The Time Thomas Edison Electrocuted an Elephant (and Filmed It)

The so-called War of the Currents, spanning the late 1880s and early 1890s, ironically had a bit of both. The deaths of animals by electrocution, staged as publicity to demonstrate the safety of one form of current over another, are fairly well documented. But what many consider one of the last examples is the 1903 execution of Topsy, an elephant that proved—and still proves—how repugnant the human species can be when mistreating animals.

The War of the Currents was much more than a technical rivalry between alternating current and direct current. It was a clash of visions, styles, and thoughts, but it also became a race to see who would stoop lower in order to "win." Unfortunately, with the installation of the new electrical networks, the first human deaths by electrocution began to emerge. In most cases, it was just people in the wrong place at the wrong time, but these events not only fueled Thomas Edison's belief that alternating current was inferior and unsafe, but also gave rise to more sinister developments, such as the electric chair, first used in 1890, and the deaths of multiple animals (dogs, calves, and even a horse) due to the demonstrations by Harold P. Brown.

That American engineer launched a true crusade against alternating current, going so far as to form what more than one lawyer today might call an "illegal association" with Edison, so that the first electric chair would use Westinghouse generators, Edison's direct rival at the time.

(Warning: The video below shows the death of an animal, without any censorship.)

I apologize for such an introduction full of historical details, but they are necessary to visualize the madness behind the War of the Currents. More than a decade later, on January 4, 1903, the execution of Topsy took place, an Asian elephant brought illegally to the United States. That execution happened at Luna Park in Coney Island, which was still under construction.

Topsy's life was full of torture and slavery. Falsely promoted as "the first elephant born in the United States," Topsy gained a reputation as "dangerous" after killing a spectator, James Fielding Blount, who according to testimonies was drunk, began throwing sand at the elephant, and burned her trunk with a cigar.

After an additional incident with another spectator, her owners (the Forepaugh & Sell circus) decided to sell her, and she ended up in the hands of Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, the owners of the aforementioned Luna Park. Both were forced to fire Topsy's "trainer," William "Whitey" Alt, after repeated mistreatment and an attempt to ride her like a horse while apparently intoxicated, thereby sealing Topsy's fate. No other circus or zoo was willing to accept her, so they would end her life.

Thompson and Dundy, repulsive minds as few, tried to make the execution public, and even sell tickets at 25 cents per person. Finally, the ASPCA (which already existed at that time) blocked the sale of tickets, but more than 1,500 people and a hundred members of the press still gathered to bear witness. Topsy was first poisoned with potassium cyanide, and then executed with 6,600 volts, using alternating current. The entire process was recorded on a silent film created by the "Edison Film Company," a subsidiary of the Edison Manufacturing Company. In fact, the name "Thomas A. Edison" supposedly appears at the beginning of the film.

According to historians, Topsy's execution cannot be linked to Thomas Edison because the War of the Currents had ended ten years earlier (Edison himself had begun to lose control of his company in 1890), and because in 1897 he sold his last electricity-related stocks to focus on the iron market. Moreover, several sources indicate that Edison was not present at Luna Park at the time of the execution.

Even so, the rule is that there is no impartial historian, and on more than one occasion certain "compatriots" have tried to present Edison in a better light. In the public's mind, Topsy was the last victim of the War of the Currents. At the site of her death there now stands a monument, a sad and shameful reminder of something that must never happen again.