of Kemmler, were paid by Westinghouse. Legend has it that the mercenary Cockran was paid $100,000—though this figure is certainly exaggerated. What is certain is that Westinghouse was prepared to spend freely to ensure that his dynamos were not associated with the electric chair.

  Cockran appealed against electrocution as being “cruel and unusual,” and thus unconstitutional. There is no doubt that it was unusual at that point, but its supporters thought it was anything but cruel—though nobody would know for sure until after the first execution. It was known that if the voltage was too high there could be burning of the flesh at the point of contact with the electricity, but if the person was killed or rendered unconscious instantly, this would not be cruel.

  The first round of hearings went against Cockran and his client. Edison himself testified on July 23. He said that he had conducted experiments on his 250 employees to determine the electrical resistance of a human body, and he could guarantee that death could be caused instantly and universally with an electric shock. But you would have to be careful not to use too much power, as that might burn the body.

&nbs
p; “Have a nice little bonfire with him, would you?” asked Cockran.

  “Oh no, just carbonize him,” Edison replied.

  At a lower power setting the results would be less spectacular.

  “His temperature,” said Edison, “would rise three or four degrees above the normal and after a while he’d be mummified. The heat would evaporate all the fluids in his body and leave him mummified.”

  But Edison was adamant that if the current was correctly controlled, instant death would result without the distressing side effects. Cockran lost the first round, and appealed to the Supreme Court of New York. While that appeal was pending, Brown installed the first electric chair at Auburn. He was assisted by Edwin Davis. Davis, who was in his early forties at the time, would soon be appointed the state’s electrician and would oversee 240 executions before his retirement in 1914.

  On December 30, the Supreme Court handed down their decision, agreeing with Judge Day in the lower court that the execution by electrocution was not a cruel and unusual punishment. In February 1890 the Court of Appeal heard and rejected the final pleas on behalf of the condemned man. On March 31, Kemmler was told that he would be executed during the final week of April.

  He said, “I am guilty and must be punished. I am ready to die. I am glad I am not going to be hung. I think it is much better to die by electricity than it is by hanging. It will not give me any pains.”

  Final adjustments were made to the chair. It was smaller and neater than originally envisioned, with a high back and a comfortable seat, and a footrest.

  But there was one final throw of the dice. Westinghouse had hired Roger Shermann, a high-powered attorney, who obtained a writ of habeas corpus demanding Kemmler be produced at the Circuit Court of New York on June 10—in layman’s terms, a stay of execution. And there was more hope—a bill was introduced before the New York Assembly abolishing capital punishment. The bill passed in the Assembly but lost in the Senate. And Shermann failed in his last-minute appeals too, losing out in the Supreme Court. By June 23, all avenues had been exhausted, and all barriers to the execution removed.