Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [104]
The World understood that the story being told about Kemmler's conversion was standard melodrama, familiar from the countless tearjerkers of the Victorian stage. But the very conventionality of the tale was what made it compelling. One of the goals of the new method of killing was to rob execution of ritual, to turn it into a medical procedure and destroy the old hanging ceremony of procession, prayers, confession, and drop. Kemmler may have been locked away in a basement cell and denied contact with the public, but the execution ritual reasserted itself through the medium of the newspaper. Kemmler played a role not unlike that of Jesse Strang, the man hanged before a crowd of 30,000 in Albany in 1827. Both prisoners expressed sorrow for their sins, submitted to the will of God and the state, and accepted meekly the punishment meted out. Regardless of whether it was true, the story of Kemmler's conversion reassured Americans that their system of punishment was fair and good. They were killing someone, certainly but they were also protecting society and saving a soul.
KEMMLER'S EXECUTION had been set for the week beginning April 28, with the warden deciding the exact day Kemmler spent a great deal of time that week scribbling on cards for the benefit of those who wanted his signature for their autograph collections. Each day he wrote "William Kemmler, Auburn, N.Y., April 1890" on dozens of plain white cards. It was a laborious process, given his still-shaky writing skills. Sometimes he confused April with Auburn and wrote "Aprilburn" or "Aubril," which forced him to tear up the card and start again. Keeper McNaughton read him stories about his case from the New York newspapers, and Kemmler complained that the newspapers' illustrations did not look a bit like him. The window of Kemmler's cell afforded him a view of the comings and goings at the prison's front gates. On more than one occasion he was heard to say, "By God, there's another reporter."9
None of the reporters indicated that Kemmler was anything but calm in the face of death. According to some reports, Gertrude Durston told Kemmler to "go to the chair like a man," and the prisoner said that he would. He gave Mrs. Durston a message for her husband: "Tell Charley not to put on the current so strong that it will burn me." Later the prisoner offered reassurances to the warden: "You have been kind to me and I shall try to make your work easy"10
The law allowed Warden Durston to invite about two dozen witnesses. He kept his list a secret, but on April 28 the men began to appear in Auburn. Alfred Southwick and George Quinby, the district attorney who had convicted Kemmler, arrived from Buffalo and proceeded to the prison. As the warden walked them toward the death chamber, he said, "Hush! Talk low!" He nodded at a wall: "Kemmler is in that room." The men heard the steady tramp of a man's boots. "That is Kemmler marching up and down in the corridor in front of his cell," the warden explained.11
Durston had placed the electric chair in a room immediately adjacent to Kemmler's cell. Formerly the reception room where new prisoners were bathed and issued their stripes, the death chamber still contained a bathtub and a sink. The room measured about seventeen by twenty-five feet and was dimly lit by two heavily grated windows. The ceiling was low, the floor boards rough, the walls freshly painted in a dull white. Whereas Brown's electric chair had been a reclining model, the one Dr. Fell designed was a simple oak chair with a ladder back, wide arms, and a footrest that could be extended or stowed under the seat. Newspapers reported that it looked like "an ordinary barber's chair." "There is nothing uncomfortable about the chair save the deadly current which goes with it," the Herald observed.12
The deadly current would be applied through