On August 6, 1890, at Auburn Prison, New York, William Kemmler became the first person to be sent to the chair. He was convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. After he was strapped in, a charge of approximately 700 volts was delivered for only 17 seconds before the current failed. Although witnesses reported smelling burnt clothing and charred flesh, Kemmler was far from dead, and a second shock was prepared. The second charge was 1,030 volts and applied for about two minutes, whereupon smoke was observed coming from the head of Kemmler, who was clearly deceased. An autopsy showed that the electrode attached to his back had burned through to the spine. Electrocution as a humane means of execution was first suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had witnessed an elderly drunkard “painlessly” killed after touching the terminals of an electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. In the prevalent form of execution at the time—death b...
Mental patients stripped of dignity, live naked
KOLKATA/MURSHIDABAD: More than 50 inmates of a mental asylum in Behrampore, West Bengal, are forced to remain naked, without a shed of fibre to protect their dignity, because of alleged callousness by the authorities. Twenty of them are women. They say their clothes are so badly infested with bugs that they prefer to go nude.
Members of Kolkata-based mental health rights organization, Anjali, raised the alarm after Behrampore Mental Hospital authorities took no action despite repeated pleas. "We go to the hospital five days a week to train male and female patients. Each visit is traumatising because we see the inmates languishing in wretched conditions. In winter, colonies of lice nest in the staircase. The stench makes the air heavy and nauseating. Their plight has got worse in the past couple of months. We repeatedly asked the hospital authorities to make the conditions more habitable but there has been no improvement," Sumana Bhattacharya told TOI from Behrampore.
On the eve of Independence Day, she and fellow campaigner Aditi Basu met some of the 20 women and 30-35 men at the asylum and decided to make the horror story public. "It has been traumatising for us. Imagine the kind of trauma experienced by the men and women who are forced to live in this undignified manner. Most of the naked inmates cowered on seeing us. Some tried to cover their private parts with their hands.
The sense of shame was evident. When we asked why they weren't wearing anything, they said the clothes were so infested with bed bugs and body lice that wearing them caused unbearable itching," said Basu
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