Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [35]
The debate over capital punishment also took place on utilitarian grounds. Supporters believed executions deterred others from committing murder, and that outlawing the gallows would "unkennel the bloodhounds of disorder... and perhaps overturn the very foundations of political existence." Death penalty abolitionists considered this argument ludicrous. "Imagine a man who would like to kill another, sitting down and balancing the relative gravity of hanging or imprisonment," one lawyer wrote, "and ending it all by giving up the formation of the purpose because of capital punishment, or nursing and maturing it because of imprisonment for life!" On the other hand, many of those sentenced to life in prison managed to avoid serving the full sentence. Although successful appeals of capital sentences were rare in the nineteenth century, executive pardons were not uncommon, especially for well-heeled convicts or those who had gained the public's sympathy. "In point of fact imprisonment for life would mean confinement for a few years and then liberty to commit another crime," the New York Herald wrote. "Political influence and bribery would be brought to bear and the prisoner would simply laugh at his sentence as meaning next to nothing."17
Nearly every northern state saw legislative action to repeal the death penalty, and some efforts succeeded. In the wake of a hanging day riot in 1837, Maine passed a law that effectively (although not explicitly) ended the death penalty. In 1846 Michigan's government became the first English-speaking legislative body anywhere in the world to abolish capital punishment officially, and Rhode Island and Wisconsin followed within a decade. These successes, though, were unusual. More typical was the case of New Hampshire. When the state held a referendum on the issue in 1844, the vote ran two to one in favor of the death penalty.18
DESPITE THE LAWS that privatized hangings in the 1830s and 1840s, executions still drew a large audience, through the medium of the newspaper. The press expanded coverage of executions after the privatization laws went into effect, allowing people to satisfy in print an appetite forbidden in person. For the authorities, this seemed to be a perfect situation. The hanging rituals could assert their deterrent effect, but now the audience was dispersed—at home, on the streetcar, in the park. People could absorb the lessons of the spectacle without participating in it or disrupting it in any way.
In some counties, however, sheriffs flouted the privatization law by appointing hundreds of friends and constituents as "special deputies" with viewing privileges. Admission tickets distributed by sheriffs quickly found their way onto the black market, and those without tickets often climbed hills overlooking the prison yard. At the Tombs prison New Yorkers clung to chimneys and railings of nearby buildings to get a view of the sufferings of the condemned.19
Technically, there should not have been any suffering, because hanging methods had been changed over the years in an attempt to make executions more humane. The earliest gallows were two posts with a crossbar—the victim either walked up a ladder, which was then removed, or stood upon a cart, which was driven away. In either case, the prisoner fell just a few inches and died of strangulation. By 1800 the trapdoor gallows was common, and a few decades later some states adopted a new design: Rather than dropping the prisoner through a trap, these gallows used a suspended weight that, when