Topsy: Thomas Edison electrocuted an innocent elephant 1903
Topsy the elephant was innocent!
In a tale that interweaves the electrocution of a gentle giant with the electrification of America and the rise of the big top circus, “Topsy,” by Michael Daly, reports that the elephant of the title was not the serial man-killer portrayed by those seeking to justify her wrongful execution.
The book also discredits the myth that her electrocution at Luna Park in Coney Island in 1903 was part of Thomas Edison’s fight for supremacy over George Westinghouse in the War of Currents. The Great Wizard had already lost that epic battle.
Topsy details the ill-fated elephant’s death and a life blighted by struggles between historic giants of the human herd. The book recounts how Topsy was smuggled into America as a baby during the raucous competition between the irrepressible P.T. Barnum and the ruthless Adam Forepaugh for circus supremacy and how she met her end after the bitter fight between a desperate Edison and a resolute Westinghouse.
Topsy had in truth killed just once and only after decades of torment that culminated with a circus follower throwing a lit cigar in her mouth. Her subsequent owners found her to be not so much a danger as an inconvenience.
The human heroes of “Topsy” are two enlightened trainers who proved that kindness achieves more than cruelty. The book’s other figures from circus history include a refreshments vendor who was caught short of water during a rush and grabbed a tub where a rider was soaking a pair of pink tights. The result was the first pink lemonade.
What follows is an excerpt from Topsy, describing her execution on January 4, 1903 at the original Luna Park in Coney Island: BY MICHAEL DALY
The wires were dragged over. Topsy immediately complied when she was instructed to raise her right foot for the first death sandal.“Not so vicious,” a reporter remarked aloud.
Topsy seemed less a wild animal than a mild one. Another reporter later wrote, “She stood still in the application as quietly as could be asked, obeying all commands of the men even when telling her to get down on her knees.”
After the second electrode was fitted on her rear left foot and she was again standing,Topsy did become mildly bothered. She shook off the electrode on her forefoot, but soon it was secured again and there she stood, nearly three decades after being torn from her mother and smuggled into America, where she had traveled tens of thousands of miles in perpetual servitude, endured innumerable beatings, and survived more than a dozen train wrecks. Her big dark eyes with their extravagant elephantine lashes glimmered with what a reporter discerned to be still at her core.
“There was real benevolence in her eyes and kindness in her manner,” the Tribune reported.
The amusement park’s press agent stepped up to act out the ultimate metaphor for his profession, feeding Topsy three carrots filled with a total of 460 grams of potassium cyanide. She took and gobbled one after another, playfully curling her trunk.
The motion picture camera had been shifted around so that Topsy was in center frame and one of the cloth banners on the platform was in full view over her left shoulder.
OPENING MAY 2ND 1903 LUNA PARK $1,000,000 EXPOSITION THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND
If the gobbling of the carrots was filmed, it never made public view. The Edison crew was there to film, and the Luna Park people were there to stage, an electrocution, not a poisoning. The big worry was that the cyanide might cause her to collapse before the electricity brought her down. The third carrot was no sooner swallowed than the Edison plant got the awaited signal on the phone.
“All right!”
The camera was running and recorded Topsy again trying to shake off the electrode on her right forefoot. The electrode stayed in place. She set her foot back down and was standing motionless when the 6,600 volts coursed through the wires and the electrician, Thomas, closed the switch at the park. There were flashes and small blue flames and then smoke began to curl up from where copper met foot. Some would describe the smell as that of burning flesh, others that of burning hoof. The pain must have been excruciating and her huge form shook violently.
“Turn the current off!” a Luna employee cried out.
The smoke rose up around her flanks and she pitched forward into it, tipping to the right as her right foreleg buckled. The chain on her left leg grew taut with the fall, restraining her even in her last instant, drawing the limb straight out, displaying the electrode at the bottom of the foot. The electrode had stopped smoking. The current had been turned off after ten seconds.
Once the motion picture camera stopped filming, the donkey engine was set to work, cinching the noose tight around Topsy’s neck and holding it tight for a full ten minutes. Only then, when she had been triply killed and there was not the slightest chance that she was alive, did the three veterinary surgeons approach and pronounce her dead.
Topsy was measured and it was recorded that she was ten feet tall and ten feet, eleven inches long. The autopsy was then performed on the spot. The heart and stomach were removed for the biology department at Princeton University. The taxidermist Hubert Vogelsang began skinning her. Some of the hide would be used to cover Thompson’s office chair and two of the legs would be fashioned into umbrella holders. Thompson would tell people that the hide and leg came from the world-famous Jumbo. The head was buried in a remote, unmarked patch behind the stables.
“Here I am! Here I am! Where are you?”
1903 movie of Topsy's death. Not for the faint hearted :-(
http://www.youtube.com/
posted by Bill Milhomme at 1:23 PM
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