Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [110]
DURSTON RAPPED TWICE on the door, a prearranged signal. The dynamo had been humming smoothly for several minutes, sending more than 1,000 volts of electricity through the switchboard. At Durston's signal, someone in the switchboard room—his identity was never revealed, but it might have been one of Kemmler's fellow convicts—closed the switch, diverting the current into the electric chair.
Kemmler gave a quick, convulsive start. His mouth twisted into a ghastly grin. Every muscle in his body contracted, straining against the leather straps. His right index finger doubled under with such strength that the nail cut into the palm and blood trickled out onto the arm of the chair.
Dr. Spitzka tiptoed to the chair and stared intently at the face of the bound figure. After seventeen seconds, Spitzka cried, "That will do! Turn off the current. He is dead." Another voice echoed, "Oh, he's dead."
The warden rapped on the door to the switchboard room, and the current to the death chair was cut off. At the switchboard, Edwin Davis pressed a button that rang a bell in the dynamo room, and the dynamos were shut off. Kemmler's muscles relaxed, and he slumped against the straps. The head electrode was removed.
"Observe the lividity about the base of the nose," Dr. Spitzka said. "Note where the mask rests on the nose—the white appearance there." The other doctors gathered round and pressed their fingers against Kemmler's face, noting the play of white and red when the fingers were removed. The hue of Kemmler's skin, Spitzka said, was "unmistakable evidence of death."
Electrical execution had been quick, clean, and painless, just as its advocates had argued. "This is the culmination often years work and study," Southwick proclaimed. "We live in a higher civilization today."
HE SPOKE TOO SOON. A cut on Kemmler's hand was dripping rhythmic pulses of blood. One of the witnesses shouted, "Great God! He is alive!" Another said, "See, he breathes!"
And he did. Kemmler's chest heaved, and from his mouth came a rasping sound, growing quicker and harsher with each suck of breath. A purplish foam from his lips splattered onto the leather mask. Saliva dripped from his mouth and ran in three streams down his beard and onto his gray vest. The chest straps squeaked as he struggled for breath, and he groaned, an animal cry that witnesses found impossible to describe. His whole body shook and shivered.
"Turn on the current! Turn on the current!" Someone shoved the electrode back down against Kemmler's skull. The warden signaled to the switchboard room, and the switchboard room signaled to the dynamo room, where the operators struggled to restart the Westinghouse machine. More than two minutes after the electricity had been cut off, the witnesses heard the thunk of the switch from the next room, and the current flowed.
Once again Kemmler's muscles contracted, his body rising up, rigid as a statue. This time there would be no mistake. The current stayed on for between one and two minutes—in the confusion, no one remembered to keep time.
The sponge of the back electrode dried out and burned away, allowing the bare metal disk to press sizzling against Kemmler's skin. At the head electrode his hair began to singe. The stench of burning hair and flesh filled the room.6
One witness turned aside and vomited. The United Press reporter fainted, and another witness propped him on a bench and fanned him with a newspaper. District Attorney Quinby rushed from the room in horror. Some turned away and hid their faces in their hands; others were so repulsed that they could not avert their eyes from the spectacle.
"Cut off the current," Spitzka shouted, and once again the wires fell dead. The smell of urine and feces mingled with the acrid smoke in the air. Dr. Fell doused a small fire that had started on Kemmler's coat near the back electrode. Another doctor held a bright light to Kemmler's eyes, and the optic nerve showed no response.
This time, Kemmler was dead. Fell made a small incision at the temple and drew off a blood