Dr. Harry E. Mereness, who wrote this realistic description of an electrocution, was attending physician at Sing Sing Prison for six years, and during that period he attended, in his official capacity, sixty-seven executions in the Electric Chair—a record that has never been equaled. Among the many noted executions he witnessed were those of Lieut. Becker of the New York Police Department and the four gunmen in the Rosenthal case. Prior to their death, he attended the prisoners in the condemned cells.
“The average prisoner, approaching the moment of execution,” says Dr. Mereness, “is in a mental haze or wild delirium produced by the fear of death. In two instances, however, this was lacking. Both men, after being strapped in the chair, said: ‘Good-by, Doc!’”
The minute hand on my watch indicates 5:44 a. m. I am standing in a direct line with the chair.
My gaze is directed to the left side of the room and down a short, narrow, heavily-walled corridor that forms the communication between the condemned cells and the execution chamber. There are a number of guards standing quietly about, and on my right, back of a rope stretched across the room, sit the witnesses.
There is a tension in the very air of the chamber. Absolute quiet prevails. A few seconds pass, eternally long they are.
Then comes a sound—a muffled “Good-by, all.” The sound reaches the ears of the witnesses, and involuntarily they straighten up on their stools; there is some scuffling of feet, and one witness, possibly a trifle more nervous than the rest, clears his throat. Everyone is now keenly alert.
I hear the chant of the priest—the response of the condemned man—the low, quavering and broken response, “Have mercy on me.”
The little procession now enters the corridor. I see the condemned man—stocking-footed, and with his right trouser leg flapping, grimly ludicrous, for it has been slit up to the knee in order to facilitate the application of the leg electrode. He is between the deputy warden and his assistant, each supporting an arm as they slowly enter the death chamber.
At the sight of the fateful and fatal chair, the condemned man involuntarily shrinks back, but the guards are prepared for this, and their hold becomes a little firmer. There is no halt in their step, and but five paces away, inanimate, portentous and ominous—the chair!
