WILLIAM KEMMLER, THE POOR PEDDLER
William Francis Kemmler was an illiterate son of German immigrant parents, raised in near poverty in Philadelphia. He was one of only two children who survived out of a family of eleven. Born on May 9, 1860, he had finished with his education within the first decade of his life and was out on the street hustling for a living. For seven years, he shined shoes, sold newspapers, and helped out in his father’s butcher shop. But at the age of seventeen, he got a job in a brickyard and began putting money aside. Within two years he had purchased a horse and cart, allowing him to set up as an independent trader, peddling fruit and vegetables.
Once he could afford to, he developed a taste for whiskey. He became a heavy drinker, and like many a drinker before him, he did not display his best judgment when under the influence of the bottle. After one spectacular bender he woke up to find that he had married Ida Forter in Camden, New Jersey. Two days later he came to his senses when he realized that she was already married and had not divorced her first husband. He left her and ran back to Philadelphia, where he immediately moved in with another married woman, Matilda (Tillie) Ziegler. She had left her husband because of his fondness for drink and lewd women—that could have described her new man, Kemmler, to a tee. She had a young daughter, Ella.
A little over a week after moving in with Ziegler, Kemmler sold his fruit and vegetable business and the little property he had; and the couple, with Ella, moved to Buffalo, where they lived together as husband and wife. He even used the name John Hort to further the deception, and he applied locally for a peddler’s license. He began working with a partner, John de Bella.
But all was not rosy in the new household. Kemmler was regularly drunk and Ziegler was regularly unfaithful. A year and a half passed in constant bickering and Kemmler was convinced that his lover was cheating on him with his business partner. He was drinking more than ever but still managed to run and grow his business. That all came to an abrupt end on the morning of March 29, 1899. That morning, he entered the barn where he stored his horse and supplies, and he seemed sober and in control, according to his employees. But as he was giving them their instructions for the morning, Tillie came out of their apartment and asked him to fetch her some fresh eggs. She then turned and walked back into the building.
Instead of getting eggs, Kemmler picked up a hatchet and followed her into the kitchen. She was at the sink, clearing away the breakfast crockery. Ignoring four-year-old Ella, who stood by watching with horror, he walked up behind Tillie and struck viciously at her back with the hatchet. As she staggered and turned, he continued to rain blows down on her head and shoulders. He struck her twenty-six times in all, leaving her in a bleeding pulp on the floor. Tossing the hatchet aside, he turned and rushed from the room, leaving Ella still paralyzed with fear.
Kemmler made no effort to conceal what he had done. He walked straight to the front of the house, which was the part occupied by his landlady Mary Reid. His hands and arms covered in gore, he calmly told her, “I have killed her. I had to do it; there was no help for it. One of us had to die. I’ll take the rope for it.” A moment later, Ella rushed in, confirming the grisly news, saying, “Papa has killed mamma.”
Kemmler calmly picked up his stepdaughter and placed her on a chair before cleaning his hands and arms and leaving the house. He was accosted by a neighbor who demanded that he fetch a doctor. Instead, he went in search of a public house. He banged on the counter and called for a drink, but the neighbor, who had followed him, told the barman not to serve him. While the two men quarreled, the first police officer, John O’Neill, arrived on the scene.
“Have you been licking your wife?” he asked.
“Yes—with a hatchet,” said Kemmler.
They returned to the bloody kitchen where, unbelievably, Tillie Ziegler was still alive. Her arms were moving ineffectually and she was moaning in pain. She died a number of hours later in the hospital.
Kemmler was unrepentant, blaming the killing on his quick temper, and telling investigators that the sooner he was hanged the better.
Five weeks later, on May 6, the trial opened. The accused was subdued, and one newspaper described his appearance as that of “mild-eyed imbecility.” He was accompanied by his brother Henry Hort. Henry’s feelings must have been mixed. The two brothers had ended up with two sisters; Henry’s wife was the sister of Kemmler’s lover and victim. Henry’s wife also attended the court, but she was definitely not on William Kemmler’s side. She was there for her sister.
The prosecution painted a picture of a man who was a heavy drinker and prone to violent outbursts of temper. He was jealous of his business partner, whom he suspected of sleeping with his wife.
The defense case was simple. Kemmler was a habitual alcoholic and was incapable of premeditated murder. That required a clear and calculating mind. He had killed while his judgment was befuddled with drink. While he was not actually drunk at the time of the killing, habitual drinking had left his mind deeply affected.
Alcoholic insanity is a difficult case to prove. At best, Kemmler could hope to escape the rope. His defense knew there could not be an acquittal for a man who had hacked his partner to death in front of her daughter.
Defense witnesses established that Kemmler had been drunk every day for two months prior to the killing. He often spent four or five dollars a day (the equivalent of over a hundred dollars today) on drink and was frequently incoherent. Several medical experts testified that continued abuse of alcohol rendered a man less capable of rational decisions
The jury took over two hours to reach a decision, long for those days. But at 11:18 a.m. on May 10—just one day after Kemmler’s twenty-ninth birthday—they returned a verdict of guilty.
The Buffalo Courier reported that as Kemmler rose to receive the verdict, “There was a sharp clap of thunder. Rain dashed against the windows, and as Kemmler turned to face the jury there was a flash of lightning typical of his coming fate … The moment was decidedly prophetic.”
Sentencing was put back to May 14, and the courtroom was packed. Everyone was wondering if Kemmler would be the first person sentenced under the new Electrical Execution Act. The peddler, who had remained calm and sullen throughout the trial, was suddenly looking nervous.
Judge Henry Childs turned to the prisoner and pronounced the dreaded sentence: “Within the week commencing Monday, June 24, 1889, within the walls of Auburn State Prison or within the yard or enclosure thereof, that you suffer the death punishment by being executed by electricity, as provided by the code of criminal procedure of the State of New York, and that you be removed to and kept in confinement in Auburn State Prison until that time. May God have mercy on your soul.”
Kemmler went pale and sank to a chair before being escorted from the courthouse.
Though the execution was scheduled for six weeks later, it would be more than a year before the appeals procedure had been exhausted. William Bourke Cockran, a young Irishman who had moved to America at the age of seventeen, took up the cudgel for Kemmler. He was a rising star of the Democrat Party, a noted orator, and a highly skilled lawyer. There is some suspicion that his hefty fees, which were beyond the purse of Kemmler, were paid by Westinghouse. Legend has it that the mercenary Cockran was paid $100,000—though this figure is certainly exaggerated. What is certain is that Westinghouse was prepared to spend freely to ensure that his dynamos were not associated with the electric chair.
Cockran appealed against electrocution as being “cruel and unusual,” and thus unconstitutional. There is no doubt that it was unusual at that point, but its supporters thought it was anything but cruel—though nobody would know for sure until after the first execution. It was known that if the voltage was too high there could be burning of the flesh at the point of contact with the electricity, but if the person was killed or rendered unconscious instantly, this would not be cruel.
The first round of hearings went against Cockran and his client. Edison himself testified on July 23. He said that he had conducted experiments on his 250 employees to determine the electrical resistance of a human body, and he could guarantee that death could be caused instantly and universally with an electric shock. But you would have to be careful not to use too much power, as that might burn the body.
“Have a nice little bonfire with him, would you?” asked Cockran.
“Oh no, just carbonize him,” Edison replied.
At a lower power setting the results would be less spectacular.
“His temperature,” said Edison, “would rise three or four degrees above the normal and after a while he’d be mummified. The heat would evaporate all the fluids in his body and leave him mummified.”
But Edison was adamant that if the current was correctly controlled, instant death would result without the distressing side effects. Cockran lost the first round, and appealed to the Supreme Court of New York. While that appeal was pending, Brown installed the first electric chair at Auburn. He was assisted by Edwin Davis. Davis, who was in his early forties at the time, would soon be appointed the state’s electrician and would oversee 240 executions before his retirement in 1914.
On December 30, the Supreme Court handed down their decision, agreeing with Judge Day in the lower court that the execution by electrocution was not a cruel and unusual punishment. In February 1890 the Court of Appeal heard and rejected the final pleas on behalf of the condemned man. On March 31, Kemmler was told that he would be executed during the final week of April.
He said, “I am guilty and must be punished. I am ready to die. I am glad I am not going to be hung. I think it is much better to die by electricity than it is by hanging. It will not give me any pains.”
Final adjustments were made to the chair. It was smaller and neater than originally envisioned, with a high back and a comfortable seat, and a footrest.
But there was one final throw of the dice. Westinghouse had hired Roger Shermann, a high-powered attorney, who obtained a writ of habeas corpus demanding Kemmler be produced at the Circuit Court of New York on June 10—in layman’s terms, a stay of execution. And there was more hope—a bill was introduced before the New York Assembly abolishing capital punishment. The bill passed in the Assembly but lost in the Senate. And Shermann failed in his last-minute appeals too, losing out in the Supreme Court. By June 23, all avenues had been exhausted, and all barriers to the execution removed.
On the morning of July 12, 1890, William Kemmler was led from Auburn prison to a train, which brought him to Buffalo. Dressed in a dapper gray suit, with a “natty black derby hat,” he sat before Judge Childs, who said that he hoped the long delay in the appeals process had given Kemmler time to reflect on the enormity of his crime and the justice of his conviction. He then ordered the execution date for the first week of August at Auburn Prison.
The New York Assembly issued a gag order on reporting of the new execution method, banning reporters from being present among the witnesses. But Warden Durston allowed Frank W. Mack of the Associated Press and George G. Bain of the United Press to witness first execution as private citizens. Though they were not there in an official capacity, they would be allowed publish their impressions. Their reports were widely circulated and shared among the nation’s papers. On August 7, the New York Herald reported the previous day’s proceedings, saying: “The killing of Kemmler marks, I fear, the beginning and the end of electrocution, and it wreaths in shame the ages of the great Empire State who, entrusted with the terrific responsibility of killing a man as a man was never killed before, brought to the task imperfect machinery and turned an execution into a horror.”
Predictably, it had not gone according to plan.
“The scene of Kemmler’s execution was too horrible to picture. Men accustomed to every form of suffering grew faint as the awful spectacle was unfolded before their eyes. Those who stood the sight were filled with awe as they saw the effects of this most potent of fluids, which is only partly understood by those who have studied it most faithfully, as it slowly, too slowly, disintegrated the fiber and tissues of the body through which it passed.
“The heaving of a chest which, it had been promised, would be stilled in an instant peace as soon as the circuit was completed, the foaming of the mouth, the bloody sweat, the writhing shoulders and all the other signs of life.
“Horrible as these were, they were made infinitely more horrible by the premature removal of the electrodes and the subsequent replacing of them for not seconds but minutes, until the room was filled with the odor of burning flesh and strong men fainted and fell like logs upon the floor.”
The procedure had begun at five o’clock in the morning, when the chaplain and Reverend W. E. Houghton (Kemmler’s spiritual adviser) went to Kemmler’s cell where they found him up and awake. He was dressed in a new, dark gray suit with a vest and checked tie. He looked spruce and natty—though in the seat of his trousers a large hole for the electrode was visible. Kemmler seemed cheerful and lighthearted.
Witnesses were led into a small room—mainly doctors and legal professionals. The chair was in another room, dimly visible under gaslight. Warden Durston consulted with doctors about how long the electric shock should last. One said three seconds—another said fifteen. They compromised on ten. Then Durston went to fetch Kemmler.
The condemned man entered the death chamber calmly, walking to the chair with self-possession. He said his last words before he sat: “Well, gentlemen, I wish everyone good luck in this world, and I think I am going to a good place, and the papers have been saying a lot of stuff that isn’t so. That’s all I have to say.”
Then he handed his suit coat to the warden and began to unbutton his vest, but he was told he could leave that on, so he rebuttoned it. Then he sat and calmly adjusted his neck tie as Durston secured the electrode to the base of his spine through the hole in his trousers. The straps were adjusted, and then the final piece was put in place—the hood and face straps. The hood left Kemmler’s mouth free to move and he whispered, “Durston, see that things are right.”
“Ready?” asked Durston.
“Ready,” replied the doctors who were supervising though not operating the equipment.
“Good-bye,” said the warden to Kemmler, who made no reply.
The time was now 6:43 a.m., and the warden stepped to the door of the death chamber and gave the signal to the executioner, Davis. “Everything is ready,” he said to the hidden electrician, who duly flicked the switch.
Suddenly the body of Kemmler convulsed in the chair, straining against all the straps. Dr. McDonald, looking at his stopwatch, called stop after ten seconds. Durston repeated the command, louder. The current was switched off, but Kemmler remained rigid in the chair. His nose appeared dark red and a fly landed on it and walked about unconcernedly.
“He’s dead,” two doctors (Edward Spitzka and Carlos McDonald) proclaimed. But then a third doctor, Dr. Balch, spotted a cut on Kemmler’s thumb that was pumping blood in small spurts. That was a sure sign he was still alive—his heart still beating. A low cry of horror went through the crowd of witnesses.
“Turn on the current; this man is not dead,” cried Dr. Spitzka.
Kemmler began to groan, the sound growing in the small room. His chest began to heave.
The District Attorney hurried from the witness room and began to walk down a corridor to get away from the horror. A sensitive man, he stumbled and fainted and needed to be revived. He did not reenter the witness room for the conclusion of the execution.
The second time, Davis stepped up the current to 2,000 volts, and he held it far longer than the ten seconds recommended by the doctors. Kemmler stopped groaning immediately but drool continued to drop from his lips down to his beard. Still the current flowed, and then the witnesses could hear a sizzling sound, as the flesh around the electrode began to cook. Smoke began to fill the small chamber, and it reeked of burning hair. Durston yelled to turn the current off.
The body remained frozen in its final throes.
Dr. Fell was the first to speak. Despite what he had witnessed, he said, “The man never suffered a bit of pain.”
Dr. Spitzka agreed, saying, “The man was killed instantly, I think. Those were only muscular contractions, and the fellow never suffered any pain. That’s one sure thing about it.”
When he had time to reflect upon it, Spitzka was less sure, refusing to endorse the new form of execution: “For me, first the guillotine, second the gallows, and last of all, electrical execution. Never before have I felt just as I do now. What I have seen has impressed me deeply, not exactly what you would call horror, but rather with the wonder of doubt. I have seen hangings far more brutal than this execution, but I have never seen anything so awe inspiring. What I have seen satisfies me that the scale of capital punishment is first the guillotine, second the gallows, and far in the rear, the electrical execution.
“I do not regard the execution as a failure, but it did not appear to be what it had promised to be.”
Westinghouse did regard it as a failure and was quick to condemn the whole experiment, telling newsmen, “I do not care to talk about it. It has been a brutal affair. They could have done better with an axe. My predictions have been verified. The public will lay the blame where it belongs and it will not be on us. I regard the manner of the killing as a complete vindication of all our claims.”
Westinghouse proved to be wrong. There were severe reporting restrictions on the first execution, with only two reporters witnessing the procedure. And the version of the officials, that it had gone smoothly, became accepted. Electrocution was here to stay. But Westinghouse was also wrong in his fears that the chair would forever associate AC with death. The public did not care which form of current was used to kill condemned prisoners. And his AC system went on to win the War of the Currents. It is now used worldwide, while DC has dwindled to a few specialty uses. Edison won the battle to get his rival’s current used in the chair, but he lost the war.