Also they realised that the execution was not the pleasant to watch, the prisoner may foam at the mouth, convulse violently and in some extreme cases catch fire. A certain amount of people had to be present at the execution and to make it seem more acceptable they started to put a hood over the face and to lessen the chance of a second surge of electricity being needed they would place a wet sponge under the main plate of the equipment to aid in the conduction of the electricity this also lessened the chance of the body catching fire. .
'We were lead into a small room and sat down on folding chairs, the man was lead in and his rites read, then it was almost like a ceremony and everything was seemingly carried out so precisely, after the man was pronounced dead by the doctor he was taken away by the prison guards. Only then were we released and I could smell burning flesh for hours afterwards. I felt sorry for the man as he looked so frightened and I could see it was hard on the prison guards. After this experience I do not feel this is the right way to treat Gods people.
This experience proves that the Electric chair was not as humane as was once thought. Later on America started to gas its prisoners. The gas chamber was a way of combating the smell, it catching fire and chances of it being unappealing to the spectators. The victim is lead into a chamber strapped to a chair much like the electric chair. The rites are read, a lever is pulled and gas is released into the chamber. The gas chamber can take sometime to kill a person although they are unconscious very quickly. Also it has the same problems as the electric chair in the fact that it is not very nice to watch because the prisoner can foam at the mouth and lose control of their bodily functions and they can defecate themselves. To make it a little easier on the eye someone invented a mask that would let the gas through but mask the foaming.
