Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1889 — EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY. [ARTICLE]

EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY.

The inal* More Painful than Boiling in Molten Lead, ::^! “The enforcement of the death penalty by means of electric currents would nqt oaljt be" aonnlrfari- MoiaMatu WnsSptioo, Satwo uTcfatsorSe Ous'ln the extreme/’ This is toe de* liberate opinion of Myron Law, superintendent of the electrical department of the Brush Electric company of thl* city, says .the Philadelphia Record. He was talking recently o f the com-ing-electric execution of the murderer Kcinmie at Buffalo. - Mr; Law proceeded to give some interesting facts to demonstrate the truth of the conclusion at which be had. arrived. “Any person, M said he, “who is thoroughly acquainted with an electric current could not possibly have any other idea th in this. It is absurd to claim that execution by electricity is less painful than hanging, that it would be instantaneous in its effects, or that it would do away with any repugnant; features of our public executions.” “In the first place death by electricity is not painless. H anging, throat-cutting, tli3 guillotine, shoot'ng, burning to death in moiton lead or in furnaces are painless executions wheh compared with that by electricity. Let me cite a few instances of the pain felt by those who have received severe electric shocks. Six years ago one of my men named John Smith out an electric wire which he thought to bo ‘dead. ’ This was on Eighth street, between Sansam and Walnut Standing on the ladder, with one hand ho grasped the ruptured wire, whifeh fed forty-eight lamps and had a current of 2,200 volts passing through it With the other hand he held by means of plyers the other end of the wire. Immediately he made the mo9t heartrendering screams for help. His hands were rivitei fast and his whole body was undergoing most terrible contortions. “The electric current of 2,200 volts strength was passing through his body and pinned him to the spot We threw a rope over his hands and jerked him from his perilous position. Both of his hands were burned terribly and his whole system was shattered. When he had sufficiently recovered a few days later to be able to talk intelligently he said that his sufferings were terrible beyond description. ‘•Another man in our employ once received the full force of a current of; several hundred volts. In removing, his hands from the wire one of his fin-J gers dropped off, having been burned: almost to a crisp by the current. During the accident his face showed in a frightful manner intense pain and his body was in a constant tremor., “Of course, electricity can instantaneously kill a person, but in that infinitessimally small space of time of the transition from life to death the person will suffer inconceivable pain.. Although the speed of electricity is ai the rate of 286,000 miles per second the killing can not be so instantaneous as to preclude all pain. Every particle of the nervous tissue is polarized,! and polarization causes each particle} of matter to revolve on it 3 axis; which means the stretching of the nerves out of all proportion and consequently the most intense pain. But Hie great fault with execution by electricity is that it is almost impossible to ascertain just how strong a current will kill a man instantaneously and jo* not be a barbarous mode of killing. If thq current be but a few volts stronger than that required to instantly exe* cute a certain person the consequences would be terrible. It would disfigure the body beyond recognition and would disintegrate every portion of the corpse. “Should the current be just a trifle too weak to execute a person it would threw him into a trance so death-like that it is probable that the body would be buried alive. So in order to reduce this new mode Of execution to a practical scientific working the amount of resistance in each body would have to be previously tested before any approximate idea could be reached as to how strong a current would surely kill without disfiguring or disintegrating the body or throwing the body into a trance. But even if this desideratum is found, there might be some hitch or slight fault in the electrical apparatus which would spoil everything.”