Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [159]
CHAPTER 23. THE AGE OF THE ELECTRIC CHAIR
1. On the Massachusetts law, see Commonwealth v. Storti, 178 Mass. 549 (1901); Hiller B. Zobel, "The Death of Luigi Storti," Massachusetts Legal History 7 (2001): 81-93; New York Tribune, April 15, 1898. On Ohio, see Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Ohio Penitentiary . . . for the Fiscal Year 1896 (Norwalk, Ohio: Laning, 1897), 10, 43-44; Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Ohio Penitentiary . . . for the Fiscal Year 1897 (Norwalk, Ohio: Laning, 1898), 17, 37; New York Tribune, November 27, 1896; New York Herald, November 20, 1897; F. O. Marsh, "Some Medical Aspects of Capital Punishment," Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Society (1898): 416-21. Harold P. Brown, on behalf of Edison, wrote to German officials explaining electrocution: see Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 426.
2. Ronald Kline, "Science and Engineering Theory"; Theodore Bernstein, "Theories of the Causes of Death from Electricity"; Reynolds and Bernstein, "Edison and 'The Chair,'" 26; A. J. Jex-Blake, "Death by Electric Currents and by Lightning," British Medical Journal 1 (1913): 425-30, 492-98, 548-52; Jaffe, "Electropathology," 837-70.
3. Quotation from Edwin J. Houston and A. E. Kennelly, "Death by the Alternating Current," JAMA 25 (August 1895): 283-85. Also see Kennelly and Goelet, "Does Execution by Electricity," 197; Arthur E. Kennelly and E. R. W Alexander-son, "The Physiological Tolerance of Alternating-Current Strengths up to Frequencies of 100,000 Cycles per Second," Electrical World 36 (July 21, 1910): 154-56; Arthur E. Kennelly, "The Danger of Electric Shock from the Electrical Engineering Standpoint," Physical Therapeutics 45 (1927): 16-23.
4. Quotation from Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 7, 1895. Also see Buffalo Times, August 8, 1895 (TAEM 146:970). As late as 1938 Popular Science Monthly reported that research at Harvard Medical School indicated that the electric chair's victim "may only be shocked into a semblance of death and that the final spark of life is extinguished unwittingly in the autopsy room." Robert E. Martin, "Electric Shocks . . . Do They Really Kill?" Popular Science Monthly 133 (July 1938): 44-45,101. Also see Louise G. Robinovitch, "Electrocution: An Experimental Study with an Electric Current of Low Tension," Journal of Mental Pathology 7 (1905): 75-85; Banner, Death Penalty, 191-92.
5. Quotation from Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed. (1910), s.v. "electrocution." Also see Newark Evening News, Trenton Evening Times, December 11, 1907. For an abstract of a Spitzka article, see James W. Garner, "Infliction of the Death Penalty by Electricity," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1 (1910): 626. For other medical journal response, see A. D. Rockwell, "Discussion of Electrical Execution," JAMA 19 (September 24, 1892): 363-65; George E. Fell, "Electrodes, and Their Application in Electrocution," JAMA 19 (September 24, 1892): 365-67; Edmund W. Holmes, "Anatomy of a Hanging," Pennsylvania Medical Journal 4 (1901): 737-45; S. R. Klein, "Capital Punishment in the Electric Chair," New York Medical Journal 99 (May 30, 1914): 1089-90; A. H. Werner, "Death by Electricity," New York Medical Journal 118 (October 1923): 498-500. For criticism of the electric chair, see "Failure of Electrocution," Medical Record 65 (June 25, 1904): 1050; Frederic Rowland Marvin, "Execution by Electricity," Medical Record 66 (July 23, 1904): 145-46; S. R. Klein, "Capital Punishment in the Electric Chair," New York Medical Journal 99 (May 30, 1914): 1089-90.
6. Execution of Czolgosz, with Panorama of Auburn Prison (Thomas A. Edison, 1901). The film was first advertised in the New York Clipper, November 16, 1901, p. 832. For a brief discussion of the film, see Charles Musser, Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic