ELECTRICITY AS AN EXECUTIONER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 851, 9 August 1878, Page 3

ELECTRICITY AS AN EXECUTIONER.

The revolting scenes accompanying the execution of several criminals in America are well calculated to bring to public notice the disadvantages of hanging as a mode of capital punishment. The teachings of science are heeded and sought for in the building of prisons, in the management and care of convicts, and in every modem correctional system : and yet in so simple and easy a process as the extinguishing of human life they are utterly ignored. The most certain and painless death known to science is caused by the lightning stroke, or by, what amounts to the same thing, the electric shock. When a powerful discharge of electricity is received in the body existence simply stops and the reason is obvious, Helmholtz has proved that, for any vibration which results in sensation to reach the brain through the nerves, onetenth of a second of time is required. Furthermore, time is also need for the molecules of the brain to arrange themselves through the effect of that vibration,. through the motions and positions necessary to the" completion of consciousness, and for this an additional period of one-tenth of a second is expended; Consequently if, for example, we prick our finger with a pm, it takes twotenths of a'second for us to foci and recognise the hurt. It can easily ho conceived, therefore, that if an injury is inflicted which constantly unfits the nerves to transmit the motion which results in sensation, or if the animating power is suddenly suspended by an injury to the brain before the latter completes consciousness, then death inevitably follows with no intervention of s risibility whatever. Now a rifle-bullet, which traverses the brain in the one-thonsandth of a second, manifestly must cause this instant stoppage of existence, and proof of this is found in the placid faces of the dead, and in fact that there is nothing more common than to find men lying dead on battle-fields, shot through the brain, with every member stiffened in th« exact position it was in when the bullet did its work. But a rifle ball is slow beside the Electric shock. Persistence of vision impresses a lightning flash on the retina for one-sixth of a second, but its actual duration is barely one-huu-dredth-thousaudth of a second.

The effect of the shock on the system is excellently described by Professor Tyndall, who while lecturing before a large audience, inadvertently touched the wire leading from fifteen charged Leyden jars, and received the whole discharge through his body. Luckily the shock was not powerful enough to be fatal ; but as the lecturer regained his senses, he experienced the astonishing sensation of ail his members being separate and gradually fastening themselves together. He says, however, that “ life was blotted out for a sensible interval," and lie dwells.

with much stress upon the opinion that “ there rannot be a doubt that to a person struck by ! »ghtniug, the passage from life to death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a pang,” So much for the death which, by suitable alteration of the law, wo would have substituted for slow strangulation. The next point is its practical accomplishment.

Instead of building a gallows and providing rope, the sheriff, advised by'a competent electrician, would procure a powerful Rhumkorff coil and a heavy battery. The instruments would rarely need replacing, and would last indefinitely for other executions. The battery and coil should he of sufficient strength to deliver an IS-inch spark. In case of there being mure than one person to be executed, all of the condemned would ho conducted with all due ceremony to tho place of execution, tho left hand of one man handcuffed to the right hand of his neighbor, and the conducting wire fastened to the bracelets on the disengaged wrists of both criminals, if only two are to be hanged, or to tho outer men, if more than that number are to suffer. The culprits beiilg seated so as to be seen by the legal witnesses, tho sheriff presses a button. The current is instantly established from the coil, passes through the bodies of the men, and all is over. With a competent electrician, who might be a member of the police force, specially charged with the duty, there would bo no possibility of mistake. The same ignominy which attaches to the gallows would be transferred to this mode of destruction, while the peculiar death by lightning, which among the ignorant of all nations and ages, has been the subject of profound superstition, would, without doubt, through its very incomprehensibility and mystery, imbue tho uneducated masses with a deeper horror.—> Scientific American.