A Dentist Invented the Electric Chair

Now I know why no one wants to sit in my dental chair!

In the late 19th century, prisons across the country were looking for ways to more humanely deal with executing criminals. In 1881, noted dentist Dr. Alfred P. Southwick from Buffalo, New York, witnessed an event that would end up changing criminal executions forever.

One night Dr. Southwick happened upon an intoxicated man who, while staggering around, inadvertently touched a live generator terminal and was killed instantly. At first Dr. Southwick was completely aghast, but as he thought about the event later, he realized the electric shock seemed quicker and more painless—and therefore more humane—than the more grisly methods that were being used at the time, such garroting, beheading, suffocating, and flaying. This revelation prompted Dr. Southwick to originate and successfully promote the passage of laws mandating criminal electrocution in New York and twenty other states.

In 1888 Dr. Southwick joined the state’s Electrical Death Commission, a group tasked to prove that electrocution was the preferred method; they were also charged with hiring someone to build the machine. At this point there still was no concrete idea for administering the jolt to the criminal, but Dr. Southwick did have an idea. Given that, as a dentist, he was accustomed to working on patients while they were seated, he suggested that the device be made in the form of a chair so that the prisoner could be more easily retained. The committee agreed, and they set to hiring someone to create Dr. Southwick’s electrocution chair.

The person they hired? Thomas Edison.