Death by Dentist

Due to the many unsightly accidents that accompanied hanging, such as decapitations and slow and painful stranglings,  in 1887 a committe was established to determine a more humane way to execute prisoners on death row. Alfred P. Southwick a dentist, who was on that committee, from Buffalo New York, invented the first electric chair. He witnessed a drunk man who quite painlessley and quickly died when he accidentaly touched a live electric generator and so decided to incorporate it into the design of a chair, similar to the one that he used to perform dental procedures on his patients.



The first lucky guy to test the chair was William Kemmler, who was on death row in New York’s Auburn Prison for murdering his lover. On the day of his execution, August 6, 1890, he was oddly calm, perhaps because there was promise of a more human death than his peers. He was sat in the chair, shaved and drenched sponges put on his bald scalp. Then Edwin Davis, the state electrician flipped the switch and ran 1000 volts of electricity through Kemmler’s body for 17 seconds. Kemmler was then examined by Dr Edward Charles Spitzka and Dr Charles F. Macdonald who found him to be unconscious but his heart was still beating and he was still breathing. Spitzka promptly called out to the electrician, ‘Have the current turned on again, quick – no delay.’



The second jolt was with 2000 volts and was left on until the blood vessels under the skin ruptured and the smell of burning flesh filled the room, bringing the execution time to 8 minutes. Several spectators tried to leave the room, a reporter from the New York Herald said that, “Strong men fainted and fell like logs on the floor.”



During the autopsy, the 2 doctors found that all the blood in the vessels in Kemmler’s eyes and brain had completely evaporated. There were burns where the nodes were connected to his body. Especially the one on his lower back; where the node had burnt through his flesh and to his spine.  George Westinghouse, one of the witnesses said that “They  would have done better with an axe.”