Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

The other man was younger — possibly only twenty-three or twenty-four — and though he looked fit enough and manly enough, there was still evidence on his face of the boy he had so recently been. His disposition seemed sunnier — more overtly optimistic — than his companion’s, and his suit had a sharpness and style about it that made the barman green with envy.

‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ O’Toole asked.

‘I’d kill for a beer,’ said the shorter man.

‘So would I,’ the taller man agreed. ‘Kill for it — and damn the consequences.’ He paused, and smiled down at his companion. ‘But if I was to be executed for the crime, I still think I’d prefer the rope to the electric chair.’

‘What do you really think of the way we dispatch our murderers over here?’ the shorter man, Alex Meade, asked, as the barman was filling a jug for them.

‘It was. . interesting,’ replied the taller man, Sam Blackstone.

‘You mean, impressive .’

‘I mean interesting .’

Meade chuckled. ‘You just can’t bring yourself to say that we’ve got the edge on you in this matter, can you, Sam?’ he asked. ‘You just can’t admit that while you Brits are still stuck in the fifteenth century with your executions, we Yanks have embraced living in the twentieth.’

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the twentieth century until next year — 1901 — Blackstone thought, but there seemed little point in getting into a pedantic debate with the American colleague who had been kind enough to take the trouble to bring him to Cayuga County to witness the execution.

‘To tell you the truth, the whole process seemed rather slow and ponderous,’ Blackstone admitted.

‘Slow and ponderous?’ Meade repeated. ‘The guy was dead within fifteen seconds of pulling the switch.’

‘Maybe he was,’ Blackstone conceded. ‘But, dear me, it seemed to take for ever to get him into a position where the switch could be pulled.’

‘And how long would it take in Limeyland?’ Meade asked, sounding a little aggrieved.

‘If everything goes smoothly, there’s never more than twelve seconds between the condemned man leaving his cell and taking the drop which breaks his neck.’

Meade shook his head in wonder. ‘You guys,’ he said. ‘England must be the only country in the world that makes a positive virtue out of being old-fashioned. It’s a miracle to me that you ever gave up bows and arrows.’

‘Being old-fashioned is not just one of our greatest strengths,’ Blackstone replied, as the barman handed him the jug of frothing beer. ‘It’s also an important part of our charm.’

‘Is that right?’ Meade asked, as he turned and headed for a free table. ‘I must admit, I never knew Englishmen had charm.’

There were many things about America that Blackstone found strange and disconcerting, and the saloon culture was one of them. Back in England, each pub was a series of small rooms, only vaguely connected to one another. Here, on the other side of the pond, intimacy seemed to have been sacrificed in the interest of ostentatious democracy, and most drinking establishments were like this one, consisting of one vast, almost prairie-like room.

The beer was different, too. It had none of the gravity of a pint of London bitter. It was lighter and more frivolous — a sign, as he saw it, that Americans had still not come to appreciate what a serious matter drinking was.

‘You’re drawing comparisons again, aren’t you?’ Alex Meade asked him, from across the table.

‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ Blackstone admitted.

But then, wasn’t it only natural that he would?

It was less than a month since he had disembarked from the second class deck of the liner that had brought him to New York, and been met on the quayside by the fresh-faced detective sergeant in the straw boater.

His mission had been simple — to identify a prisoner and take him back to England, where the man was under sentence of death. But things had not worked out quite as intended. Within a few hours of first setting foot on American soil — or rather, on American concrete — Blackstone had found himself involved in an investigation into the murder of a police inspector.

Nor had the successful conclusion of that case done anything to speed his return home. His prisoner had escaped — been allowed to escape, bribed his way into an escape — and until he was recaptured, Blackstone was seconded to the NYPD.

‘Did I ever tell you how the invention of the electric chair came about?’ Alex Meade asked innocently.

But there was nothing really innocent about it — Meade had an almost missionary zeal when it came to explaining his country to his English friend, a zeal which Blackstone found fascinating and irritating in almost equal measure, and often both at the same time.

The Englishman smiled again. ‘No, you never did tell me,’ he confessed.

Meade took a long sip of his beer, which Blackstone guessed meant that this would be one of his longer anecdotes.

‘As with so many other things in this great country of ours, it was driven by commerce,’ Meade began. ‘Specifically, it was driven by the War of Currents.’

‘The War of Currents?’ Blackstone repeated, as he knew he was supposed to.

‘Indeed,’ Alex Meade replied. ‘See, the first person to start supplying power in America was Thomas Edison.’ He paused. ‘You’ll have heard of him?’

Blackstone nodded. ‘Invented the light bulb, didn’t he?’

‘Among other things,’ Meade agreed. ‘At any rate, Edison’s power system used direct current, which was fine and dandy in a way, but had the drawback that the power generator could never be more than a mile and a half from the place that was using the power. That didn’t matter at first, because direct current was the only show in town, so everybody used it. Then along came Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse with their alternating current.’

He paused again, in case there was anything Blackstone wished to say.

‘I’m not much of a scientist,’ the Englishman admitted.

‘Tesla invented AC while he was working for Edison, but Tom wasn’t interested in the idea. Westinghouse was quite another matter. He could see the potential of a power source that could be created many miles away from where it was being used, and went into competition with Edison.’

‘And part of that competition was to see who could produce the first electric chair?’ Blackstone guessed.

Meade chuckled. ‘You couldn’t be further from the truth. What actually happened was that it soon became obvious to Edison that Westinghouse’s system was vastly superior, but — Tom being Tom — he couldn’t bring himself to admit it publicly and change over to it himself. So what he did do was to start spreading the story that alternating current was much more dangerous than direct.’

‘I believe that’s what you Americans would call “dirty pool”,’ Blackstone said.

‘Yeah, but, at the same time, we can’t help admiring the guy for being so smart,’ Meade replied. ‘Where was I?’

‘Dangerous,’ Blackstone prompted.

‘That’s right. Now, at just that time, the authorities were looking for a more humane way of executing people than hanging them,’ Meade continued. ‘A dentist called Southwick had already come up with the idea of an electric chair, and Edison secretly financed a guy called Brown to develop it.’

‘Because of his own interest in finding a more humane way?’

Meade shook his head. ‘Edison was against capital punishment on principle — totally against it,’ he shrugged, ‘but, when all’s said and done, business is business.’