…from Wired, which publishes a disturbing image from the movie Edison made of electrocuting Topsy the elephant at Coney Island, "to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current." The great inventor was willing to torture and kill an elephant, in a doomed effort to win a competitive advantage for his business. Some 1,500 humans watched the grisly spectacle.
Elsewhere, Nonhuman Crew extended team member Dave Monroe clips contemporaneous coverage of the event:
The Commercial Advertiser, New York, Monday, January 5, 1903.
BAD ELEPHANT KILLED.
Topsy Meets Quick and Painless
Death at Coney Island.
Topsy, the ill-tempered Coney Island elephant, was put to death in
Luna Park, Coney Island, yesterday afternoon. The execution was
witnessed by 1,500 or more curious persons, who went down to the
island to see the end of the huge beast, to whom they had fed peanuts
and cakes in summers that are gone. In order to make Topsy's execution
quick and sure 460 grams of cyanide of potassium were fed to her in
carrots. Then a hawser was put around her neck and one end attached to
a donkey engine and the other to a post. Next wooden sandals lined
with copper were attached to her feet. These electrodes were connected
by copper wire with the Edison electric light plant and a current of
6,600 volts was sent through her body. The big beast died without a
trumpet or a groan.
Topsy was brought to this country twenty-eight years ago by the
Forepaugh Circus, and has been exhibited throughout the United States.
She was ten feet high and 19 feet 11 inches in length. Topsy developed
a bad temper two years ago and killed two keepers in Texas. Last
spring, when the Forepaugh show was in Brooklyn, J. F. Blount, a
keeper, tried to feed a lighted cigarette to her. She picked him up
with her trunk and dashed him to the ground, killing him instantly.
http://www.railwaybridge.co.uk/topsy.html
[drawing by Nonhuman Crew collaborator, DAM]
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