Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [115]
The preparations complete, the anxious prisoner shouted "Let her go!" MacDonald obliged by signaling to the switchboard. After about fifty seconds at 1,600 volts, MacDonald cut off the current, but McElvaine began to sputter and moan. "Turn it on!" MacDonald yelled. "The other way" The electrician threw a switch that sent the current into the leg and head electrodes. This time the current flowed for forty-three seconds. McElvaine was dead, his corpse a frightful sight, covered in burns and blisters.23
The criticism was directed at the new electrode arrangement. "Mr. Edison was entirely mistaken in recommending that the current be applied through the hands," the Times wrote.24
Electrocutions continued with the old electrode arrangement. In May 1892 authorities executed a man at Auburn prison—the first to die there since Kemmler—and reports indicated that this one went more smoothly. There were ten electrocutions in 1893, two in 1894, six in 1895, five in 1896, eight in 1897. By the turn of the century, more than fifty men had died in the chair. The killings started to become routine, rating only short articles in the daily newspapers.25
Not all of the later executions went smoothly. During his 1893 execution in Auburn, William Taylor's legs contracted so strongly that the front leg of the chair was torn free, sending him pitching forward.* Officials tried to turn the current on again but discovered that the dynamo had burned out. Taylor revived and began to groan, so the physicians gave him morphine and chloroform to ease his suffering while carpenters repaired the chair and electricians tapped into the city's electrical supply for more current. An hour later, Taylor's unconscious body was carried back to the chair for a second jolt. Some witnesses claimed that the drugs had killed him before the second shock was administered.26
An illustration from the New York Medical Journal showing the flow of electricity through the human body in both the head-to-calf and hand-to-hand electrode arrangements.
Taylor's case was extreme, but botched electrocutions were not infrequent. As a result, there were few outright enthusiasts of electrocution, but alternatives were few. Many physicians proposed different methods of scientific killing, usually involving poison—an injection of morphine, chloroform, a sealed chamber filled with carbon monoxide or illuminating gas—but no one carried through on these ideas. A New York State assemblyman suggested a return to hanging, but his bill went nowhere, probably because bungled hangings remained common in states that retained the gallows. The Herald expressed the general mood of resignation: "Electricity seems, on the whole, to answer the purpose better than anything else." The Journal of the American Medical Association observed, "All public clamor against the method may be said to have been effectively stilled, for the present at least. Now it remains to be seen if other States will adopt the measure."27
*By the time of Taylor's execution, the original chair had been replaced by one with only three legs—two in back, one in front.
CHAPTER 22
The End of the
Battle of the Currents
IN THE WEEKS before and after Kemmler's execution, Thomas Edison and Arthur Kennelly were busily engaged in new experiments on alternating current. They were spurred to action by an angry letter from Samuel Insull, the vice president of Edison General Electric. At a meeting of Edison utility companies in the summer of 1889, managers from many cities had complained that they were being crushed by competition from Westinghouse. Insull had promised the local companies that within six months Edison General would have its own alternating system available. Because of Thomas Edison's intransigence, that promise was not kept. As another meeting of the local Edison companies approached in the summer of 1890, Insull reminded Edison of the earlier promise. "A year has now expired since that meeting