The first execution by electricity has been a horror. Physicians who might make a jest out of the dissecting room, officials who have seen many a man’s neck wrenched by the rope, surgeons who have lived in hospitals and knelt beside the dead and dying on bloody fields, held their breaths with a gasp, and those unaccustomed to such sights turned away in dread.

The doctors say the victim did not suffer. Only his Maker knows if that be true. To the eye, it looked as though he were in a convulsive agony.

The current had been passing through his body for fifteen seconds when the electrode at the head was removed. Suddenly the breast heaved. There was a straining at the straps which bound him, a purplish foam covered the lips and was spattered over the leather headband.

The man was alive. Warden, physicians, eve­rybody, lost their wits. There was a startled cry for the current to be turned on again. Signals, only half-understood, were given to those in the next room at the switchboard. When they knew what had happened, few were prompt to act, and the switch handle could be heard as it was pulled back and forth, breaking the deadly current into jets.

The rigor of death came on the instant. An odor of burning flesh and singed hair filled the room. For a moment a blue flame played about the base of the victim’s spine. One of the witnesses nearly fell to the floor. Another lost control of his stomach. Cold perspiration beaded every face. This time the electricity flowed four minutes.

Kemmler was dead. Part of his brain had been baked hard. Some of the blood in his head had been turned into charcoal. The flesh at the small of his back was black with fire.

New York World, August 6th, 1889

136 years ago today, William Kemmler became the first human executed in the electric chair, a method first proposed four years prior by Dr. Alfred Southwick, who initially proffered electrocution as a method of euthanasia for stray dogs, though his first success was in electrocuting a horse to death. Southwick, a dentist, was inspired to shift his focus toward human subjects after a series of botched hangings and his experience performing procedures on chair-bound patients.

“New York was a pioneer in the use of the electric chair, you know,” the Warden was saying. “The first one was a man named William Kemmler up in Auburn Prison back in 1890. That one was pretty crude and, uh, shocked a lot of people, if you’ll pardon the expression…” The warden chuckled loosely at his joke.

“There is the culmination of ten years work and study!” exclaimed Southwick at Kemmler’s execution. “We live in a higher civilization from this day.”

“Peaceful development of electricity,” the reactionaries boomed, but we knew that the electric chair was just the first step.

William T. Vollmann, You Bright and Risen Angels