(CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - THOMAS EDISON) [Kingston Art Studio]

In Common Council's Stated Session Monday September 23rd, 1889 ... A singularly brutal and wanton murder was committed on August 22nd, 1889 at 171 Jay street ... on the person of an estimable and inoffensive citizen. The Late Christian W. Luca ...

Brooklyn: Kingston Art Studio, [1889]. Albumen photograph. Approx. 14 by 11 inches; very good condition.

An 1889 albumen photograph of a printed and manuscript certificate presented to the Brooklyn Police of the Second Precinct for their “prompt arrest of the red-handed murderer” of Christian W. Luca. The 1889 murder of Christian W. Luca, a grocer, caused a sensation in Brooklyn and New York. Charles McElvaine murdered Luca in a botched burglary. He pleaded insanity while imprisoned at Sing Sing Prison. But after two years of trials and appeals, McElvaine was sentenced to die. McElvaine's execution in 1892 was the first public execution via the electric chair in New York, if not all of America. More importantly, McElvaine's electric chair execution, only the seventh of its kind, involved a disgraceful saga of greed, ethics, and competition between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison. Both Westinghouse and Edison had become convinced that their platform for supplying electricity, via either alternating or via direct current, was superior than the other. Edison support direct-current (DC). Westinghouse proposed alternating current (AC). For state contracts, and the overall domination of their individual schemes for electricity distribution, Westinghouse and Edison began competing with each other. Via the The Electrical Execution Law, which took effect on January 1, 1889, Edison became a major player in the business of government-sanction death by electrical execution. Unfortunately, Edison's theory of a “wet work” electric chair execution proved wrong, a terribly inhumane and brutal experiment. McElvaine died, but only after a miserable period of torture. From a petty burglary gone bad, to the murder of a grocer in Brooklyn, this first public execution via the electric chair shaped public opinion and further inflamed the capital punishment debate in late 19th century America. [Brandon, “The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History,” pp. 209-210. Blumenthal, “Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners,” - p. 16 - “Edison deviously backed experiments with the electric chair using Westinghouse's alternation current in order to brand it far more dangerous than his own direct current.”] [141425]

$250

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