Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [162]
21. Quotation from Trombley, Execution Protocol, 277. Also see Denno, "Is Electrocution an Unconstitutional Method of Execution?"
22. Quotations from New York Times, March 7, 2001. The "offending standards of decency" phrase is drawn from a 1958 Supreme Court decision, Trop v. Dulles, that had become central to arguments concerning the Eighth Amendment. See Banner, Death Penalty, 237.
23. Statistics courtesy Death Penalty Information Center, personal correspondence with author, May 15, 2002; Carol Robinson, "Block First Woman Executed Since '37," Birmingham News, May 10, 2002; Maria Glod, "Family's Killer Dies in Va. Electric Chair," Washington Post, April 10, 2003, p. Bi.
EPILOGUE. THE NEW SPECTACLE OF DEATH
1. The anecdote is recounted in Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison, 3.
2. See "Chronology of Thomas Edison's Life," Thomas A. Edison Papers Web site, http://edison.rutgers.edu/chron2.htm, August 4, 2002; Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison, 21-22; Baldwin, Edison, 370.
3. James S. Evans, "Edison Regrets Electric Chair Was Ever Invented," New York American, February 10, 1905 (TAEM 221:289). In 1909 Edison again endorsed electrical execution in a private letter written by his secretary: "Mr. Edison directs me to write you that his belief, based on experiments with animals in this Laboratory is that a person electrocuted is mentally dead in less than 1/1000 of a second, and physically dead in two seconds; any motions made after that time is reflect [sic] action." Harry Frederick Miller to William H. Roberts, May 29, 1909 (TAEM 198:108). The official biography is Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, Edison: His Life and Inventions, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910).
4. See Reynolds and Bernstein, "Edison and 'The Chair.'"
5. New York World, December 21,1889. As late as 1907, Edison was still throwing his support behind efforts to limit high-voltage transmission within cities. See "Edison Condemns High Voltages," Newark Advertiser, December 26,1907, clippings file, ENHS.
6. Quotation from Electrician 24 (November 15, 1889): 41. Also see New York World, December 17,1889.
7. Quotation from New York World, October 20,1889.
8. On low-voltage deaths, see A. E. Pain, "A Case of Death from the Electric Current While Handling the Telephone and an Electric Light Fixture," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 155 (1906): 741; F. E. Jones, "A Case of Death from the Electric Current as a Result of Turning on an Electric Light," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (1909): 239; C. Van Zwaluwenburg, "A Case of Accidental Electrocution from Ordinary One Hundred Volt Alternating Lighting Current,"JAMA 41 (1903): 967. Most accidental deaths occurred in industry. See "Fatal Accidents from Electric Shock in Recent Years in the United States and Canada, in England and Wales, and in Canada: A Report by the Engineering Committee of the Conference on Electric Shock," Journal of Industrial Hygiene 10 (1928): 111-16; Mark Aldrich, Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 84. Also see Carlson and Millard, "Defining Risk Within a Business Context."
9. Suspicions of Westinghouse interference persisted even after Kemmler's death. When Shibuya Jugiro filed an appeal claiming that electrocution was cruel, the Herald complained, "It is within the power of the Westinghouse or any other electric light concern to baffle the law of capital punishment." When a state senator moved to abolish electrocution in 1892, the move was dismissed as a ploy by "the interested electric machinery companies." New York Herald, January 9, 1891; March 17,1892.
10. Quotation from New York World, June 22,1888.
11. Quotation from Bill Sloat, "Ohio's