Guillotine
- This article is about the execution machine. See paper guillotine for the office equipment. See Guillotine (metalwork) for the metal-working tool. See Guillotine (game) for the Wizards of the Coast card game, and cloture for the parliamentary motion.
The guillotine is a device used for the mechanized application of capital punishment by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which is suspended a heavy blade. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head.
Development
The guillotine became famous (and acquired its name) in France at the time of the French Revolution. However, guillotine-like devices, such as the "Scottish Maiden" seen on the right, existed and were used for executions in several European countries long before the French Revolution. The first documented use of the Scottish Maiden was in 1307 in Ireland[1], and there are accounts of similar devices in Italy and Switzerland dating back to the 15th century. However, the French developed the machine further and became the first nation to use it as a standard execution method.
The device takes its name from Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French doctor and member of the Revolutionary National Assembly, on whose suggestion it was introduced. Dr. Guillotin proposed the use of a mechanical device to carry out the death penalty. The basis for his recommendation is believed to have been his perception that it was a humane form of execution, contrasting with the methods used in pre-revolutionary, ancien régime France. In France, before the guillotine, members of the nobility were beheaded with a sword or axe, while commoners were usually hanged, or more gruesome methods of executions were used (the wheel, burning at the stake, etc.). In case of decapitation, it sometimes took repeated blows to completely sever the head. The family of the victim or the victim themselves would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order for a quick and relatively painless death. The guillotine was thus perceived to deliver an instantaneous death without risk of misses. Furthermore, having only one method of execution was seen as an expression of equality between citizens.
Antoine Louis (1723-1792), member of Académie Chirurgical, developed the concept put forward by Guillotin, and it was from his design that the first guillotine was built. The guillotine was first called "Louison" or "Louisette", but the press preferred Guillotine as it had a nicer ring to it. Antoine Louis (and perhaps others) introduced several improvements over the guillotine's ancestors, notably the characteristic angled blade and the lunette--the two-part circular collar that held the victim's head in place. On April 25, 1792, highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine.
Guillotin himself died, not on his invention as myth would have it, but of natural causes on the 26th of May in 1814. The descendants of Dr. Guillotin have since changed their surname because of the association with a method of execution.
The guillotine in France
The guillotine was from then on the only legal execution method in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, which entailed execution by firing squad.
The reign of terror
The period from June 1793 to July 1794 in France is known as the Reign of Terror or simply "the Terror". The upheaval following the overthrow of the monarchy, fear of invasion by foreign monarchist powers and fear of counterrevolution from pro-monarchy parties within France all combined to throw the nation into chaos and the government into frenzied paranoia. Most of the democratic reforms of the revolution were suspended and wholesale executions by guillotine began. Former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793. Maximilien Robespierre became one of the most powerful men in the government, and the figure most associated with the Terror. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced thousands to the guillotine. Nobility and commoners, intellectuals, politicians and prostitutes, all were liable to be executed on little or no grounds; suspicion of "crimes against liberty" was enough to earn one an appointment with "Mademoiselle Guillotine." Estimates of the death toll range between 15,000 to 40,000. In July of 1794, Robespierre himself was guillotined.
For a time, executions by guillotine were a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors would sell programs listing the names of those scheduled to to die. Regulars would come day after day and vie for the best seats. Parents would bring their children. By the end of the Terror the crowds had thinned drastically. Excessive repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.
The guillotine retired
The last public execution was of Eugene Weidmann, who was convicted for six murders. He was beheaded on June 17, 1939, outside the prison Saint-Pierre rue Georges Clemenceau 5 at Versailles, which is now the Palais de Justice. The allegedly scandalous behaviour of some of the onlookers on this occasion, as well as the fact it was secretly filmed, caused the authorities to decide that executions in the future were to take place in the prison courtyard. The last execution was of Hamida Djandoubi and took place on September 10, 1977 in Marseille.
The guillotine outside of France
Just as there were guillotine-like devices in countries other than France before 1792, likewise some countries, especially in Europe, have continued to use this method of execution into modern times.
A notable example is Germany, where the guillotine is known in German as Fallbeil, "falling axe". It has been used in various German states since the 17th century, becoming the usual method of execution in Napoleonic times in many parts of Germany. The Nazis employed it extensively: twenty guillotines were in use in Germany and (from 1938) in Austria. In Nazi Germany beheading by guillotine was the usual method of executing criminal convicts as opposed to political convicts, who were usually either gassed, hanged or shot. The Nazis have been estimated to have guillotined some 40,000 people in Germany and Austria; possibly more than were beheaded during the French Revolution. West Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949, East Germany in 1987 and Austria in 1985.
Living heads
From its first use, there has been debate as to whether the guillotine always provided as swift a death as Dr. Guillotin hoped. With previous methods of execution, there was little concern about the suffering inflicted. But where the guillotine was invented specifically to be "humane," the issue was seriously considered. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the very swiftness of the guillotine only prolonged the victim's suffering. The blade cuts quickly enough that there is relatively little impact on the brain case, and perhaps less likelihood of immediate unconsciousness than with a more violent decapitation.
Audiences to guillotinings told numerous stories of blinking eyelids, moving eyes, movement of the mouth, even an expression of "unequivocal indignation" on the face of the decapitated Charlotte Corday when her cheek was slapped.
Anatomists and other scientists in several countries have tried to perform more definitive experiments on severed human heads as recently as 1956. Inevitably the evidence is only anecdotal. What appears to be a head responding to the sound of its name, or to the pain of a pinprick, may be only random muscle twitching or automatic reflex action, with no awareness involved. At worst, it seems that the massive drop in cerebral blood pressure would cause a victim to lose consciousness in less than 5-10 seconds.
References
- . ISBN 0922233020.
{{cite book}}: Missing or empty|title=(help); Unknown parameter|Author=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Publisher=ignored (|publisher=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Title=ignored (|title=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Year=ignored (|year=suggested) (help)
Notes
- ^ Robertson, Patrick The Book of Firsts Clarkson Potter, 1974.
External links
- The Guillotine Headquarters with a gallery, history, name list, and quiz.
- L'art de bien couper a French site with a quite complete list of guillotined criminals, pictures, history.