• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1015 0

officials believed that they were losing ground to Westinghouse because their company was poorly organized. At the start of 1889 the Edison electrical business was still fragmented into several distinct firms, including Edison Electric Light Company (the patent-holding company) and the manufacturing enterprises (the Tube Company, Lamp Company, Machine Works, and Bergmann & Company). In April these firms were merged to form a new company called Edison General Electric, with Henry Villard as president and Samuel Insull—who earlier had served as Edison's secretary and as manager of the Machine Works—as vice president. (Edward Johnson resigned the presidency of Edison Electric and became the president of the electric railway division of the new company.) Edison General, it was thought, would operate more efficiently and command enough capital to push rapid expansion of the Edison system. A few dissenters within the company suspected that the consolidation failed to correct the company's basic problem: the lack of an alternating system to compete with Westinghouse's. 15

JUST AFTER the Buffalo jury convicted William Kemmler in May 1889, Harold Brown provided the first public description of the execution apparatus to the New York Star: "There will be a strong oaken chair, of the reclining make, in which the condemned will sit, and electrodes for the head and feet. The former of these electrodes consists of a metal cap, with an inner plate covered with a sponge that has been saturated with salt water, which is to be fastened on the condemned man's head by means of stout straps held by another strap around the body under the armpits. The other electrode is simply a pair of electrical shoes tightly laced on the convict's feet." A few weeks later illustrations of the chair appeared in the New York Daily Graphic and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. 16

Brown apparently believed that revealing these details would help his cause, but they had the opposite effect. The New York Evening Post explained that it originally had backed the law in the belief that "the victim would die with the touch of a wire or a knob." As the Post saw it, the myth of the simple and tidy execution was exploded by these new descriptions of the apparatus, in which the prisoner would "be seated in a formidable-looking chair, have his feet encased in shoes which contain damp sponges, have another sponge placed on his head, and his head clamped down with metallic bands." The first exe-cution "will doubtless be very interesting to the scientists," the Post claimed, but its humanity was in doubt.17

Harold Brown released this illustration of his proposed electric chair in May 1889, not long after winning the state contract to supply execution apparatus.

Electricians and doctors—those who knew most about the balkiness of machines and the resilience of the human body—had first expressed reservations about the law the previous summer, and their doubts had only grown. "The question is really and solely one of aesthetics," the Medical Record wrote. Although electricity might kill quickly, it was not "humane, or civilized, or even scientific, to strap a condemned prisoner to a chair and throw him into a convulsion, or possibly burn the top of his head off." Although the popular press at first had praised the new law as a great leap forward for civilization, many editorial writers got cold feet as the date of the first execution approached. The Buffalo Express, Philadelphia Bulletin, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Albany Argus, New York World, and New York Herald formed a chorus of opposition to the new law. A World story noted Harold Brown's links to the Edison laboratory under the headline "Thomas A. Edison Said to Be Behind the Plan to Use the Alternating Current in the Death Penalty in Order to Bring it into Disrepute." The Tribune, which originally had supported the law, now predicted that the first execution would be "distressingly bungled." The Sun went a step farther: "The only thing to do is to repeal the law." Because many suspected that the law would be declared