Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [127]
Edison had worried that if accidents led to deaths, people would decide to stick with cheaper sources of illumination such as gas and kerosene lamps. His greatest mistake was an uncharacteristic lack of faith in his own inventions. He failed to understand that electricity could kill people and still retain the public's enthusiasm.
Because of the Edison conspiracy against Westinghouse's alternating current, two distinct issues—whether the current was safe enough to use for lighting purposes, and whether it could kill criminals painlessly—became hopelessly confused, and neither received the attention it deserved. George Westinghouse was forced both to defend the safety record of his current and to attack its use for electrocution. With a stubbornness that matched Edison's, Westinghouse continued to insist that alternating current was harmless long after the claim lost plausibility. The many deaths from electrical accidents convinced the public, as well as the courts considering William Kemmler's appeal, that alternating current was lethal and that Westinghouse was less than honest. This loss of credibility damaged efforts to fight the electrocution law. The Kemmler hearings—the only serious inquiry into the legitimacy of electrocution ever undertaken—revealed that execution equipment was liable to failure and that medical knowledge of electrical death was woefully inadequate. But most of those speaking out against the new method were Westinghouse men. The opposition to electrocution never got a fair hearing, because any objections could be dismissed out of hand as the cynical machinations of George Westinghouse. Few appeared troubled that Thomas Edison's motives for defending electrocution were equally suspect.9
BY DESTROYING TH E GALLOWS, the builders of the electric chair hoped to take the spectacle out of executions. They promised a death that would be private, simple, and painless, leaving no mark on the corpse. As Edison told reporters in 1888, "Touch a button, close the circuit, it is over." The execution protocol that finally emerged was very different, requiring a hooded victim, elaborate machinery, an unseen and mysterious force, an attending priesthood of engineers speaking an arcane language, and a burnt offering. Deftly linking high technology and ancient sacrifice, the electric chair created a thoroughly modern spectacle of death.10
The public responded with enthusiasm. Prison wardens received thousands of letters from people who wanted to witness an electrocution. Almost all were turned down, but they found other ways to satisfy their curiosity. A New York dime museum featured a waxworks diorama titled "Execution of Criminals by Electricity" alongside such displays as "Beheading in Morocco," and an electric chair was among the many electrical wonders on display at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago. In the twentieth century electric chair acts became a staple of carnival sideshows; one performance featured a girl, said to be "immune" to electricity, taking shocks of 20,000 volts. Edison's Execution of Czolgosz and Electrocuting an Elephant were only the first of dozens of films to feature the new method of execution, ranging from the Clark Gable classic Manhattan Melodrama to John Waters's Female Trouble. Andy Warhol, a connoisseur of American icons, produced a series of prints titled Electric Chair in the 1960s and 1970s. Decommissioned electric chairs are now displayed at museums and draw large crowds. "It's one of the most popular things we've got," said an employee of a New Jersey museum. "Everyone who sees it goes 'Wow! The electric chair!'"11
Hamilton's drugstore in Auburn, New York, sold this postcard in the early twentieth century.
AT THE TIME the electric chair was invented,