Alfred Southwick

Birth Name:

Alfred Porter Southwick

Birth Date:

May 18, 1826

Birth Place:

Saybrook, Ohio

Death Date:

June 11, 1898

Place of Death:

456 Michigan Street, Buffalo, New York

Age:

Cause of Death:

Natural causes

Cemetery Name:

Forest Lawn Cemetery

Claim to Fame:

The Odd and the Interesting

In 1881 Alfred Southwick heard a story about an intoxicated man who touched a live electric generator. Given that the man died so quickly, Southwick concluded that electricity could be used as an alternative to hanging for executions. And while his background included stints as a steam-boat engineer and dentist, Alfred was credited with inventing the electric chair as a method of legal execution. He also served as a professor at the University of Buffalo school of dental medicine, now known as the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Fun Fact

Ok, we know you’re going to ask, so here we go …

Who was the first person executed using Alfred Southwick’s electric chair? On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler was executed by electrocution. Southwick was present and is reported to have said, “There is the culmination of ten years work and study! We live in a higher civilization from this day.”

William Kemmler was a produce peddler, alcoholic, and murderer, who, in 1890, became the first person in the world to be executed by electric chair. He was convicted of murdering Matilda “Tillie” Ziegler, his common-law wife, a year earlier. Although electrocution had previously been successfully used to kill a horse, Kemmler’s execution did not go smoothly.

Strapped into the chair, the generator was charged with 1,000 volts, which was thought to be adequate to induce quick unconsciousness and cardiac arrest. The chair had already been tested; a horse had been electrocuted the day before. Current passed through Kemmler for 17 seconds. The power was turned off and Kemmler was declared dead by Edward Charles Spitzka. Suddenly witnesses noticed Kemmler was still breathing. The attending physicians, Spitzka and Carlos Frederick MacDonald, came forward to examine Kemmler. After confirming he was still alive, Spitzka reportedly called out, “Have the current turned on again, quick—no delay.”

In the second attempt, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under his skin ruptured and bled, and some witnesses claimed his body caught fire. The New York Times reported instead that “an awful odor began to permeate the death chamber, and then, as though to cap the climax of this fearful sight, it was seen that the hair under and around the electrode on the head and the flesh under and around the electrode at the base of the spine was singeing. The stench was unbearable.” Upon autopsy, doctors had found the blood vessels under the cap of his skull had carbonized and the top of the brain had hardened. Witnesses reported the smell of burning flesh and several nauseated spectators tried to leave the room.

The execution took approximately eight minutes.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Forest Lawn Cemetery

1990 Main Road

Buffalo, New York, 14208

USA

North America

Map:

Cemetery map of Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York

Grave Location:

Section 31, Lot 21, Grave 3

Grave Location Description

As you enter the cemetery follow the blue line in the road until you come to the intersection of Sections 25, 26 and 31. Located 6 rows from the road and behind the large Nott * Hunt monument look for the 4 identical rectangle markers that only come up about one foot from the ground. Alfred has the inscription “Father” on his monument and is buried next to his wife.

Grave Location GPS

42.92700192627793, -78.85984359269278

Photos:

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Videos Featuring Alfred Southwick:

The Electric Chair History

Execution By Electric Chair

Aug 6, 1890: William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by electric chair

The Execution of Martha M. Place Was A Shocking Case

The Justified Execution of Ruth Snyder

See More:

Annie Edson Taylor

Lorraine Warren

Quinta Maggia McDonald

popular name: Quinta Maggia McDonald

date_of_death: December 7, 1929

age: 29

cause_of_death: Radium sarcoma, industrial poisoning

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Quinta Maggia McDonald was the middle child of seven Maggia sisters; listed in order of age: Louise, Clara, Albina, Mollie, Quinta, Irma and Josephine. Children of Italian immigrants, Albina, Mollie, Quinta and Irma all worked in the radium-dial factory. Quinta was recruited to work at the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey as a dial-painter. Like her sisters she would end up paying the price. The initial effects of radium seemed harmless, and the substance was popular amongst the younger girls in the factory. They would go home from a day of painting with their clothes glowing from the radium exposure. Some would even paint the buttons on their dresses or their nails, but the joy of the radium glow was short lived. Long-term radiation sickness symptoms soon became present among many of the women who worked with radium paint. Common issues included bone cancer, anemia, lesions, and sores. These problems were exhibited in Amelia Maggia, the first dial painter to die from radiation sickness. After Amelia's death, Quinta initially went to the doctor complaining of dental pain where her teeth began to just drop out of her mouth. Unlike her sister before her, she received a diagnoses of radium poisoning and was told there was no cure. Sometime later she noticed pain in her ankles, legs and hips and was put into plaster casts to keep her immobile in the chance this might bring some relieve. Upon her final hospitalization the doctors noticed a large sarcoma on her leg - the kind of bone tumor that killed a fellow Radium Girl a year before. She eventually lapsed into a coma and died at the age of 29 leaving behind two young children.