Perhaps no event in the history of crime and punishment in Southeast Missouri is as bizarre as the hanging and subsequent attempted revival of John H. Skaggs. Skaggs hailed from Tennessee and came to Missouri from Kentucky after serving as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. He had worked various jobs and was convicted of horse stealing at one point but escaped from jail. He came to Clarkton, Missouri, in 1868 and opened a small dry goods store, which did not do well.
Skaggs also worked as a toll collector for the Point Pleasant and Dunklin County Plank Road, from Weaverville in New Madrid County to Clarkton. General R. V. Richardson was principal investor and president of the company that operated the road. Richardson served as a brigadier general in the Confederate army during the war and ran the plank road as his personal fiefdom. The company owed Skaggs $2500, and he and investors Frank Clark and Henry Clark resolved to murder Richardson to avenge his treatment of those connected with the road. The murder occurred on January 6, 1870, and authorities captured Skaggs and Frank Clark soon after. Skaggs’ case went to Stoddard County on a change of venue, and the jury found him guilty and the sentence was hanging. All appeals failed.
The execution occurred August 26, 1870, in Bloomfield. Stoddard County lacked a secure jail, so the county housed Skaggs in Jackson, Missouri until that date. Sheriff George W. Kitchen and a contingent of assistants retrieved him two days earlier. A crowd of 2,500 people assembled in Bloomfield to view the hanging. The gallows was poorly constructed and Sheriff Kitchen had no prior experience with conducting an execution. When the trap opened and Skaggs dropped, the noose slipped so that the knot was at the back of his head. It failed to break his neck, and he strangled. Dr. J. W. Jackson and Dr. Jos. F. McDonald monitored the execution and declared after nine minutes that Skaggs was deceased. Sheriff Kitchen wanted to wait 10-20 minutes, but the doctors disagreed and assistants lowered him.
Events then took a bizarre turn. The doctors had Skaggs’ body carried to a room in the unfinished new courthouse. Dr. Jackson got on one side of the bench and Dr. McDonald on the other, and the body and galvanic battery were between them. The doctors bared Skaggs’ chest and connected the battery and his body with poles and wires. Sheriff Kitchen realized they intended to try and revive Skaggs, and stated his orders were to hang him until he was dead. Skaggs emitted a gasping sound and his fingers twitched—likely because of nerve stimulation. Over the next hour, and with the sheriff’s objections, the doctors continued the electrical stimulation and eventually restored irregular breathing, irregular muscular movements, and a weak pulse. By early evening Skaggs had a rapid pulse and labored breathing. He failed to regain consciousness. He continued in that way until 4 the next afternoon, when signs of life ceased. The attempt to revive him failed.
Physicians and other 19th-century experimenters applied electric current from galvanic batteries to the recently deceased to attempt revival, a process called galvanisation. The response was muscle contractions, gasps, and other false appearances of life due to stimulation of nerves still capable of transmitting impulses. Further refinement of the idea led to modern resuscitation methods.
Skaggs’ case was unusual in that he showed signs of life for a day after his execution. The botched hanging deprived his brain of oxygen, so while some features of life revived, there was little chance of this Southeast Missouri “Frankenstein” surviving.
