Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [85]
Most of the letters reproduced in the Sun related to Brown's negotiations with Thomson-Houston for acquisition of the dynamos. After Brown received the $5,000 he requested from Edison Electric, that company mostly disappeared from the correspondence. Thomas Edison and Arthur Kennelly reappeared in the Sun letters on the eve of the Kemmler hearings to give Brown unsolicited advice about his testimony. "At Mr. Edison's instance, I beg to bring the following consideration before your notice," Kennelly wrote to Brown. He said that the only possible argument against electrocution was that it "may burn the flesh of the criminal." Kennelly and Edison proposed that Brown experiment by sending high-voltage current through a dead body. If the test did not produce "any external injury," Kennelly wrote, it would "effectually silence the mutilation argument." (Apparently, this test was never conducted.)10
BROWN REPORTED the theft of his letters to the police in early September, after they were printed in the Sun, and he offered a $1,000 reward for the return of the originals. The letters were stolen more than a month before they appeared in the Sun, explaining why the last letter in the batch was dated July 18. Franklin Pope, a Westinghouse employee and the editor of the Electrical Engineer, printed information derived from the letters long before they appeared in the Sun. The theft from Brown's desk was a clear case of industrial espionage, carried out by someone who almost certainly was working for George Westinghouse.11
Some of the Sun letters had been faked, Brown claimed, but the only letter he specifically labeled a forgery—the one from Kennelly—is indisputably authentic; the original copy of it can be found in the archives of the Edison laboratory. Original copies of at least two other letters that appeared in the Sun can he found in the same archives.12
The reality of the plot described in the Sun letters is also supported by an internal document from the Thomson-Houston Company. In May, as Thomson-Houston was locating the Westinghouse dynamos for Harold Brown, Elihu Thomson, the firm's cofounder and chief inventor, wrote a letter to Charles Coffin objecting to the alliance with Brown. "Whether the matter ever becomes publicly known or not, although I think it must, I dislike to see steps taken to confer a reputation on Westinghouse apparatus which our own similar apparatus must share," Thomson wrote. Coffin ignored the advice.13
THE SUN ATTACKED Brown for his "crookedness" and said he could not "be trusted as an expert for the State." According to the Electrical World, the letters proved Brown had "been 'on the make' throughout." The Electrician denounced the "conspiracy against the Westinghouse company" and predicted that the revelation of Brown's letters would provoke "public disgust leading to the repeal of the law."14
Although the press heaped scorn on Brown, it had little to say about the roles of the Edison and Thomson-Houston companies. Typical was the response of the Electrical World, which described Brown as "a man who, by playing off one company against another in various ways and by different subterfuges, has succeeded in making a neat little sum of money for himself." Brown was presented as the mastermind, the electric companies his dupes. This interpretation ignored the evidence of the letters themselves, which showed that both Edison and Thomson Houston eagerly provided Brown with money, expert advice, references, and equipment to further his schemes.15
Following the publication of the letters, Brown betrayed little concern, explaining, "I am opposing the Westinghouse system as any right-spirited man would expose . . . the grocer who sells poison where he pretends to sell sugar." He even tried to use the letters as a defense against the charge that he was working for Edison. "My fight is against the Westinghouse company, but not in favor of the Edison Company If anything, the letters published show leaning toward the Thomson-Houston system, a rival of the Edison system."16