People love killing each other. But it is usually not allowed most
of the time and in most of the world. Sometimes exceptions are made. Criminals
have frequently been sentenced to death in most parts of the world. And sometimes prisoners of
war have also suffered this fate. There is a thin line between justice and murder.
In previous episodes we have looked at the various ways societies have ended the lives of the
condemned. Today we are going to look at how the gas chamber helped accomplish this goal.
---------------------------- How It Works
When a gas chamber is used to kill a person, it works by asphyxiating the victim.
Eventually there is no way for the condemned to acquire oxygen. Consciousness is lost and death
follows. But it isn t always immediate, and the process can be excruciating.
The two most common gases used to kill people are carbon monoxide and cyanide.
With carbon monoxide several symptoms can occur before loss of consciousness. As the
gas concentration increases in a person s blood there are many unpleasant side effects. Dizziness,
headaches, chest pain, vomiting, and confusion are a few of the more common ones.
Cyanide is even more unpleasant. It affects the ability of cells to transport energy which
results in many painful symptoms for victims. The heart rate slows, convulsions may occur,
and the lungs suffer injuries from contact with the gas.
A victim may lose consciousness quickly, or death could take several painful minutes to arrive.
To better understand why this method of execution was used it helps understand
where and why it first appeared. The Haitian Revolution
The first gas chamber may have been created by a French General who served under Napoleon.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Europeans were very fond of sugar.
It drove economic growth in Europe as it was an essential commodity.
They acquired sugar because plantations in the tropics grew sugar cane.
And these plantations could only meet demand by using slave labor.
Haiti was essential to the economies of Europe s most powerful nations. It produced 60 percent of
the world s coffee and 40 percent of the sugar used by France and England.
The island was also home to half of the slave population in the Caribbean.
In the late 1700s the region had around a million slaves. Haiti alone had more than 452,000 of them.
They were kept in line by a white population of only 40,000.
In August 1791, the slave population rebelled and attacked their former owners.
By 1792 they controlled most of the island. In 1793 France went to war with Great Britain.
France knew they couldn t fight the slaves in Haiti and win a war. To avoid a military disaster,
they abolished slavery in France and all its territories. The strategy worked and
the French were able to keep other European powers from taking the island.
After the war ended conflict between France and the population of Haiti began again. It was
temporarily resolved but tempers flared again in 1802. It became obvious to the residents of Haiti
that Napoleon intended to reinstate slavery in Haiti. They did not intend to let it happen.
By 1803 the slaves had won. But it came at a steep cost.
At the end of the conflict the French general Vicomte de Rochambeau was sent to
crush the Haitian forces. And he had a deep hatred for black people. He waged a campaign against the
local black population that was almost genocidal. He brought 15,000 attack dogs from Jamaica that
had been trained to maul black people. He also hanged 500 men, women, and children.
Rochambeau needed new ways to execute large numbers of people. In addition to hanging, he
used firing squads. He also liked to put Haitians in bags and throw them in the sea to drown.
Historians disagree on whether the General used gas to kill rebellious slaves. But author Claude
Ribbe in 2005 published a book called Napoleon s Crimes: A Blueprint for Hitler . In this book he
claimed that Rochambeau created the first gas chamber to assist mass executions.
The hold of a ship was used to confine the victims.
Then a method called "fumigational-sulphurous baths" was used to finish them. The French
would burn sulfur which in turn made a sulfur dioxide gas.
This filled the hold below eventually killing everyone trapped there.
Their deaths were certainly not pleasant. Sulphur dioxide irritates skin and membranes in the eyes,
nose, throats, and lungs. Death from inhaling this gas was slow and painful.
Eventually the Haitians won their freedom. But the idea of using deadly gases to kill people
was never forgotten. The Final Solution
No other group in history used gas chambers to kill more people
than the Nazis did during World War Two. They first began experimenting with poison gas
in late 1939. The first victims were part of a euthanasia program that killed people
with disabilities. The Germans manufactured carbon monoxide gas to eliminate the victims.
As far as the Nazis were concerned this method of killing was successful.
As the war progressed some of the soldiers that were ordered to kill men, women, and children
started having psychological problems. Most people don t find it easy to commit genocide.
But the Nazis were determined to help solve this problem.
The Nazis couldn t afford empathy, especially as they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
So, they created gas vans. These vans had the exhaust redirected to an interior compartment.
Victims were placed in the vans and would slowly asphyxiate as the running
engine deposited its waste into their lungs. This method of execution was effective and cheap.
So, the Nazis needed to try it on an industrial scale.
Before 1941 was over the Nazis decided it was a good idea to send Jewish prisoners
to camps. One of the goals of these camps was to quickly and efficiently kill the prisoners.
Destroying undesirables was part of Hitler s so-called Final Solution .
The Jewish victims were forced into cattle cars that were carried by trains.
When the trains arrived at the camps the prisoners were forced to exit.
They were then told that they had to be sent into showers to be disinfected.
As the prisoners approached the chamber the guard would make them raise their arms above
their heads. The real reason for doing this is because the guards could fit more prisoners into
the chamber. And the more of them that were in the chamber, the faster they would all suffocate.
Once the victims were in the chamber the door would be closed. A diesel engine was
used to generate carbon monoxide which filled the chamber. Everyone within soon died.
As the war progressed the Nazis also tried to improve the gassing process. At the Auschwitz camp
in Poland the Nazis conducted experiments with Zyklon B. It was a cyanide-based pesticide that
was also quite effective at killing people. By the end of the war most of the Nazi camps
were using Zyklon B to execute prisoners. Although they weren t the last to use gas
chambers the Nazis were the only ones to do it on an industrial scale.
They were not the first or the last to use a form of cyanide gas.
Death Row There are two
other countries besides Nazi Germany that used gas chambers to execute people in the 20th century.
Lithuania experimented with it briefly in the 1930s. But the United States used it
in various places for several years. And in some states, it s still legal today.
The first person to earn the privilege of dying by gas inhalation in the US was a Chinese immigrant
named Gee Jon. He came to the United States in 1907 and spent most of his time in San Francisco
s Chinatown. He was also the member of a local gang that dealt in narcotics and liquor.
Most of the time if a Chinese person killed another Chinese person the law didn t get
involved. However, one night in August 1921 Gee shot Tom Quong Kee. Tom owned a laundry
establishment in Nevada, and they were less forgiving of violence than San Francisco.
Gee Jon was tried for the crime and, once found guilty, was sentenced to death.
A bill authorizing the use of lethal gas was passed by Nevada in 1921,
which made Gee eligible to be the first person in Nevada killed in this manner.
Gee s attorney appealed the decision claiming it was cruel and unusual punishment.
Nevada s State Supreme Court denied the appeal and complimented Nevada s legislature for
"inflicting the death penalty in the most humane manner known to modern science."
Cyanide gas was going to be the method of execution.
The California Cyanide Company in Los Angeles was the only distributor of cyanide near Nevada.
They refused to deliver the deadly chemical to Nevada.
When an assistant Warden showed up to retrieve the chemicals
several people at the company resigned rather than participate in killing the prisoner.
Nonetheless the cyanide found its way to Nevada. At first the prison tried to
kill Gee by pumping cyanide gas into Gee s cell while he was sleeping. It didn t work
because the cell was too well ventilated. The prison officials had to build a gas chamber.
At this point it was obvious that to kill a person with gas a small airtight enclosure was needed.
They quickly erected a structure in the prison s butcher shop. To make sure it worked they had
to test it first. That was done with the successful execution of a cat.
When the time arrived to kill Gee Jon he was strapped into a chair in the chamber.
A window was installed so observers could look into the chamber and observe Gee as he died.
Gee was weeping uncontrollably as he was strapped into the chair.
The captain of the guards yelled Brace Up! at which point Gee composed himself.
Then four pounds of liquid cyanide were sprayed into the chamber.
Most of it settled as liquid on the floor. Spectators smelled almonds
which meant cyanide was leaking from the chamber. Prison officials had to evacuate
the area and ventilate it to prevent further death. But they did succeed in killing Gee.
Gee appeared to lose consciousness in about five seconds. His head continued to nod up
and down for five or six minutes. After ten minutes his body was finally motionless.
The gas chamber was never the most common way to execute prisoners,
but it was the most elaborate. By the 1950s the process was more streamlined.
The prisoner was led into the chamber and strapped to a chair.
The executioner would then pull a lever which dropped pellets of sodium cyanide into sulfuric
acid. The reaction produced large amounts of the deadly gas which in turn killed the prisoner.
Death in this manner was often not fast nor was it painless.
Two very problematic executions caused the gas chamber to fall out of favor.
In 1976 Jimmy Lee Gray kidnapped and murdered a three-year-old. He was convicted by the
State of Mississippi which sentenced him to death. The penalty was carried out in 1983.
Those who observed the process were traumatized by the experience.
The gas chamber in Mississippi had an iron bar located behind the inmate s head. Although the
victim was strapped into a chair the head was not restrained. As Gray began inhaling the gas,
he began thrashing around banging his head repeatedly into the iron bar.
Prison officials cleared the observation room eight minutes after the gas had been released.
Gray s attorney criticized the decision, saying "Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his
head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while reporters counted his moans .
The reporters counted eleven moans. No additional prisoners were sentenced to death
by lethal gas after 1984. Mississippi finally decommissioned its gas chamber in 1998.
Donald Eugene Harding was convicted of killing two people in Arizona in 1980. He was led to the
gas chamber to meet his fate in 1992. Harding did not die quickly. He took eleven
minutes to asphyxiate and suffered greatly. Supposedly during his last moments Harding
repeatedly cursed the warden and gestured repeatedly with his middle fingers.
The Warden was so traumatized by the event that he refused to ever perform another gas chamber
execution again. Arizona voters agreed and the gas chamber was eliminated.
Although in some states prisoners can still choose the gas chamber nobody ever
makes that choice. It was effectively eliminated as a method of execution
in the United States after 1992. -------------------------------
Humanity has spent a long time trying to discover the perfect method for killing each
other. It s an ongoing experiment that never seems to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
Gas chambers can certainly kill large numbers of people quickly and efficiently. But they inflict
an incredible amount of psychological and physical suffering. Even hardened
professionals who were used to delivering death found the process to be disturbing.
The use of lethal gas for executions has been eliminated in most of the world.
But there are rumors that it persists in places such as North Korea. Such a cheap
and effective method for killing people is hard to avoid for the dedicated dictator.
What do you think about gas chambers? Was it a shameful event in human history? Or
was it a suitable end for deserving criminals?
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