[at-l] Re: A Walk in the Woods

[gwbrown1 at gmail.com (Greg Brown)]

On 5/31/05, Carol Donaldson <carol1944@brmemc.net> wrote:
> Ohh, I'm from the South, remember?  You can't say "hanging" around here and not get someone all excited.  In Erwin, they even hung an elephant!
>

There is a book about this event called The Day They Hung The Elephant
(shouldn't it read "hanged"?).

Sadly, the US also publicly executed another elephant, this one named
Topsy.  On Coney Island at the turn of the last century there were
numerous large amusement parks, one of which was Luna Park, known for
it's vast display of lights and ability to eat up enormous amounts of
power.  Luna also had live elephants wandering the park.  As you can
imagine, this was not the best idea, mixing live elephants and drunken
civilians.  Topsy killed three men in three years, the last being a
trainer who fed her a lit cigarette.  The decision was made to
eliminate Topsy but she proved to be a tough old girl, surviving a
number of cyanide laced dinners before leaving park management
searching for some other option for her elimination.

Knowing a good PR opportunity when he saw one, Thomas Edison decided
to electrocute Topsy in front of an audience and film crew to
demonstrate the "harmful effects" of AC power (Edison was, at the
time, locked into a bitter struggle between his vision of "safe" DC
power for the masses and George Westinghouse, who was pushing for the
adoption of AC power).

Edison proposed to publicly electrocute Topsy and the park management
agreed.  And so the stage was set, and on an unseasonably cold day in
1903, Topsy was led to a platform, hooked to main power source of Luna
park, and the switch was thrown.  She was dead in 10 seconds.

Luna park burned down about 10 years later and the body of Topsy was
sent to the landfill (no gravestone or plaque anywhere to be found).
If you ask the people at the Coney Island museum to show you the
electrocution film they will.  But don't ask in front of a big crowd.

Greg