Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1891 — ELECTROCUTION. [ARTICLE]

ELECTROCUTION.

The Instruments of Death and the Method of Applying Electricity. ; New York Correspondent Ind. Journal. Among the strangers upon the ground to-day was a man whom exWarden Brush pointed out as an Edison expert and said: “That man can tell about the electrical arrangements.” To your correspondent he said this man was Henry Nosterand, and he was an qxpert electrician. He had applied to Warden Brown for permission to witness the execution, but had been denied. His general conversation pointed tor the afterwards acknowledged fact that he was a Westinghouse man. He said that it was not true that the Westinghouse prijple were interested in getting a stay of execution. They had no further interest in the matter. If the executions were bungled it could not be the fault of the instrument or the number of volts. It will be altogether the fault of the contact. He believed that the second or negative electrode should be at the base of the spine, and they thought it was the way it would be placed. The death of the men would be entirely different, as the electricity acted in different ways upon the bodies in different states of health. From what he had read he believed that the Japanese would be the easiest subject. The question of the location of the second electrode is one of the things puzzling the people outside the prison walls. Warden Brown said that he did not know whether it would be applied to the hands, the feet or the spine of the condemned men. In Kemmler’s case the negative electrode was applied at the base of the spine. The death-chair is a substantial as well as comfortable-looking piece of woodworkers’ mechanism, and, with the connections with the dynamo, was designed by Captain Hilbert, the prison machinist, under whose supervision it was built. It is constructed in a very workmanlike manner, and differs very materially from the chair used in the execution of Kemmler at Auburn prison. The chair is located iu a room just south of that occupied by the cells of the condemned men, which is entered by a door opening from the passage which runs in front of their cells. The room is 50 feet long by 28 feet wide, and is perfectly bare, except for the muslin-curtained windows, through which light enters in abundance. THE DEATH CHAMBER. The addition in which the deathchamber is located is the last one built, and is a one-story frame structure. As the visitor enters the room of execution he faces the chair, which is placed at the opposite end. This article of furniture, which is an object of terror to the four men, is very solid! The seat is broad, and the back, on which a heavy head-rest is constructed, has a slight curve. Above the rest, and fastened to the back by a long strip, is a figure “4”, which is intended to rest on the head of the occupant. It is through the wire in this that the current passes. Besides this there are quite a number of straps used to secure the prisoner is position after he has taken his seat in the chair. The chair faces the ■east, and directly behind it is a low cabinet for the use of the man who turns on the current, who is thus out of sight of everybody. Its sides, however, do not reach the ceiling, so the operator can have plenty of ventilation. Directly back of the cabinet and against which the cabinet stands is a door leading directly. to the dynamo, room. On the side of the cabinet is a sliding door, which on being opened reveals the switch board bv which the signals are-given to the operator, who stands in the cabinet and turns on the fatal current. ,

The first object which meets the eye is a card giving directions concerning the turning on and off the current. Underneath the directions is a little electric bell button, which is pressed to give the -signal to the operator. Next to the .placard is the test switch. This switch turns on the current into a dozen or more incandescent lights at the top of the switch-board, and also iffto the am meter and volt meter, which are in the side with the resistance box. All these are arranged to test the strength of the current before it is put in operation on the condemned man. There is another switch by which the current can be directly connected with the wires leading to the chair. The man at the switchboard, however, cannot turn the current through the occupant of the chair, this being entirely the province of the man who stands behind the cabinet and operates the switch located there, which is connected directly with the occupant of the chair Captain Hilbert, the designer of the chair, is proud of its completeness, and especially of the code of signals. The failure of those in the Kemmler case was one of the things that made the electrocution such a horrible affair. The Captain, in speaking of his device, asserts that it is able to kill twenty-five men an hour. He has made an improvement on the arrangement of the electrodes, which differs materially from that of the Kemmler case. In the latter the "urrent was passed directly through the body and heart. The inventor of the Sing Sing chair has a new plan for applying "the electricity, to the wrists or to one wrist and an ankle.