Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [103]
Kemmler usually slept well, but after returning from the Buffalo sentencing he spent a restless night. The next day he could not speak without bursting into tears. At the midnight shift change, Keeper McNaughton told his relief, Bill Wemple, to keep an eye on the prisoner. A few minutes later Wemple heard a voice from the cell: "Who are you up there?" Kemmler said. "What do you want with me?" The keeper rushed to the cell and asked what was wrong. Kemmler pointed to the ceiling and said, "I saw a man up there who said that he was Jesus Christ. He had, oh, such a good face, and he said to me that he would forgive all my sins."4
When he had first arrived in Auburn the previous May, Kemmler was "no more than a wild beast," according to the newspapers. He boasted about murdering "the old she-devil" Tillie Ziegler and said he would do it again a hundred times. But he had changed, through the combined effects of solitary confinement, enforced sobriety, and the influence of a few visitors. Keeper McNaughton read to Kemmler from the Bible and told him about the saving power of Christ. These efforts were assisted by the warden's wife, "a sort of Florence Nightingale in the prison," in the Herald's view. As was common practice at the time, Gertrude Durston lived with her husband on the prison grounds and worked alongside him. With a dramatic escort of two huge dogs—a Saint Bernard and an English mastiff—she went on daily rounds of the workshops, the mess, and the hospital, distributing religious tracts to the prisoners.5
Mrs. Durston made a special project of William Kemmler, the first condemned man to come within range of her ministry. She gave him gifts—a Bible, a pictorial Bible primer, and a writing slate—and set to work on the twin pillars of American uplift: religion and literacy. She helped him write on his slate and read him Bible stories. In the hours when she was absent, Keeper McNaughton took on the same tasks. After a few months of their quiet ministrations, Kemmler became more gentle and started to take a genuine interest in religion. In his quiet hours he practiced on his slate, or looked at his pictorial Bible, or even tried to read a few verses on his own. His vision of Christ was less a bolt from the blue than the culmination of a year of religious training.
The Herald broke the story of Kemmler's vision of Christ on April 7, and it was quickly picked up by newspapers across the country. Mrs. Durston received dozens of letters from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, even Texas, encouraging her to continue the work of the Lord. The prisoner also began to receive visits every other day from two spiritual advisers: Reverend Horatio Yates, the prison chaplain; and Reverend Dr. Oscar A. Houghton, the pastor of Auburn Methodist Episcopal Church. On each visit the ministers discussed a Bible verse with Kemmler, then offered a prayer. "The Bible says, 'If a man shed blood, by man shall his blood be shed,'" Kemmler told Reverend Houghton. "I love Jesus and I am not afraid."6
Some newspapers doubted the authenticity of Kemmler's conversion. The warden barred reporters from visiting the prisoner, so all reports of his behavior were filtered through the Durstons, the clergy men, or the keepers. Some reporters discovered that his favorite possession was not the pictorial Bible but a game called "Pigs in Clover," which had become a fad that year after it was learned that President Benjamin Harrison played it at the White House. Kemmler sat for hours with the handheld toy, guiding marbles (the pigs) through a circular maze to their resting point at the center (the clover). The Buffalo Evening News learned that Kemmler "chews tobacco . . . and hums the common songs of the day. Does he look over his pictorial Bible? Yes, but he would just as soon look over a pictorial Boccaccio."7
The World took an even harsher stance, decrying "the on-pouring