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By Root 1087 0

Brown once again charged that Westinghouse was endangering the public for the sake of higher profits. "So many lives have been sacrificed by criminal economy in electric lighting that legislative control of the subject is imperatively demanded," he wrote. The pamphlet reprinted many of the relevant documents, including newspaper articles and letters, reports of accidents in various cities, detailed descriptions of the Edison lab experiments, and the Medico-Legal Society report. The pamphlet was professionally printed and mailed to the press and government officials across the country.20

WHILE BROWN and Westinghouse wrangled publicly, the electrical execution law quietly took effect on January 1,1889. Austin Lathrop, the superintendent of the New York State prison system, appointed a commission to finalize the technical plans. Dr. Carlos F. MacDonald, the chairman of the state's Lunacy Commission and a professor at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, headed the panel, and he was joined by a fellow physician, A. D. Rockwell, the coauthor with George Beard of the standard text on electrical medicine and a cofounder of the American Neurological Association. Late in February Lathrop and MacDonald met with Harold Brown in New York and told him they wanted to conduct further experiments. Once again Thomas Edison offered the use of his laboratory.21

On the afternoon of March 12, Brown, MacDonald, two surgeons, and a professor from the University of Pennsylvania convened in Orange. As in the earlier experiments, Kennelly handled the electrical apparatus and kept careful records in a lab notebook. By the end of the day, four dogs, four calves, and a horse had died. Since the new state commission had accepted the Medico-Legal Society's recommendation of alternating current, no direct current was used. The main purpose of the experiments was to determine the proper placement of electrodes on the bodies of the victims. Kennelly and MacDonald tried different arrangements: foreleg to hind leg, head to hind leg, back of the neck to hind leg, back of the neck to heart. The easiest deaths were suffered by those animals with one electrode on the head and another on a hind leg.22

These experiments "solved any doubts . . . regarding the certainty of quick death by the alternating current," Scientific American wrote. "As for the bodies of the slain, they so completely escaped disfigurement that the veal was perfectly suitable for human food, and it was returned to the butcher who had brought the calves to the laboratory"23

NOT LONG AFTER these tests, the state prison superintendent awarded Harold Brown the contract to acquire dynamos and other equipment for Auburn, Sing Sing, and Clinton, the three prisons where executions would take place.24

The state appropriated $10,000 for the necessary equipment, including three alternating dynamos. Brown had a choice of manufacturers, including Westinghouse, Thomson-Houston, and several European firms. He also could have contracted to have a generator built specifically for the purpose. But Brown insisted on Westinghouse machines, and he was unapologetic about his choice. He explained his reasons in the preface to the third edition of his Comparative Danger booklet, published sometime between March and July "The danger of the alternating current was admitted by all the prominent companies excepting the Westinghouse, which still protested that it was 'safe.' On this account," Brown explained, "its apparatus was purchased for the infliction of death upon condemned criminals." He explained further in a letter to the Evening Post: "I determined to educate the public by buying for electrical execution the same apparatus that killed . . . many [people] who made accidental contacts with 'safe' Westinghouse circuits."25

For a state expert, it was a startling admission: Brown acknowledged that he would use his official position to punish Westinghouse for his alleged intransigence on the safety issue and to bring alternating current into disrepute.

Although Edison Electric still denied that Brown was making