This problem of the hand having “little to do” produced concern—and even outright indignation—in the late 19th century, when it came to matters of life and death. In particular, debates over the electric death penalty demonstrated a fundamental uneasiness with taking a life in a manner quite “‘insulated’ and at a remove from the body in question. In an 1888 essay on “Electric Killing,” Thos. D. Lockwood noted that, although electricity could allow people to communicate in myriad ways, “we have not yet pressed a key or a push-button for the deliberate purpose of killing anybody.” Lockwood wrote in response to a suggestion made in New York, outlined in a report from the Gerry Commission to begin using electricity for the death penalty, and he called this a “cold blooded proposition for the degradation of a noble science; and moreover one which is entirely uncalled for.”
Electricians convening at the National Electric Light Association convention in the following year expressed similar concerns in a panel assessing the constitutionality of electrical capital punishment. Vocal dissenter “Professor Anthony” argued that no sheriff would want to “place the electrodes and touch the button which was to produce death.” He wagered that even after 100 years, electricians or other experts would still have to carry out the act because no nonexpert would take on such a weighty responsibility. Despite these outspoken rejoinders, only five months later, New York passed the Electric Execution Act, which conjectured that applying a scientific and technological method to executions would reduce public outrage toward capital punishment.
Given the “gentle pressure on the button” required to carry out executions, some also viewed the shift as a progression to “moral and intellectual rather than physical” ground, quite unlike hanging, stoning, beheading, or other more viscerally violent methods. Public interest in the death penalty crystallized around this modern, technologically superior and masterful form of control that could take a life. Push buttons combined with the electric chair to create a standardized, state-sanctioned form of justice that was described as “instantaneous” and “well calculated to inspire terror.”
Removing labor from the operation via electric button provided a useful justification for managing deviant behavior while making the activity less overtly gruesome and brutal. Yet some worried that people did not know enough about electricity to use it effectively for execution, nor, as one author writes in the first issue of the now-defunct Belford’s Magazine, should the criminal “be put out of the way in the easiest possible manner for him.” Death penalty by button could be perceived as too simplistic and therefore unfit for its weighty task, given that it operated with the same touch as an electric bell push; from this perspective, a “reversal of forces” violated a tenet that human life should not be taken without effort.