When one thinks of the items available from Montgomery Ward, the prominent mail-order retailer based in Chicago, an electric chair is certainly not among them. Yet in 1913, this merchandising giant received an unusual letter from the Colonial Stores Company in Canton, China, seeking to purchase an apparatus for executing criminals. The letter sent by the “purveyor of provisions and supplies,” explained that the request came on behalf of a high-ranking official interested in adopting the American method of capital punishment.1
Since electric chairs were not part of Montgomery Ward’s extensive catalog, they directed J. A. Cheong, the correspondent from the Colonial Stores Company, to contact the warden of the Virginia State Penitentiary. The prison official, in turn, advised Cheong to reach out to the Adams Electric Company in Trenton, New Jersey, a firm known for selling and installing electric chairs.2
This remarkable inquiry can be traced back to developments in late 19th-century New York. In a quest for a more “humane” alternative to hanging, the state turned to the electric chair as a modern solution for carrying out death sentences. William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electrocution in 1890, and despite the procedure going horribly wrong, it was embraced as a progressive approach to capital punishment.
Other states soon followed New York’s lead. Ohio adopted the electric chair in 1897, followed by Massachusetts in 1900, New Jersey in 1906, and Virginia in 1908. Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky also became early adopters. As this technology spread, so did the demand for skilled electricians capable of installing these devices in prisons nationwide.
Among the entrepreneurs who stepped up to meet this growing market was the Adams Electric Company, headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. Carl F. Adams, the founder of the company, had built and installed New Jersey’s first electric chair. After installing the apparatus in Trenton, he secured additional contracts across the country.3
In response to Cheong’s inquiry, Adams provided detailed terms: the electric chair itself would cost $3,000, to be delivered on board a ship in New York. Installation would require a specialist to accompany the apparatus, at a rate of $5 per day during transit and $10 per day while overseeing installation and instruction. Adams estimated it would take a month to prepare the machine and an additional two weeks for on-site installation. He also noted that if the device was purchased on behalf of a government agency, the price markup should remain within a reasonable profit margin—typically between 20 and 25 percent.
Although no record confirms whether the Adams Electric Company ever fulfilled the order from Canton, China, the inquiry remains a striking footnote to the era’s tangled legacy of progressivism, technological innovation, commerce, and justice. That an apparatus designed for state executions could be purchased from a mail-order merchandiser best known for supplying American households with everything from farm equipment to clothing and pianos is both extraordinary and unsettling.
Yet, the letter that sparked this blog post is preserved in the Rutgers University Archives. It stands as a testament to the unexpected ways in which modernity, commerce, and the machinery of the state could intersect in unexpected ways in the early twentieth century
Notes
- “Carl F. Adams Papers, 1901-1935.,” Rutgers University Libraries, n.d., https://rutgers.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=01RUT_INST:01RUT&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI_2&tab=Everything_except_research&docid=alma991002018869704646. ↩︎
- The Adams Electrric Company installed Virginia’s electric chair in 1908. For a detailed account see “Death Row and Executions in Virginia,” March 5, 2025, http://s1030794421.onlinehome.us/government/deathrow.html. ↩︎
- Adams built the first electric chair used in the New Jersey State Prison, after the legislature banned hanging. He was working at the prison as an electrician and was commissioner to build the apparatus. He passed away at the age of 78 in 1946. For a detailed account see, New York Times, “CARL F. ADAMS; Trenton Electrician Built Jersey State Electrocution Chair,” The New York Times, October 15, 1946, https://www.nytimes.com/1946/10/15/archives/carl-f-adams-trenton-electrician-built-jersey-state-electrocution.html. ↩︎
- Wyoming Public Media, “Archives on the Air 303: The Montgomery Ward Catalog – L.R.A. Condit Papers,” Wyoming Public Media, July 13, 2023, https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/show/archives-on-the-air/2023-07-12/the-montgomery-ward-catalog-l-r-a-condit-papers. ↩︎