Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [145]
5. Brooklyn Citizen, November 4,1888 (TAEM 25:580).
6. Quotations from Kennelly Notebook #2, p. 113, December 18, 1889 (TAEM 104:552); Brooklyn Citizen, November 4, 1888 (TAEM 25:580). On the relative velocities of nerve sensation and electricity, see Park Benjamin, "The Infliction of the Death Penalty," Forum 3 (July 1887): 509-10; New York Herald, April 25,1890; Kemmler Hearings, 243-46; A. D. Rockwell, Rambling Recollections: An Autobiography (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1920), 232. On research into the velocity of the nerve impulse, see Rowbottom and Susskind, Electricity and Medicine, 98-99.
7. Quotations from Commission Report, 77. Fell's experiment helped persuade Elbridge Gerry to support electrical execution: New York Herald, January 27, 1888. Footnote quotation from Thomas D. Lockwood, "Electrical Killing," Electrical Engineer 7 (March 1888): 89-90.
8. Quotations from Kemmler Hearings, 366; Medical Record 37 (May 17,1890). Also see Commission Report, 75. On the Medico-Legal Society, see James C. Mohr, Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 219-24; Blustein, Preserve Your Love for Science, 112. For physician contributions to the search for a new killing method, see J. H. Packard, "The Mode of Inflicting the Death Penalty," Sanitarian 6 (1878): 360-63 (reprinted in Bulletin of the Medico-Legal Society of New-York 1 [1878-9]: 135-40); "Of the Death Penalty," Bulletin of the Medico-Legal Society of New-York 1 (1878-9): 141-56; G. M. Hammond, "On the Proper Method of Executing the Sentence of Death by Hanging," Sanitarian 10 (1882): 664-68; Alonzo Calkins, "Felonious Homicide: Its Penalty, and the Execution Thereof Judicially," in Papers Read Before the Medico-Legal Society of New York, 2nd series, rev. ed. (New York: W F. Vanden Houten, 1882), 254-76; "The Method of Inflicting Capital Punishment," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal no (May 29, 1884): 508; Frederick Henry Gerrish, "The Hypodermic Administration of Morphine as a Substitute for Hanging in the Execution of Criminals," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 113 (September 17, 1885): 270-71; W Lindley, "The Methods of Capital Punishment," Southern California Practitioner 1 (1886): 73-81; J. Mount Bleyer, "Scientific Methods of Capital Punishment," Hum-boldt Library of Popular Science 9 (1887): 1-16. The American Medical Association now forbids physician participation in executions. See "Physician Participation in Capital Punishment," JAMA 270 (July 21,1993): 365-68.
9. Quotation from "A Report on Execution by Electricity," Electrical World 12 (November 24, 1888): 273-76. Also see New York World, November 15, 1888 (TAEM 146:356); "Execution by Electricity," Medical Record 34 (November 17, 24,1888): 597, 623; New York Times, March 9, 15, 1888; Clark Bell, "Electricity and the Death Penalty," Journal of the American Medical Association 12 (March 9,1889): 32 (reprinted in Medico-Legal Journal 7 [1889-90]: 201-9).
10. Quotation from Arthur Kennelly to Frank Hastings, December 3, 1888 (TAEM 109:207).
11. The account of this experiment, including quotations, in this and the next two paragraphs is drawn from Kennelly Notebook #1, pp. 47-50, December 5, 1888 (misdated December 4 by Kennelly) (TAEM 104:302); Harold P. Brown, "Death-Current Experiments at the Edison Laboratory," Electrical World 12 (December 15,1888). Also see Scientific American 39 (December 22,1888): 393; New York Times, December 6, 1888; Medical Record 34 (December 8,1888): 678.
12. S. Eaton to Edison, December 12, 1888 (ENHS: D-88-22-4; emphasis in original; my thanks to Matt Abramovitz for bringing this letter to my attention); New York Tribune, February 4,1889; New York World, December 10,14,18,1888. A Jer-sey City man offered his sick spaniel to Edison in the hope that the dog might