No Good Deed

Human ingenuity might bring us wonder and joy, or it might bring us tragedy and sorrow. The only way to find out which story does what is to listen to both of them carefully.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the cabinet of curiosities. Not everyone had it easy

(00:29):
growing up. Many of us were forced to make our
own way due to any number of hardships. Carl knew
that better than most. He grew up in Germany, and
his father had a certain kind of idea about how
men should behave He told Carl's mother not to coddle him.
His boy had to make his own way, forge his

(00:49):
own path, like he had done so. Carl learned early
on that he had to be self sufficient in order
to get what he wanted or needed. By the age
of two, he had learned to feed himself. By ten,
his interest in music had led him to take up
the violin, and with no one around to teach him,
Carl taught himself instead. He got pretty good too, so

(01:12):
good in fact, that when he turned sixteen, his parents
sent him to a music conservatory to continue his education.
Karl studied with some of the finest teachers in Germany
for several years. After he graduated. He used his talents
to take him far beyond what even he believed possible.
Before he was old enough to drink, he was playing

(01:33):
with international orchestras in sold out concert halls. His skills
were so renowned he was invited to perform before the
famous composer Johann Strauss in Vienna. He developed a little
trick previously unseen during your average concert. Whenever he'd break
a string, Karl would change it in the middle of

(01:55):
the show while the rest of the band played on.
Then he'd rejoined the group and continue the performance. But
he didn't do it backstage or off to the side.
He made it part of the act. It got so
popular that he started using a weakened string in his shows,
just so he would be forced to demonstrate his ability
each time he played, and his talents were limited to

(02:18):
just music or impromptu violin repairs. It's hard to imagine
how someone might learn to shoot at a music conservatory,
but Carl also managed to become an a smarksman. He
was so good at it that he was said to
shoot the spots off of playing cards. Of course, word
about it spread, and the public wanted to see this

(02:39):
new skill with their own eyes, so Carl added it
to his repertoire anything to keep the people in their seats.
Right Throughout his career, he shared his gifts with audiences
all over the world. Carl even took his unique brand
of music and marksmanship to America, where he eventually settled
with his wife and gained citizenship. Carl had lived the

(03:01):
kind of life most men only dream of, becoming a celebrity,
both at home and abroad. But when his later years
were up ended by the First World War, he saw
a bigger calling for himself. He wanted to help the
veterans returning from battle, specifically those who had lost limbs.
To do this, he wrote and illustrated a guide book

(03:22):
for them. It took him less than a month to finish,
and it taught recent amputees how to use their feet
for things they used to do with their hands. I
know it sounds strange for a master violinist, a man
who could change a broken string in the middle of
a performance or shoot a playing card, to write a
book about using one's feet to perform everyday tasks. Well,

(03:45):
As the old saying goes, you have to write what
you know, and Carl knew all about doing things with
his feet, from shuffling cards to smoking cigarettes to writing
his autobiography. Carl was a phenom with his feet. That's
because he had no choice. Carl Anthan had been born

(04:07):
without hands. It's wooden frame is unmistakable, the leather straps
worn and cracked, waiting to envelop a new guest, and

(04:30):
the helmet, once fastened to the head, it's capable of
delivering two thousand volts straight through the body. They took
something as simple as a chair a place of rest,
and transformed it into an instrument of death. Little did
Ben Franklin no when he first collected that bolt of
lightning on a stormy night in seventy two, that his

(04:52):
discovery would be used to power the ultimate method of justice.
For over one years, the electric chair was designed as
a more humane form of execution. Back in the late
eighteen hundreds, a dentist, yes, a dentist, had heard about
a man who had died instantly after grabbing onto the

(05:13):
high voltage wires of a large electric generator. The dentist
saw a way to use this electricity to do more
than just power lights around town. It could be used
to ensure a quick and painless end for death row
inmates everywhere, especially after a recent series of botched hangings
had landed in the newspapers. The Governor of New York

(05:35):
established a commission to seek an alternative method, consisting of
three members, a human rights advocate, a lawyer, and that dentist.
The commission sought advice from experts such as Thomas Edison
on how best to harness electricity as a means of execution,
because justice was meant to be swift but not cruel.

(05:57):
There's that word again, justice, I guess it's apt. The
first electric chair went into use in eighteen nine, and
ten years after its introduction, Charles Justice, and inmate at
the Ohio State Penitentiary, came up with an idea. While
serving his sentence, he'd been given a job of cleaning

(06:17):
up the room where the electric chair was housed, the
death chamber, as it was called. It was during one
of his rounds when he noticed something about the chair,
the restraints. They weren't strong enough to keep a man
from shaking all over as the electricity course through him.
This constant movement resulted in burned flesh, which offended witnesses
and went against the whole more humane thing they'd been

(06:40):
aiming for. Charles worked with prison officials to enhance the restraints.
I mean, why not. He would have done anything to
reduce his own sentence, and he certainly had the technical
knowledge to make those changes. Instead of leather straps, he
created metal clamps that fit over the prisoner's wrists and les,

(07:00):
designed to reduce movement and the risk of burned skin.
The results worked wonders for the prisoners, the witnesses, and Charles.
When the time came for his parole hearing, he had
no problem convincing the board he was ready for a
second chance. After all, he'd been instrumental in making their
executions more efficient and humane, just as they had intended.

(07:23):
It's unclear how Charles spent his newfound freedom. Whether he
traveled the world or sought a job as an engineer,
will never know, though I can hazard a guess that
whatever he did, it was far from legal. That's because
ten years after he was released, Charles Justice found himself
right where he'd started. He'd been convicted of murder and

(07:45):
sent back into his old stomping ground, Ohio State Penitentiary.
There was only one difference. Now, he would never be
eligible for parole. He would never sleep in his own bed,
or drink a beer or do anything again that a
freeman might enjoy. He was the latest addition to Ohio

(08:05):
State Penitentiary's death row, and on November nine of nineteen eleven,
Charles Justice was strapped into the same chair he'd helped
improve a decade earlier. You got to feel firsthand the
metal restraints around his wrists and ankles, albeit only for
a few moments. Seconds later, charles life came full circle. Justice,

(08:29):
as they say, had been served. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.

(08:52):
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over the world of Lore dot
Come and until next time, stay curious.