Paul took a chair a few rows behind Brown, at the back of the audience. This was not a performance at which one wanted orchestra seats.
It was near six-thirty when a pair of prison guards led the condemned man into the sunny basement. Paul realized that he’d never even seen Kemmler before. He didn’t look like an axe murderer. Or not like what Paul might imagine an axe murderer to be. He was small, with a close-cropped beard and narrow eyes. He looked thin, as if the prison food had not been to his liking. His hair was dark, and his three-piece suit was a perfect summer gray.
The chair itself was quite simple. Just a tall-backed oak chair, of a dark and average color. The seat was lined with leather. Leather too were the straps across the arms.
“Gentlemen,” said Kemmler to the assembled, “I wish you all good luck. I know where I am headed, and I know that it is a good place. I can only hope the same will be true of you.”
Kemmler removed his jacket. He folded it gingerly and placed it on an unused chair.
He took the chair at the center of the room. “Now, there’s no rush. So take your time, and make sure you do the job right.”
The two guards placed electrodes on Kemmler’s back. To do so, they had to cut holes in his white shirt. He sighed as they did. The electrodes were attached to long wires that swept up toward the ceiling and ran into the wall.
The A/C generator required to power the electric chair was big, and it was loud, and so a decision had been made to keep it in a distant room. When it was time to turn the crank, the warden was to use a bell to send a signal to the men operating the generator.
The guards used the leather straps to bind Kemmler’s body. First his legs, then his stomach, then his forearms and biceps. A headpiece was fit atop his skull. It was of the same matching leather, except for a wet sponge that fit into Kemmler’s mouth. After the sponge held down his tongue, the headpiece would hold his jaw tight. He wouldn’t be able to scream.
“All right, then,” said the warden as he stepped back. Paul looked to Brown, who had the face of a child on Christmas morning and was tapping his shoes on the wooden floor.
Paul already felt ill. His stomach was churning even before the horror began.
But he would not shut his eyes. He was going to take in every detail. If he could accumulate enough precious and terrible facts, just maybe they would get him through.
Without any more preamble, the warden rang the bell. The ding was sharp and clear. The warden repeated it a few times so that there could be no ambiguity. It was time for Kemmler to die.
Suddenly the prisoner’s body shivered. The switch had clearly been thrown in the adjacent room, and one thousand volts of A/C raced through him. His muscles tightened. His hands fluttered in the air, trying to escape his bonds. As Westinghouse had shown Paul in the lab, the A/C did not make the body inert. Kemmler’s muscles were not permanently clenched. He would have been able to get up if only the leather straps were not holding him tight.
Westinghouse’s A/C system would have been perfectly safe had not Brown and Coffin conspired to make a version of it specifically designed to kill.
Paul saw Kemmler’s right-hand index finger curl up into itself. His nails convulsed against his palm so violently that he drew blood from his own hand.
And that was it. The current ran through Kemmler for seventeen seconds before the warden again rang the bell, and the men in the generator room turned off their machine. All of the assembled took a breath. It was done.
Paul looked to Brown, who seemed ready to applaud.
Paul stood. Some summer air would be helpful. But just as he got to his feet, he heard a strange noise. It was faint. It was coming from the direction of the electric chair. Everyone else seemed to hear it too. All heads turned to look. The noise was coming from William Kemmler.
Blood continued to drip from his hands. His head rocked side to side. His chest moved up and down, the air seeping back into his lungs. He was mumbling. Trying to say something through the charred sponge.
“Oh dear God,” someone said. Horror spread across each man’s face as he realized that Kemmler was still alive. Paul saw a white froth coming out of the man’s mouth. He was trying to breathe. What unimaginable state must his inner organs be in?
The warden quickly took control of the situation. He bade the men to again be seated, and rang his bell furiously. They would try again.
The current again zapped through Kemmler. But this second attempt proved no more successful than the first. The prisoner heaved against his restraints, every muscle in his body tensing and releasing and tensing again. The sponge in his mouth began to fry, like blackening chicken in an iron pan. Paul saw the faintest whiff of smoke rise from his hair to the ceiling. William Kemmler was burning alive.
But he still didn’t die. Not this second time, to the embarrassment of the warden and to the great horror of the witnesses. Nor did he die on the third try either.
By the fourth attempt, the protests from the guests had grown forceful. “My God, man,” said one of the physicians. “You must make this stop. This is torture.” It was impossible to disagree. Even the reporters had joined in, pleading with the warden to end this barbarism. But this was the law. The warden’s duty was to follow its letter. He had instructions from the office of the governor himself. He intended to carry them out.
Harold Brown got up and approached the warden. They shared a brief whispered conversation. It seemed as if Brown was offering to consult. He was ever eager to play the role of inventor. But the warden shook his head and quickly sent Brown back to his seat. This was an affair of the state.
The current again entered Kemmler’s body. The prisoner raged against the leather straps with such force that his skin began ripping off. His mouth and eyes grew black from char. Blood no longer dripped from his hand, but rather poured in a bright gush. Dark smoke rose from his head.
And then, quite suddenly, blue fire shot from Kemmler’s mouth. Paul watched as the same blue hellfire he’d seen above that street in Manhattan incinerated Kemmler’s skull, lit his hair on fire, and then washed across his body. It stripped the skin from his bones.
The guests jumped to their feet as the blood flew across the basement. Paul was among the men sprinting for the door.
In the prison yard, the first thing Paul did was vomit. Without food in his stomach, what came up was just a bitter clot of bile. He knelt in the dirt, spitting the taste from his lips.
Paul looked up at his fellow witnesses. He wasn’t the only one being sick. The physicians, more accustomed to gore, had lit cigarettes. They were talking animatedly, trying to figure out what they had just witnessed. They’d never seen a body do that before. Their personal horror was tinged with professional curiosity.
The reporters were scribbling in their notebooks. Paul realized that within minutes they would file reports of what they’d witnessed, a scene they would paint for the many newspapers across the country. The Westinghouse system of alternating current had just proven itself to be a spectacularly poor instrument of murder. If Edison and Brown had wanted to demonstrate the stubborn safety of alternating current, they could have done no better job.
Paul still felt ill. But for the first time in a long while, he also felt like his side had won something.
Paul turned to see Brown exiting quickly through the prison gates. He thought he could make out dark stains on Brown’s linen jacket. And on his hands as well.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN