There was an elephant electrocuted too in all that. As I recall her name was Nellie and it was at a World’s Fair (?).

*I looked this up again because it’s been 20 years or more since I learned about that. Her name was Topsy and it was at Coney Island. She struck one of her handlers after being abused. Apparently, they filmed it too and its on the web for download. Gross.

Edison had tried electrocuting all those dogs and it didn’t sway people to the 'danger' of AC like he’d hoped. He figured it was because dogs were smaller than humans so people didn’t see the 'danger' to themselves. Maybe they would with a bigger animal.

He kinda glosses over the fact that people were afraid of electricity already. It was new and people were afraid it would leak out of the walls and hurt them. So there was the huge effort to explain electricity to people, how it worked and why it was safe. All this was going on more or less at the same time, or near it. The govt just had more trust at the time. And he was the lone expert saying otherwise. Plus, his rivalry with Tesla was fairly well known as was his tendency to be a petty man.

Anyway …

Nellie had been abused by her handlers and became intractable. So her owner thought to punish her by electrocuting her. If she lived, she’d be too scared to cause problems any more; she’d be docile. If she died, at least she wasn’t a problem anymore and they sold tickets to this event so he recouped some cost. As I recall, he was in the States with a circus, but wasn’t American himself. He was Italian or something.

Some people are just depraved. It doesn’t matter where they’re from. They’re just not right in the head.

America has it’s share for sure, but so does England and every other country in the world. I’ll remind you that crucifixion, immurement, and burning at the stake were not exactly light weight executions.