by Michael Daly
Under the Big Top, home of mastodonic merit in disparate droves.
New York greets “The Glorious Paragon of All Parades.”
The Fearless Frogman in action.
The Wizard in his laboratory.
Tesla, genius and lover of pigeons.
George Westinghouse, exactly himself.
Edison’s electric light parade down Madison Avenue.
The electric chair, which Edison hoped would also bring
the demise of Westinghouse’s ambitions.
The Elephant Colossus, Coney Island: a hotel with a fabulous
trunk room, then a bazaar, finally a brothel.
An elephant giving a ride at Luna Park —
what was to have been Topsy’s job.
The entrance to Luna Park, “The Heart of Coney Island.”
The elephants at Luna Park were only wonderful
until they were taken to a particular deserted spot.
Bill Snyder, trainer and hater of the ill-fated Sid, with
Hattie at the elephant quarters in Central Park.
Topsy’s final moment, the smoke rising from the
electrodes attached to her feet.
SIXTEEN
The Executioner’s
Experiments
A young man seeking to ingratiate himself with Edison could have done no better than did Harold Brown with his June 5, 1888, letter to the editor of the New York Post cautioning against the dangers of alternating current and extolling the relative safety of direct current.
“The alternating current can be described by no adjective less forceful than damnable,” Brown wrote in this letter published one day after electricity became New York’s official means of execution. “The only excuse for the use of the fatal alternating current is that it saves the company operating it from spending a larger sum of money for the heavier copper wires which are required by the safe incandescent systems.”
Whether or not Brown was already doing Edison’s bidding, Westinghouse recognized the letter as an intensification of the War of Currents. Westinghouse wrote to Edison from his home base in Pittsburgh two days later with what was essentially a peace proposal.
“I believe there has been a systematic attempt on the part of some people to do a great deal of mischief and create as great a difference as possible between the Edison Company and the Westinghouse Electrical Company when there ought to be an entirely different condition of affairs,” Westinghouse wrote.
Westinghouse recalled visiting Edison’s laboratory as a potential customer and now invited him as a colleague to visit his own facilities in Pittsburgh. Edison declined.
“My laboratory work consumes the whole of my time,” he wrote back. “Thanking you for your kind invitation.”
Edison made an invitation of his own, this to Brown. The Wizard allowed Brown to make full use of the facilities in his huge new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, to conduct animal experiments similar to Southwick’s with the purpose of “proving” the great hazard of alternating current. Signs went up in the neighbored around Edison’s lab offering twenty-five cents for stray dogs, the same bounty that had been posted in Buffalo.
Brown subsequently reported in the journal the Electrical World on twenty-seven experiments beginning at 10:06 p.m., July 10, 1888.
First Experiment Dog No. 1. Old black and tan bitch; low vitality; weight not taken (about ten lbs.) . . . Connection made through roll of wet cotton waste, held in place by wrappings of bare copper wire; continuous current used eight hundred volts . . . two seconds . . . Behavior of dog: Howled vigorously and made violent effort to escape, showing that it had control of muscles and that nerve functions were not destroyed. Howled loudest as circuit was broken. Continued howling and rushing about for two and a half minutes after circuit was opened, then dropped upon its side. Pulsation of heart detected until 10:21 p.m.
And then:
Second Experiment. Dog No. 2. Large half-bred St. Bernard puppy; strong and in good condition. Weight not taken (about twenty lbs.) . . . Connections made as above . . . Continuous current used . . . 290 volts . . . two seconds. Behavior of dog: Howled during time of contact and tried to escape. Easily quieted and entirely uninjured.
And then:
Third Experiment. Same dog as second experiment. Same connections. Alternating current used by introducing a circuit breaker and alternator in circuit with the dog . . . two seconds . . . Behavior of dog: Was made perfectly rigid during time of contact, unable to howl or move until current was broken, then howled and made feeble efforts to escape. Continued whining.
And then:
Fourth Experiment. Same dog and same connections. Alternating current as in previous trial . . . 800 volts . . . three seconds . . . Behavior of dog: Was turned into rigid mass during contact, no motion or tremor visible; at opening of circuit it fell with all muscles limp, howled faintly with a single expulsion of breath and died.
On it went for dog after dog. The eighth dog was hit with one thousand volts of continuous, or direct, current and Brown noted, “Dog howled and struggled violently for two minutes, then apparently died. Dog immediately dissected . . . Heart found still pulsating . . . Artificial respiration would have saved its life if resorted to immediately after moment of apparent death.”
The ninth subject, a “strong and vigorous” bulldog, was hit with eight hundred volts of alternating current. Brown noted, “Dog was placed in wooden box to prevent accident in case he broke loose; slats were nailed across top of box, but these were unnecessary, as during time of contact the dog was apparently turned to stone.”
The last five experiments were all on the same red setter, which was left “panting violently and perspiring copiously. Evidently dying, but to put him out of pain it was decided to give higher voltage . . . Dog died without noise or struggle.”
What exactly the experiments demonstrated was not immediately clear. They were intended in part to support Brown’s contention to the New York Electrical Control Board that alternating current should be restricted to less than three hundred volts. This happened to be considerably less than the voltage needed for alternating current to achieve the ease of transmission that was its great advantage over direct current.
Westinghouse refrained from conducting experiments that would have disproved his rival’s contention that alternating current was inherently more deadly because the current’s “impulses are given first in one direction, then in the other several thousand times a minute.” He instead countered with his own letter to the editor, this to the New York Times and sticking largely to fact:
It is generally understood that Harold P. Brown is conducting these experiments in the interest and pay of the Edison Electric Light Company; that the Edison Company’s business can be vitally injured if the alternating current apparatus continues to be successfully introduced and operated as it has heretofore been; and that the Edison representatives from a business point of view consider themselves justified in resorting to any expedient to prevent the extension of this system.
Westinghouse went on, “We have no hesitation in charging that the object of these experiments is not in the interest of science or safety, but to endeavor to create in the mind of the public a prejudice against the use of the alternating currents.”
Westinghouse noted that the Edison Company reported expanding its systems by forty-four thousand lights for the first three quarters of 1888, while Westinghouse had expanded by forty-eight thousand in the month of October alone.
Westinghouse ended by offering to send to the newspaper an impartial expert. Brown responded with a letter disputing all Westinghouse’s assertions and emphatically denying he had ever been in Edison’s employ. Brown proposed a kind of electro-duel.
“I therefore challenge Mr. Westinghouse to meet me in the presence of competent electrical exper
ts and take through his body the alternating current, while I take through mine a continuous current,” Brown wrote.
Brown said they could start at one hundred volts and increase by fifty-volt increments.
“Until either one or the other has cried enough and publicly admits his error.”
Westinghouse did not dignify the challenge with a response. Brown conducted more experiments for the benefit of a special committee established to determine precisely how the new method of execution should be applied. One dog showed remarkable resistance, suffering repeated excruciating shocks until one of the attendants could bear it no longer and picked up the poor pooch, declaring that he was adopting it. He named it Ajax, after the hero of Greek mythology, who was said to have defied lightning.
The supply of strays was dwindling, and Edison wrote to Henry Bergh of the ASPCA. Bergh had written to Edison some months before to ask the inventor’s view about Buffalo’s use of electricity to kill strays. Edison now asked Bergh to supply him with “some good-sized animals,” ostensibly for experiments seeking to determine the minimum voltage required for the purpose.
Bergh may have been humbugged by Barnum into abetting the suffering of elephants but he correctly recognized that efforts to determine the least amount of electricity needed to kill an animal would necessarily inflict considerable suffering. He refused, noting that the ASPCA’s goal was “instantaneous and merciful death” in every instance.
Bergh asserted that same principle when Brown and Edison’s chief electrical expert mounted a public demonstration of their experiments at Columbia College. A dog was subjected to a series of painful shocks before finally being dispatched by five hundred volts of alternating current that elicited what were described as “pitiful moans.” Another dog was being wired up when the ASPCA intervened and shut down the event, saying that if such tests were indeed required, they should be conducted by impartial scientists of a respected institution, not in “the interests of rival inventors.”
Edison’s “experiments” continued on a total of forty-four dogs that he managed to acquire. Bergh ceased to be a factor when he fell fatally ill during the big blizzard in March of 1888. The snow was so deep it was up to the hubs of the hearse’s wheels as it bore Bergh’s remains to St. Mark’s Church in lower Manhattan, but Barnum still managed to arrive from Bridgeport and be prominent among the mourners. He sent a big wreath despite Bergh’s instructions that his funeral be kept simple.
Gerry was a pallbearer. Atop the coffin was a framed photo of a St. Bernard, though certainly not the one that had died in torment at Edison’s lab.
Doubters had noted that a dog weighed considerably less than a human, and on another day Gerry traveled with the special committee to Edison’s lab to witness a demonstration on larger animals, the Wizard himself presiding. Gerry was surely aware of Bergh’s refusal to supply Edison with strays, but he apparently accepted these experiments as justifiable in the name of finding a more humane way of dispatching humans. Only alternating current was employed, first on two calves, one 124.5 pounds, the other 145 pounds. Both were quickly killed, the electrodes placed on the forehead and the middle of the spine.
“The meat was pronounced fit for food,” the New York Times reported.
Next came a 1,230-pound horse, for which Edison had paid ten dollars, plus another dollar to have it led from Newark to his lab. Edison instructed that this time electrodes—which were wrapped in cloth soaked in saltwater—should be affixed to the subject’s forelegs, on the theory that the electricity would travel from point to point through the chest. The horse did not react to the administration of six hundred volts, and the technicians checked the delivery system for a defective part. The second try produced no visible result other than steam curling up from the electrodes. The third try went up to seven hundred volts for twenty-five seconds. The horse pitched over dead and an “after” photo was taken to be paired with a “before” photo that documented the animal had been in good health.
Edison was left wondering if part of the problem was that bones such as in the forelegs are not good conductors. He nonetheless felt affirmed in his belief that routing the electricity through the body from one extremity to the other was most effective. He must have been delighted by the conclusion offered by the Times.
“The experiments proved the alternating current to be the most deadly force known to science, and that less than half the pressure used in this city for electric lighting by this system is sufficient to cause instant death. After Jan. 1 the alternating current will undoubtedly drive the hangmen out of business in this State.”
An opportunity to cap off the “Westinghousing” experiments with one of the biggest of land creatures came in the form of an elephant named Chief. The owner was none other than Adam Forepaugh, who had once been as fierce a competitor in his own field as either Edison or Westinghouse. But Forepaugh seemed to have suffered a loss of competitive drive and even a general weakening of the will since his supposed victory over his rival at Madison Square Garden.
The elder Forepaugh may have indeed partaken of the Tree of Knowledge and realized that Barnum was still the great Barnum and that Forepaugh was still just Forepaugh, that it would always be so. Forepaugh could and did often draw more customers, but they generally remained of a rough sort while Barnum was still considered the class of the field, the “Sunday school show.”
Perhaps, too, the elder Forepaugh was simply aging and growing weary of the road. That is what he had told his rival when the Forepaugh show passed through Bridgeport in June of 1888. The arrival of Forepaugh in Barnum’s hometown initially appeared to be the direct personal challenge, a breach of the at least ostensible peace the two showmen had brokered at the time of the Madison Square Garden dual appearance. Barnum responded in his usual style, by cheerfully welcoming his rival. He made a full report in a private letter the next day to James Bailey, the partner who now handled the business end as well as day-to-day operations and was on the road with the Barnum show.
“Forepaugh seemed friendly. He will immediately stop the bills calling his ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ & he says if we ever see anything wrong, he will stop it if we let him know it.”
That had been surprising enough. Forepaugh had gone on to suggest he had lost faith in a son who was turning out to be more of a liability than a legacy.
“Forepaugh said when I first saw him yesterday a.m. he had directed in his will to have the show sold out when he dies.”
At a second encounter with Barnum that day, Forepaugh had taken the notion a step further, suggesting he might be willing to partially sell out prior to his demise via an arrangement by which the two shows would be combined into a single entity that would then sell shares, as was the new American way of corporations.
“In the afternoon, he said, ‘You and Bailey can get a million and a half of dollars or more by making the two shows in a stock company of $3,000,000 of capital.’”
Barnum reported to Bailey that Forepaugh had expressed a desire to remain involved in hiring performers, but would stay out of the business itself and “never touch a cent of money.” Forepaugh had argued that a single administration would cut overhead and eliminate the need to offer competitive wages.
As for the present Forepaugh show, Barnum wrote to his partner that it had been “crammed yesterday afternoon & night. . . . He don’t cater for the genteel & refined class & he don’t get them, but he pleases the masses.”
Forepaugh still had a Wild West show, and some customers did offer a complaint.
“The hundreds of shots by Indians and cowboys took place at the opening of the show, so the tent is so full of smoke for the first half hour that persons can’t see from one ring to the other,” Barnum wrote.
Barnum said he had told Forepaugh that any deal would have to meet with Bailey’s approval. Forepaugh had replied that there should be no hurry in telling Bailey.<
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“[Forepaugh] says he likes you, knows you are an honest man & he will come & see us in the winter & thought I had better not mention it to you till then,” Barnum further reported.
However Forepaugh really felt about Bailey, any regard was not mutual. Bailey’s response to Forepaugh’s proposal was immediate and emphatically negative. Barnum was not above trying to humbug his own partner and wrote back three days after the first letter, “I hope you did not think because I wrote you about 4-PAW’S desire to form a stock company that I favored such an idea. Far from it.”
In truth, Barnum was so intrigued by the proposition that he could not just let it go. He wrote Bailey again toward the end of August to say, “I continually feel that somehow we ought to have two shows, one east and the other west & this can only be done successfully by absorbing Forepaugh’s show. He is really getting more public recognition and making more and more money each year. . . . And this strengthens his name and compels us to keep up a too-expensive show.”
Barnum went on to suggest a domestic factor in Forepaugh’s desire to quit the road.
“Forepaugh’s wife is young & wants him to stop traveling personally. He dare not trust it to his son.”
Barnum made a proposal to Bailey.
“Now, perhaps if we give Forepaugh to understand that we intend to start 2 shows, he may be induced to put his son, his name & his show property into a stock company with ours, he taking say one quarter and we 3 quarters of the whole stock.”
Forepaugh and his son would, of course, have to sign a paper guaranteeing they would “never again let their names be used by another enterprise.” Forepaugh would be allowed to have an accountant travel with the show and keep an eye on the proceeds.
