Coney Island Electrocutes Topsy the Elephant

Topsy had spent twenty five years hauling loads and drawing crowds for the Forepaugh Circus before Coney Island bought her in 1902. That May a drunk spectator named James Fielding Blount burned the sensitive tip of her trunk with a lit cigar, and she crushed him to death. By the time Luna Park's owners Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy got hold of her, they were ready to sell tickets to watch her die, first announcing a public hanging at 25 cents a head, until the president of the ASPCA stepped in and called it needlessly cruel. On the afternoon of January 4, 1903, handlers fed Topsy carrots laced with potassium cyanide, strapped copper sandals to her feet, and sent 6,600 volts of alternating current through her body for ten seconds. A film crew that happened to be working for Thomas Edison's company was standing in the press pack with a camera running.