It
was 6:38am on August 6th,
1890, as the prisoner entered the room, hands bound, between two
prison guards. He was surprised how many had come to witness his
death.
He had been calm
since being woken an hour and a half earlier, offering no resistance.
He had dressed himself quickly, formally, in his Sunday best suit,
white shirt and tie. They brought him breakfast, which he ate
heartily, and a priest, who said a prayer. A 'trusty' came and
shaved his head. The dark corridors and cells of New York State's
Auburn Prison were cool and stale at this early hour, as he was taken
to the execution chamber, but with a sense of the stifling heat to
come.
Records show there
were seventeen present, including the Warden, Charles Durston.
William Kemmler faced him and Durston nodded, a little tense. He
knew this day would go down in history. Kemmler remained calm,
almost serene. He looked at the chair in the centre of the room.
"Gentlemen, I
wish you all good luck. I believe I am going to a good place, and I
am ready to go," he said, and without prompting, sat down.
One of the guards
made him stand again and cut a hole in his suit near the base of his
spine, to attach one of the electrodes. The prisoner sat again and
the metal restraint was attached to his head.
He
almost smiled. "Take it easy and do it properly, I'm in no
hurry." His arms and legs were strapped to the chair, a cloth
hood was placed over his head.
"Goodbye,
William," said Durston, as he signalled the electrician to throw
the switch.
William Kemmler was a
second generation native of Philadelphia, a slender youth with dark
brown hair. Illiterate, with little schooling, he worked at first in
his father's butcher shop. He grew up speaking both English and
German, the language of his parents. They were both known to be
alcoholics: his father died after a drunken brawl and his mother from
liver failure. Kemmler.
After his parents
died and the business was lost, he became a peddlar, and earned
enough money to buy a horse and cart after moving to Buffalo, where
he sold vegetables off the back of the cart. But he had also begun
to turn to drink and – with the nickname "Philadelphia Billy"
– soon developed a reputation for binge drinking and stupid drunken
episodes, one of which led to the destruction of his cart and his
stock. He took up with Tillie Ziegler, and they started to live
together. At the trial she would be refeerred to as his common law
wife.
On March 29, 1888, he
was recovering from a drinking binge the night before when he became
enraged with Tiller. He accused her of stealing from him and
preparing to run away with a friend of his. When the argument reached
a peak, Kemmler calmly grabbed a hatchet, and returned to the house.
He struck Tillie repeatedly, killing her. He then went to a
neighbor's house and announced he had just murdered his girlfriend.
Every report describes him as 'calm', 'rational', 'unemotional' – a
classic sociopath.
The trial proceeded
quickly. He was convicted of first-degree murder on May 10. Three
days later he was sentenced to death. Two months before the murder,
New York introduced a new execution law which replaced hanging. The
new method was death by the wonderful new force then becoming known
for the first time: death by electricity. Soon after the new law
was enacted, an electric chair – a device invented a few years
earlier by a Buffalo dentist – was installed at the Auburn state
prison, and this is where Kemmler was consigned after pleading
guilty. He would become the first person in the world to be killed
by electric chair.
An appeal was
launched, not by Kemmler, but by the infant electricity industry, who
obviously thought this was bad PR. The appeal claimed that the
electric chair violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel
and unusual punishment. The appeal went all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court, who ruled electrocution was not a cruel and unusual
punishment.
So the execution
proceeded. The generator was charged to one thousand volts, which
was assumed to be adequate to induce quick unconsciousness and
cardiac arrest. The chair had already been thoroughly tested; a horse
had been successfully electrocuted the day before. The charge was fed
to Kemmler for 17 seconds. The power was turned off, one of the two
doctors present stepped forward and Kemmler was declared dead.
However, with an
audible gasp, witnesses suddenly saw Kemmler's chest rise and fall –
he was still breathing. Both doctors confirmed Kemmler was still
alive, and one of them reportedly called out, "Have the current
turned on again, quick—no delay,” the shaking of his voice
betraying shock and horror, in stark contrast to Kemmler's earlier
calm.
It took some time to
recharge the generator, this time up to 2,000 volts. Blood vessels
under the skin ruptured and acording to the New York Times,
"an awful odor
began to permeate the death chamber, and then, as though to cap the
climax of this fearful sight, it was seen that the hair under and
around the electrode on the head and the flesh under and around the
electrode at the base of the spine was singeing. The stench was
unbearable."
Several witnesses
panicked and unsuccessfully tried to escape from the room, but the
room had been locked. In all, the entire execution took eight
minutes until death was finally achieved. Papers across the country
outdid each other with sensational headlines and stories. A reporter
who witnessed it described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse
than hanging." The electrician reportedly commented: "They
would have done better using an axe.” Yet death by electric chair
was not and still to this day in some states is not regarded as cruel
and unusual.