A Capital Offense

PETER: We just heard how late 19th century Americans linked the proper treatment of animals to the proper treatment of people. But it wasn’t all humane societies and child welfare. That linkage also had a dark side.

ED: In 1903, for example, Thomas Edison filmed and amazing, if disturbing, event. It’s called, very descriptively, Electrocuting an Elephant. And it basically consists of this elephant being led into the frame. We see is standing there for a few seconds, secured with ropes. It sort of impatiently shakes its legs, at which point smoke starts to billow from its feet. The elephant’s legs stiffen. And then it leans forward and collapses.

PETER: The elephant’s name was Topsy. And in life, she had been a circus performer. But over the course of her final three years, she trampled and killed three circus workers. Her owners deemed Topsy a threat and contracted Edison to help Topsy, and I’m quoting, “ride the lightning.”

ED: And Topsy was not alone. More than a dozen elephants were kill publicly around the turn of the 20th century, some by hanging, others by firing squad. And historian Amy Wood says that the amazing part about all of this is that people understood the killings as executions.

AMY WOOD: The New York Times, which is a pretty reputable paper, used the line, “She paid the price of the death penalty for her murders.” And the more tabloid-like papers obviously reported on this at length and basically imposed this narrative of remorse and justice onto the execution, onto what was happening to her.

ED: So who held remorse?

AMY WOOD: Topsy. And I can read to you a little bit from The New York Herald, if you’d like to hear that. OK. “A moment before, the hundreds of men, women, and children who had gathered to see the execution had looked pityingly upon Topsy as she was led to the death post. There was nothing vicious in her manner then. As far as it is possible for man to comprehend the thoughts of animals, it appeared that Topsy was repentant for her bad behavior in the past. That she had grave apprehension as to what the occasion meant was also suggested by her conduct.”

And it goes on like that. And that line, “As much as it’s possible for man to comprehend the thoughts of animals,” part of it you could say, well, they’re being kind of sardonic, or they’re trying to be funny. But I think with that line it also seems like they really are straining to read her mind, to see what she’s thinking at that moment.

And for the execution to have meaning for them, they had to see the elephants as human-like, as potentially having accountability, of showing remorse, for this kind of narrative of justice to make sense to them.

ED: One of the stories you told really dramatizes this, the story of Nick and Dick. So could you please tell us that story?

AMY WOOD: Well, there’s actually three stories. There’s Nick in 1899. And then there’s Dick in 1900. And then there’s Columbia executed in 1907.

And what’s interesting is that in those cases the circus– I don’t know if it was the owner or the circus keepers and trainers– lined up the other elephants for them to watch their fellow elephant be executed. And that’s where you get the language of this isn’t just a joke. It sounds funny to us, but for the people at the time, for them to do that– And they talk about in the news reports, they say, we wanted this to be a lesson to the other elephants. We wanted this to be a warning to the other elephants of what the price of disobedience is. And then they showed all sorts of shock and disappointment when the other elephants watched the execution indifferently.

ED: Were other animals executed?

AMY WOOD: I haven’t found reports of it. And to give you a sense of it, the circus archives in Baraboo, Wisconsin, it was kind of the World Circus archives, they have whole folders on elephant executions. There aren’t folders for lion or tiger executions.

There was a particular fascination with elephants throughout the 19th century. People had these kind of dual feelings about elephants at the time. On the one hand, elephants showed attachment to their kin and to their keepers. They were seen as very intelligent. They have a capacity to mourn.

But at the same time, they were seen as these kind of exotic monstrous beings. Their faces are not human-like at all. They’re inscrutable in some ways. You can’t read an elephant’s face. So that kind of tension between seeing elephants as intelligent, but also seeing them as strange, exotic, and monstrous is what led to that kind of fascination.

And it also led to– you can see that they became good substitutes for criminals in that way. Because people’s views towards criminals also had that dual aspect in the 19th century. On the one hand, criminals were seen as these kind of monstrous, irrational beings who stood outside of human society and who should suffer for their crimes. People felt a deep sense of vengeance or wanting retribution with criminals.

And at the same time, particularly in the late 19th century, you’re seeing new kinds of understandings of criminal, seeing them as objects of pity, people who might not be fully responsible for their actions or who failed to repress or contain animal impulses that we all struggle to retain. And so you can see kind of parallel there between how people are viewing elephants and how people are viewing criminals at the time.

ED: Amy Louise Wood is a professor at Illinois State University. Her book is called Lynching and Spectacle, Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890 to 1940. And if you’re interested, you can see the somewhat disturbing video of Topsy being electrocuted at our website, backstoryradio.org.