The Guillotine 1792 - 1977.
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Dr.
Joseph Ignace Guillotin did not invent the execution machine that bears his
name.
A similar device known as the Halifax Gibbet had been in use in that Yorkshire town since 1286
and continued until 1650. It was noticed by a Scotsman, James Douglas Earl of
Morton, who had one built in Edinburgh in 1556, which
became known as the Maiden and remained in use until 1710.
There is a credible recording of an execution by a similar machine in Milan in 1702, and
there are paintings of a guillotine like machine used in Nuremberg in the mid
1500's.
However,
it was Dr. Guillotin (Deputy of Paris) who on October the 10th, 1789 proposed to the Constituent
Assembly that all condemned criminals should be beheaded on the grounds of
humanity and egalité (equality). Beheading was seen as by far the most humane
method of execution at the time and was allowed to people of noble birth in
many countries. Ordinary prisoners were slowly hanged, broken on the wheel (an
horrendously cruel form of execution) or burnt at the stake. The idea of a
standardised, quick and humane death was much more in line with revolutionary
thinking.
The Constituent Assembly duly passed a decree making beheading the only form of
execution on the 25th of March 1791, and this came
into law on the 25th of March 1792. There was a
small problem to this, as was indicated by the then official executioner,
Sanson, who pointed out the impracticality of executing all condemned persons
by the sword. Beheading requires a skilled executioner with a lot of strength,
a very steady hand and a good eye, if it is to sever the criminal's head with a
single stroke. Sanson proved to be right, as during the Terror, the rate of
executions reached staggering proportions, well beyond the capacity of the few
skilled headsmen to carry out.
It was clear that some sort of machine was required and after consultation with
Dr. Antoine Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgery, such a machine was
devised and built. It was initially known as the louisson or louisette, but no
doubt, much to the relief of the good surgeon took on the name of its proposer
and became known as the guillotine.
The first one was built in Paris by one Tobias
Schmidt, a German engineer, and was ready for testing using recently deceased
bodies from the hospital of Bicerte on the 17thof
April 1792.
It had two large uprights joined by a beam at the top and erected on a platform
reached by 24 steps. The whole contraption was painted a dull blood red and the
weighted blade ran in grooves in the uprights which were greased with tallow.
However, it worked well enough and its first execution was that of
Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier for robbery with violence on the 25th of April 1792 in the Place de
Greve. The execution went according to plan with his head being severed at the
first stroke.
Guillotines were soon supplied to all Departments in France and models were
made as children's toys and even as earrings for women. Experiments were made
with a 45 degree angled blade and also a rounded blade but this proved
unsatisfactory and the angled blade became the standard pattern, in use until
the abolition of capital punishment in France.
The
"Terror" began on the 10th of August and trade for the guillotine
increased rapidly. In the 13 month period, May 1793-June 1794, no less than
1,225 people were executed in Paris. The Place de
Greve saw the first use of the guillotine on the 22nd of August 1792 for ordinary criminals.
Political offenders were executed at the Place de Carrousel. Virtually the
whole French aristocracy were sent to the guillotine during the French
Revolution. On the 21st of
January 1793, it was erected for the first time in the Place de la
Revolution for the execution of King Louis XVI, its most famous victim. This
was also the place of execution for such famous women as Marie Antoinette and
Charlotte Corday. Charlotte was condemned
after a brief trial for stabbing to death Jean-Paul Marat, one of the
revolution's leaders. She was executed on the evening of the 17th of July 1793
and upon arrival at the Place de la Revolution in the usual tumbrel (horse
drawn cart), asked Sansom (her executioner) to be allowed to look at the
guillotine as she hadn't seen one before and felt that it was of interest to
someone in her position! She was an attractive and brave 24 year old who was
seen as something of a martyr by many.
In June of 1793, the guillotine was temporarily moved to the Place St. Antoine
where 96 people were decapitated in 5 days. Due to protests from local traders,
it was then moved to the Barriere Ranverse where 1,270 people were executed in
under two months. It returned to the Place de la Revolution for the execution
of the famous revolutionary, Robespierre, and 21 of his followers on the 28th
of July. The guillotine was also being used in all the other French cities with
great frequency at this time and many thousands of people fell victim to it.
France was not the only
country to adopt the guillotine as many other governments saw the advantages in
speed and humanity of it compared to the other methods then available. It was
used by Algeria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Tunisia and Vietnam. The Papal States in Italy used the
guillotine from 1814 to 1870 for 369 executions. Sweden purchased a
guillotine from France in 1903 so that
they could end decapitation by the axe. This machine was used only once
for the execution of Johan Ander at Långholmen in Stockholm on the 23rd of November 1910.
More people were guillotined in Germany during Hitler’s
time, than in France during the whole
of the French revolution. The guillotine had been in use in some parts of Germany long before
Hitler came to power. The Rhine province had introduced it
as far back as 1798. The province of Bavaria used it from
1854, Saxony and Wuerttemberg from 1853 and 1854 respectively and Baden from 1857. From
1871, German law stated that all condemned criminals must be decapitated but
allowed both the axe and the guillotine. Executions were fairly infrequent
during the early years of the 20th century, however, increased dramatically
particularly between 1938 and 1945. Hitler ordered that criminals and those who
opposed his regime should suffer death by either guillotining or hanging and
had 20 guillotines built and dispersed to prisons around Germany and Austria. He also greatly
increased the number of crimes punishable by death. Between 1933 and 1944, a
total of 13,405 death sentences were passed. Of these, 11,881 were carried out.
In 1940 alone, some 900 German civilians were put to death. In 1941, the
minimum age for execution was reduced to just 14 years.
The execution rate had risen to over 5,000 by 1943. Between 1943 and 1945, the
People's Courts sentenced around 7,000 people to death. In the first few months
of 1945, some 800 people were executed, over 400 of them German citizens.
Nazi executioners could guillotine a prisoner every 3 minutes if required,
which it often was. It has been claimed that it took just 90 minutes to guillotine
75 prisoners at Breslau Prison.
In Austria, 1,377 men and
women were guillotined between 1938 and 1945 after sentence by the Special Court or People’
Tribunal in Vienna. These Special
Courts had replaced the ordinary courts in 1939. Most of them were executed for
opposing the Nazis and for treason. It is thought that in all, some 16,000
people were guillotined by the Nazis. For accounts of some of these executions click here.
After the war, the Allies permitted the use of the guillotine for German
nationals and even had some new ones constructed by the company of Fritz and
Otto Tiggeman. West Germany (as it became)
abolished capital punishment in 1951, the last guillotining of Berthold Wehmeyer,
taking place on the 11th of May
1949. East Germany continued to use
the guillotine until 1967, but records of executions there are very sketchy.
Construction.
All
guillotines follow the same basic pattern, but the modern ones did not have a
scaffold for the condemned to climb and were placed directly on the ground. As
with the gallows in Britain, this was found
to be a great improvement, due to the difficulty of getting an often terrified
person with their hands strapped behind them up a flight of steps.
French guillotines had two uprights of approximately 14 feet 9 inches (4500 mm)
high and 15 inches (370 mm) apart, with metal lined grooves to ensure free
movement of the triangular shaped weighted blade which ran on a 4 wheeled
carriage. The substantial frame is set perfectly level using spirit levels
after the guillotine is erected, to prevent the blade jamming.
At right angles to the uprights, is a bench shaped structure, about 800 mm from
the ground, at the end of which is the bascule. This is a hinged board which
stands upright to receive the prisoner who is then strapped to it before the
bascule is turned to the horizontal and slid forward bringing the prisoner's
head into the lunette. The lunette is formed in two halves each with a
semicircular cut out for the neck. When the victim is correctly positioned in
the lower half, the top half is lowered into position to prevent them moving.
The blade is of high quality steel, about 300 mm deep and is weighted with lead
to give a total weight of approximately 40 Kgs. It falls just over 7 feet
(2,250 mm) in around one 0.75 of a second before being brought to rest by a
spring mechanism in the block beneath the lunette. The blade is drawn up by a
rope running through a brass pulley until it is caught by a spring release
mechanism. It is released by pulling a cord or a lever mounted on one of the
uprights.
There is a metal bucket to catch the head and a metal tray for the blood.
Originally, a wicker basket lined with oil cloth had been used to catch the head.
The decapitated body falls or is pushed off the bascule onto an angled board
that deposits it into a basket or coffin.
The Nazi guillotine (fallbeil ) was similar to the French style but not as
high, as the photo
of the one in Plötzensee prison in Berlin shows. It is
around 8 feet tall but has a heavier blade to produce the required force.
The condemned was made to lie face down on a simple bench rather than being
strapped to a bascule and the head fell into a metal basin attached to the
frame. Later a tip board was used to further speed up the process and
Johann Reichhart designed a device for rapidly clamping victims to this.
Two
guillotinings described.
Marie Margarete (Grete) Beier.
Grete
Beier, the 22 year old daughter of the Mayor of Freiburg in Saxony, was guillotined
for the murder of her fiancée, a civil engineer named Proffler, whom she had
poisoned for financial gain. Grete was in love with another man, Hans Merker,
of whom her father didn't approve. Her father had forced her into the
engagement with Kurt Proffler, whom he felt had much better prospects than
Merker.
The case attracted international attention due to her age, sex, personality and
the elaborate nature of the crime. She was seemingly a happy and fun loving
girl from a good background. (Click here for a photo
of her)
At her trial, she admitted that on May
13th, 1908, she had visited her fiancée's house and given him
potassium cyanide in a drink she mixed for him, and then to make sure of his
death, shot him in the mouth with his own revolver. She then did her best to
make the scene look like a suicide, placing the gun carefully at his side,
leaving a forged will in her favour on his desk and with a final note to
herself, also forged, saying that he feared to lose her love, because of a
relationship that he had had with a woman in Italy who was now accusing him of
desertion and threatening to tell Grete everything. These forgeries were good
enough to initially deceive the police and Coroner. She fell under suspicion
when about a month later a letter was found that she had written to another man
hinting at what she had done, when he was arrested for an unrelated crime. She
was arrested and made a detailed confession to the murder. She hoped by
confessing that she would be granted a lesser sentence but, as the crime was a
premeditated poisoning, she was sentenced to death.
Her execution took place on the morning of July
23rd, 1908 in the yard of the regional court building before
some 190 people. The guillotine had been erected earlier in a corner of the
yard and at around 6.25 a.m., the public
prosecutor, Dr. Mannl, the judges who had heard her case, including their
chairman Dr. Rudert, and the 12 official witnesses came into the yard. The
public prosecutor and the judges all wore their official robes.
At precisely 6.30 a.m., a bell was rung
as the signal to bring out the prisoner. She was led through the gardens by her
lawyer and the prison chaplain, her hands folded and her eyes looking down at
the ground, walking slowly but upright and unaided. She was very pale but
seemed calm and showed no emotion. She wore a black dress, that had been cut
down at the neck.
She was led onto the platform of the guillotine by the executioner and his
assistant and strapped to the board which was then tilted into the horizontal
and slid forward, so that she could now see directly into the bucket in which
her head would land. This was too much for Grete, who was beginning to lose her
composure. She cried out, "Father, into your hands I lay my soul –
Father." The upper part of the neck ring had been closed about her and at
this moment the blade fell. The executioner took off his hat and announced to
the public prosecutor in the traditional German fashion that the judgement of
death had been executed. The prosecutor requested the witnesses to depart
quietly. The whole execution had taken just 3 minutes. Grete's body was taken
away in a hearse decorated with flowers and buried next to her late father.
Martha Marek.
Martha Lowenstein Marek (see photo) was guillotined by the Bavarian State executioner,
Johann Reichhart, in Vienna on the 6th of December 1938, for the
poisoning of her husband, their baby daughter, an elderly relative, whose money
and house she inherited, and finally a lodger in her house.
Emil Marek had conspired with his wife Martha to defraud his insurers by getting
Martha to chop off his leg in order that they could collect $30,000 in accident
insurance he had taken out. Martha, however, was not very good at wielding the
axe and it took 3 blows to sever the leg. The insurer's doctors were not
convinced that it was an accident that had occurred while cutting down a tree
as the Mareks claimed and therefore rejected their claim. Emil died, apparently
from tuberculosis, in July 1932 and their 9 month old baby daughter died a
month later. When her lodger Felicitas Kittsteiner died, his relatives became
suspicious because he had told them that when he ate or drank anything that
Martha prepared, he immediately felt violently sick. Martha had taken out a
life insurance policy on him before he died. The relatives informed the police
who ordered the exhumation of all 4 bodies. They found that they had all been
poisoned with a compound of thallium. She was arrested and brought to trial in Vienna in 1938. Hitler
had re-instated capital punishment in Austria when he took
control of it and a new guillotine was sent to Vienna by rail, packed
as "industrial machinery" on October
3rd, 1938. As you read earlier, it was to see plenty of use. No
woman had been executed in Austria for over 30 years
and there was some reluctance on the part of the authorities to execute Martha.
Martha was alleged to be paralysed so it was decided to take her from the
condemned cell to the execution chamber in a wheelchair. The executioner,
Johann Reichhart, and his assistants practised tipping the wheelchair in front
of the guillotine so that Martha would fall directly onto the bench in the
right place. On the morning of the execution, however, Martha's paralysis
seemed to have disappeared and she struggled violently with her guards and was
able to land a heavy kick on Reichhart before being subdued and tied to the
bascule by his assistant. Reichhart executed 3,165 people between 1924 and
1947.
Many British accounts of Martha Marek state that she was beheaded with an axe
but this is not correct and may well stem from an incorrect translation of the
German for guillotine -Fallbeil- literally drop or fall hatchet (axe).
Modern French execution procedure.
In
the 20th century, the 580Kg. guillotine would be sent from Paris to the prison by
rail and be erected in a suitable place during the night. Just before dawn, the
officials would go to the condemned man's cell and inform him that his appeal
had failed and that he was to be executed immediately. He would be allowed an
hour to prepare and to pray with his priest before having his hands strapped
behind his back and the collar of his shirt cut down. The prison register would
be signed for the final time and the prisoner escorted to the guillotine by
warders. On arrival, he would immediately be strapped to the upright bascule
and then turned horizontally and slid into the lunette. The top of the lunette
would be brought down, instantly followed by the release of the blade.
The whole procedure typically took less than two minutes to complete.
Up to
1939, executions were carried out in public - normally just outside the prison
gates. The crowds saw very little as the guillotine was always surrounded by
gendarmes but reporters and invited witnesses were permitted. Eugene Weidmann
became the last to suffer in public outside the Pallais de Justice at Versailles before a large
crowd on the 17th of June 1939 for multiple
murder. This execution was photographed and the shots appeared in the French
press. The general public obviously enjoyed it more than was felt good for them
and a week later, the government changed the law making all executions private.
A film of this execution can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-cpONnfTw8
Guillotinings
had got steadily fewer during the 20th century and France came under
pressure from its European neighbours to end capital punishment.
France finally abolished the death penalty in 1981. At least 247 men and 4
women went to the guillotine in 20th century France (roughly a third
as many executions as occurred in Britain during the same
period). The war time period, under the Vichy government, saw a
rise in the number of executions and for the first time in many decades women
were guillotined. They were Elizabeth Ducourneau on the 8th of January 1941 at Bordeaux, Sinska Czeslawa
on the 29th of June 1943 at Chalons sur Saone, Marie Louise
Giraud, who had been convicted of having performed 26 illegal abortions, who
was executed on the 30th of July
1943 in Paris and Germaine Godefroy on the
22nd of April 1949 at Angers. Prior to that,
the last recorded female execution was that of Georgette Thomas on the 24th of January 1887, along with her
husband, Henri, at Romorantin, 100 miles south of Paris. Georgette
attempted to distract her executioner by taking off her clothes! This ploy was
not successful however.
There were 36 executions between 1958 and 1969, during General de Gaulle's term
as president. De Gaulle commuted 18 or 19 sentences, one of those condemned
rejected the offer of clemency and was executed.
Between March 1969 and November 1972, there were no executions in France. One of the
executions during Pompidou's presidency took place on the 12th of May 1973 (Ali Benyanes),
the other two on 28th of November 1972 (Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems, the
Clairvaux mutineers).
Valery Giscard d'Estaing sanctioned the execution of Christian Rannuci on the
28th of July 1976 at Marseilles; Jerome Carrein on the 23rd of June 1977 at
Douai Prison; and Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, who became the last
person to be guillotined (by Marcel Chevalier) on the 10th of September 1977 at
Baumettes Prison, in Marseilles. Djandoubi was executed for the murder, rape
and torture of Elisabeth Bousquet. Djandoubi
was the last person to suffer capital punishment within the original European
Union countries.
Philippe Maurice was granted clemency by Mitterrand in 1981. Maurice, a
hardened and uneducated criminal at the time, is now noted as a talented
history researcher. He was released from prison in 2001 and has written a much
acclaimed book about his life.
The
cause of death.
The
person guillotined becomes unconscious very quickly and dies from shock and
anoxia due to haemorrhage and loss of blood pressure within less than 60
seconds. It has often been reported that the eyes and mouths of people beheaded
have shown signs of movement. It has been calculated that the human brain has
enough oxygen stored for metabolism to persist about 7 seconds after the supply
is cut off. As in hanging, the heart continues to beat for some time after
decapitation.
Various experiments have been made on guillotined heads and generally seem to
show that little consciousness remains after 2-5 seconds of separation from the
body although some have concluded that the head retains feeling for much
longer. Whatever the truth, guillotining is probably one of the least cruel
methods of execution and yet one that has a high deterrent value because it is
perceived as gruesome.
The
guillotine was the catalyst for the famous Madame Tussaud's waxwork
exhibitions.
In the 1790's there was, of course, no television and the rudimentary media of
the time had no means of printing pictures in quantity. Thus only very few
people knew what the French aristocracy looked like. Madame Tussaud collected
the guillotined heads and made plaster casts of them, which she then filled
with wax to give a reasonable likeness. She toured France with her
exhibition for some time before falling foul of the Revolution herself and
fleeing to England where her work
continued. Her waxworks are still enormously popular today.
Executed criminals continued to be popular subjects and Tussaud's used to buy
the clothes and other effects of famous criminals from the hangman in the days
when these items became his property after the execution.
Back to Contents page Beheading
For
further reading visit Jørn Fabricius' excellent site at http://www.guillotine.dk