Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [100]
This is the only point in the entire debate on electrical execution at which anyone raised the possibility7 of a table. A few lines later the report added, "We think a chair is preferable to a table." The reason for this preference was not explained, but it is likely that the chair was considered more dignified for the prisoner. On the gallows a prisoner stood tall and proud, a full participant in the ritual of retribution. Strapped to a table, he would be utterly helpless, resembling a bit too closely an experimental animal strapped to a laboratory bench for vivisection. The chair occupied a middle ground, allowing the necessary restraint and support but also paying at least minimal respect to the prisoner's humanity.9
The most controversial question involved the placement of electrodes. In Edison's view, the dozens of accidental deaths caused by grasping a wire with both hands proved the worth of a hand-to-hand arrangement. The Medico-Legal Society's physicians tested this theory by running current between the forelegs of a horse, but they were not satisfied with the results. Wishing to attack "the seat of consciousness" and the areas that "exercise jurisdiction over the lungs and heart," the report advocated placing electrodes on the head and spine. The positive pole, the doctors said, should go on the head, because "the electric stream flows from the positive to the negative pole"; the physicians apparently were unaware that with alternating current each pole alternated between positive and negative. However tentative the theories, experimental results seemed to support these recommendations. The report endorsed fixing one electrode to the chair such that "it will impinge upon the spine between the shoulders," while the other should be attached to "a sort of helmet" attached to the back of the chair.10
The Medico-Legal Society proposed an "electric table" before concluding that a chair would be preferable.
The Medico-Legal Society enjoyed no official authority, but the state commission appointed early in 1889 adopted most of its recommendations, with one slight revision. In March 1889 the commissioners killed nine animals at the Edison lab with the electrodes placed at different areas of the animals' bodies. They concluded that a current passing from the head to leg—rather than head to spine—worked best.11
It was up to Harold Brown to translate these recommendations into an execution device. His design—which he unveiled to the press in May 1889—featured an oak reclining chair with a head electrode in a "metal cap" and feet electrodes encased in "electrical shoes." In June or July of that year, a carpenter at the Auburn prison built a chair to Brown's specifications.12
In December 1889, after Dr. Fell and the state commissioners killed a horse and a calf at Auburn to test the execution dynamo, they examined Brown's chair. Dr. Fell believed that it was poorly designed, and he explained his views to Austin Lathrop, the state prison superintendent. Dr. Fell agreed that one electrode should go on the head, but he thought the second should be affixed near the spine on the lower back, so that the current flow "would include the heart and produce the greatest density in the neck, including the region of the medulla oblongata." This opinion contradicted that of the official state commission, which opted for a foot electrode, but the superintendent brushed this matter aside and told Dr. Fell to get to work. Back in Buffalo, the doctor designed a new chair, hired a carpenter to build it,* and shipped it to Auburn prison on February 12,1890. 13
ON THAT SAME DAY in February, Thomas Edison was bound for a vacation. "I am pretty well broken down with overwork and am going down in the North Carolina Mountains to freshen up," he wrote in a letter to Henry Villard. On his way to the mountains Edison stopped off in Richmond, Virginia, to lobby for his favorite cause. A state senate committee was considering bill no. 238, "For the Prevention of Danger from Electric Currents," which called