Who Murdered Topsy?: The Animal Rights Series, #1

By Pete Geissler

Tom Edison and George Westinghouse battled for years over which type of electricity would be the worldwide standard. The Current War incited Tom to electrocute a six-ton elephant named Topsy. It's 1904. Edison is on trial for Topsy's premeditated murder a year earlier. In an unusual legal maneuver, Westinghouse assumed the state's prerogative by retaining the prosecutor, Bourke Cockran, a wealthy Manhattan attorney, Federal Congressman, and a mainstay in the Democratic Party. Edison retained the defense, Elias Kilgore, another wealthy Manhattan attorney with a long list of millionaire clients. At stake are the reputation and life of Tom Edison, the validity of the death penalty, the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, our laws governing our treatment of animals, and our continuing journey to be a more humane society. The world is watching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Expressive Press
• Release date: Feb 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781979250221

Pete Geissler

Pete Geissler is an outspoken advocate of good communications and behavior. His eight books, and hundreds of articles, speeches, and classes examine why and how to be articulate, to write well, and to treat people respectfully and ethically. His accomplishments include authorship of a publisher's best seller and a finalist in best books 2014, and writing more than three million words that have been published or spoken in formal settings. Pete is founder and CEO of The Expressive Press, a publisher of books in several genre. He also teaches and coaches engineers, scientists, and business persons how to write and to use writing to boost their productivity, value, and careers. He serves on the Board of Directors, Opera Theater Pittsburgh, and chairs its planned giving committee.

Book preview

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Foreword: What is real?

What is imagined?

A speculative novella embellishes truth

Who Murdered Topsy? is a blend of fact and fiction that we once labeled Creative Non-Fiction and now label Speculative Fiction. The book is based on a true story that has been embellished with imagined conversations and three imagined characters. One is a composite of three real executioners—Edwin Davis and his successors John Hilbert and Robert Elliott—that I’ve named Jeb Clapton; a crusading journalist that I've named Sarah Scrivener; and the third, a defense attorney that I've named Elias Kilgore.

I've fictionalized several events, including the trial of Tom Edison for the murder itself, Jeb’s graduation from Cornell University as one of the country's and world's first electrical engineers, and Sarah's graduation from Syracuse University as one of the first female journalists. Other fictions that could easily have taken place are conversations between Alfred Southwick and Elbridge Gerry, Jeb and Doctor Bleyer, and Tom Edison and Harold Brown. Otherwise, the characters and events are real and based on contemporary sources.

For example, it’s true that Topsy the elephant lived her traumatic life from 1885 to 1903, when she came to her tragic death ... and that Doctor Julius Mount Bleyer was a throat physician in New York City who, according to The New York World of November 1894, invented the electric chair, not Tom Edison or Harold Brown or Alfred Southwick, as is commonly thought.

It's true that the first executions by electric chair took place in the latter days of the 1800s, the first person electrocuted was William Kemmler, and that he died a horrible death that was whitewashed by the political hacks who couldn’t admit their savage mistake. They were aided and abetted by journalists who could not find the courage to challenge politicians or Edison.

It’s true that Sam Smith—his real name—was killed by accidental electrocution that inspired Alfred Southwick to publically electrocute dozens of cats and dogs to demonstrate that purposeful electrocution was humane. Then Tom Edison and his obsessed henchman, Harold Brown, followed in the evil doctor’s footsteps by electrocuting still more dozens of pet cats and dogs, then a cow, a horse, and an elephant, in their misguided and misrepresented frenzy to prove that alternating current was more dangerous than direct current, which I've labeled The Big Lie. And it’s true that Alfred's, Tom’s and Harold’s dirty and despicable deeds were whitewashed by journalists who naively believed whatever Tom, The Wizard of Menlo Park, said.

If I have maligned Tom, so be it. I personally believe that killing dozens of animals in order to save his global-sized ego and his financial commitments in the wrong technology to be so repugnant as to be unforgivable and treated as murder one by our laws. I believe that without diminishing his many achievements. If I've maligned journalists and politicians for ignoring Tom's self-serving cruelty and lies, I meant to and do not apologize.

I grant a compassionate pass to my fictional Jeb. He fell into a sordid profession from which he seemingly could not escape. On the other side of the coin, no one forced him to choose killing people, albeit legally, for his life’s avocation.  I also grant my admiration to my fictional Sarah for her vocal and courageous stance against capital punishment and electrocution.

On a broader scale, the book opens discussions and asks for answers to questions that test our belief that we are a civil, humane, and compassionate society: Is capital punishment necessary? If so, how does it advance the over arching purpose of government by enhancing the happiness, security, and serenity of all citizens? Does capital punishment per se violate the US Constitution by being cruel and unusual punishment? Should killing animals for commercial and personal gain be charged as murder under the law, just as is killing humans? 

Are these killers—Edison, Brown, and Southwick—of a long string of animals and people ‘serial killers’? Serial murderers? Which one murdered Topsy? Or did they all play a part? Whose interests were furthered by her murder?

— Pete Geissler

Prologue: The author's life with electricity and the electric chair, or,

why write this book?

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Ossining, New York, a sleepy commuter town on the Hudson River some thirty miles north of Manhattan that housed about fifteen thousand souls in the shadow of Sing Sing Prison. Sing Sing became the most mythic and famous prison in the world, thanks to Hollywood's tough good guys in their light-colored, broad-brimmed fedoras, George Raft in particular, who sneered as they threatened to send  criminals, the dirty rats, 'up the river' to pay for their misdeeds.

Sing Sing Prison, now renamed the Sing Sing Correctional Facility to reflect our more enlightened treatment of inmates (nee prisoners), became an icon of man's inhumanity against man. The prison was the home of an electric chair, as was Auburn Prison in the Finger Lakes Region of Central New York, and, earlier, Newgate Prison in lower Manhattan.

Accompanying Sing Sing's electric chair was its considerable myth. Perhaps the most enduring myth was that all the lights in the town dimmed when the state electrocuted a criminal. In fact, the prison had its own generating plant that operated independently from the plant that supplied electricity to the town. Any dimming was an illusion that added to the prison's mystique and attracted tourists and their cash to the town.

Nevertheless, I remember staying awake until after 11PM, the usual time for executions, on Thursday, June 19, 1953, when I was a strapping and fuzzy-cheeked lad of twenty. The state electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that night, for espionage. The lights did not flicker.

Then, by sheer and happy coincidence, I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the home of Westinghouse Electric Company. Hidden among its history was George Westinghouse's avid opposition to the death penalty and to Tom Edison's lies about the safety of his DC current and the dangers of AC current. Edison supposedly recanted those lies in his later years, admitting too late that he was wrong.

I am amazed at the contrasts between the two inventors and business gurus. George was a true humanitarian who spent a small fortune fighting capital punishment and the electric chair. He seemingly knew that legal murdering of our miscreants and electrocution were at the time, and remain, cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Constitution.

Tom Edison, on the other hand, killed or ordered the killing, seemingly without remorse, of dozens of animals ranging from dogs weighing twenty pounds and up to an elephant weighing six tons. He extended his lethal ways to humans by, supposedly, inventing the electric chair—he didn't—but his massive ego forced him to accept the honor, or dishonor, in order to prove that Westinghouse's AC current is more deadly than his DC current.

It isn't.  In fact, DC is more dangerous than AC, but naive and unquestioning journalists, politicians, and others believed the Wizard of Menlo Park.  I call it The Big Lie, and blame Tom for initiating and perpetuating it in a rush of self-serving intellectual and ethical hypocrisy.

*   *   *   *   *

Historical interest: Sing Sing is derived from Sint Sink, a local Indian tribe, which is a variation of Ossine Ossine, meaning 'stone upon stone'. The site, about 30 miles north of New York City on the East bank of the Hudson River, included a quarry in which inmates toiled to provide stone blocks for building the prison and other structures. Construction of the prison began in 1825, 60 of the 800 proposed cells were completed a year later, and all 800