William Francis Kemmler (May 9, 1860 – August 6, 1890) was an American murderer who was the first person executed by electric chair.

[3] After dropping out of school at age 10, unable to read or write, Kemmler worked in his father's butcher shop.

Kemmler's father died from an infection he received after a drunken brawl, and his mother from complications of alcoholism.

[citation needed] He was known to friends as "Philadelphia Billy", and his drinking binges were very well known around the saloons in his Buffalo neighborhood.

An alcoholic, on March 29, 1889, he was recovering from a drinking binge the night before when he became enraged with his girlfriend [elsewhere referred to as his common-law wife] Tillie Ziegler.

When the argument reached a peak, Kemmler calmly went to the barn, grabbed a hatchet, and returned to the house.

A lawyer filed an appeal claiming the electric chair violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The alternating current that powered the electric chair (a current standard adopted by a committee after a demonstration performed at Edison's laboratory by anti-AC activist Harold P. Brown showing AC's lethality) was supplied by a Westinghouse generator surreptitiously acquired by Brown.

[5] The appeal failed on October 9, 1889, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the case, titled In re Kemmler,[6] on the grounds that there was no cruel and unusual punishment in death by electrocution.

He sat down on the chair, but was ordered to get up by the warden so a hole could be cut in his suit through which a second electrical lead could be attached.

Blood vessels under his skin ruptured and bled, and some witnesses claimed his body caught fire.

"[4] Upon autopsy, doctors had found the blood vessels under the cap of his skull had carbonized and the top of the brain had hardened.