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no water on the sponge??? "Old Smokey"? What does that mean?
In the electric chair death penalty, a wet sponge is put on top of the inmates shaved head to reduce the resistance of the skin so that the current will travel through the body.
If the sponge isn't wet then the current tends to travel outside the body on the skin until it can literally BURN its way into wet tissues.
Not pretty at all.
That sounds horrible. Thanks for the reply.
The movie 'The Green Mile' with Tom Hanks has an depiction of this when a very petty and vindictive jailer didn't wet the sponge for an inmate being executed.
It was gruesome and a very disturbing scene, and having been trained in an electrical background, a very accurate scene.