Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair

Dates Covered: 1880 - 1930
ISBN: 0375410597
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Our Take

Executioner's Current launches its tale of nineteenth century capitalism and sociology with the first public execution by electricity in 1890. The audience assembled had been assured the death would be certain and swift, as the day before a "gaunt, worn out horse" had been electrocuted by the same method. Seventeen seconds of current later, the convicted murderer William Kemmler was pronounced dead. Local dentist Dr. Southwick, enamored of the newer, more humane method of execution, proclaimed that "we live in a higher civilization from this day." Other witnesses were less sure when Kemmler began to twitch, bleed, drool and finally breathe again. Horrified executioners jammed the electricity on again, and waited for so long the body caught fire. Women fainted, men vomited, and the first man to be condemned to death by electricity had finally passed on.
Author Richard Moran has an eye for detail and narrative, and uses the electric chair to forge a unique picture of an America on the brink of modernity. From the commercial rivalry between Edison and Westinghouse which used execution as a most unusual and grisly form of propaganda, to the novel idea that science could be applied to human relations, this book at once brings us to the questions of the everyday man at the turn of the century, and poses timeless questions about the morality and methodology of killing our fellow men.

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