"CHAIR" CONDEMNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

"CHAIR" CONDEMNED.

SPEEDY DEATH DENIED,

Prison authorities at New York scout the suggestion put forward at an inquest in London that death from electrocution is protracted. Warder Lawes, of Sing Sing Prison, a man noted for his humanity and his opposition to capital punishment, is confident that the electric chair kills ten times faster than its victims' senses can record, and that the victim feels no pain. Dr. G. M. Ogle, of New York, who liae made a close study of electrocutions, declared that a condemned man is dead one 240 th part of a second after the current is turned on._ According to Willis Merrill, an Ohio prison doctor, a man in the electric chair is dead the instant the first shock touches him, although the heart may beat two seconds after death. The shock he says, completely destroys the nervous system but the heart muscle is the last to be affected. Instruments have shown that the current reaches the brain 24 times faster than the sensation caused by the stab of a needle in the skin. Most prison warders in New York consider electrocution more humane than hanging. The statements challenged 'by prison authorities in New York were made at an inquest at Chelsea on a workman named John William Hibbert (26), of Hoy Street, Canning Town, who received a fatal shock while working in a manhole containing electric cables in King's Road, Chelsea» Dr. Bronte, the well-known pathologist, mentioned that the Home Office has iseued a pamphlet urging that artificial respiration should 'be continued for four hours when people have collapsed from electric shock. A case was on record, ho said, where a man who had received a very severe shock completely recovered after four hours' artificial respiration. He added:—"With the American system of electrocution, it is said that death only takes place in the post-mortem r °The Coroner (Mr. H. Oswald): Our system of hanging is far more merciful. A verdict of accidental death was returned.