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n You may speak of the Halifax Gibbet and the Scottish Maiden but when it comes to noodle-knapping there is really only one name innthe frame – Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. The question is, Why? The popularnimagination loves poetic justice and just as the tale of James Douglas, 4thnEarl of Morton, tells how he was the first and last man to be decapitated bynhis own invention, the Scottish Maiden, (when, in fact, he was nothing of thensort), so the story goes that Doctor Guillotin invented the eponymous Guillotinenand was sent to meet his maker by means of his own device. Except, that isn’tntrue either. The good Doctor neither invented the machine that bears his namennor was he killed by it. He died of natural causes at the grand old age ofnseventy-five in 1814. And he was opposed to the death penalty, too. That’snwhere the real story begins.
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| An early precursor of the Guillotine |
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nDuring the years prior to the French Revolution,nthe citizens of France began to voice their discontent with the AnciennRégime, not least regarding the brutality and barbarity of the forms ofncapital punishment employed in the Kingdom. The aristocrats were despatched byneither the sword or the axe, which was not always a clean cut and there arennumerous reports of two or more strokes being needed, descending at times intondown-right hacking off the head. The common folk were hanged, burnt or brokennon the wheel, amongst other ways, and it was decided that a more humane,negalitarian method of execution was required. King Louis XVI banned thenpractice of breaking on the wheel, in a nod to the sentiment, but this was notnenough.
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| Off with their heads |
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nAs the Revolution got underway, Dr Guillotin, who proposed variousnchanges to the methods of capital punishment, addressed a meeting of thenNational Assembly. A committee was established, under Antoine Louis (the King’snphysician and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery), and Guillotin was a membernof this committee. He supported the idea of a method of execution that would benused for everyone, regardless of class or position, but his own position was thatnthis would be the first step in the total abolition of the death penalty. Thenprototype of the beheading machine was designed by Louis, based on the idea ofnHalifax Gibbet and the Scottish Maiden, together with early devices used innGermany and Italy, where it was called the mannaja.
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| A very early head-removing block |
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nJohn Evelyn, thenEnglish diarist, describes this,
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n“The next day, I saw a wretch executed, whonhad murdered his master, for which he had his head chopped off by an ax thatnslid down a frame of timber, between the two tall columns in St. Mark’s piazza,nat the sea-brink; the executioner striking on the ax with a beetle; and so thenhead fell off the block.”n
nEvelyn also notes,n
n“At Naples they use anframe, like ours at Halifax.”n
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nLouis employed Tobias Schmidt, a Germannengineer and harpsichord maker, to build the prototype and it was Schmidt whonsuggested the refinement of using a slanted, triangular blade with a bevellednedge. The Halifax and Scottish devices used a horizontal blade that not so muchnsliced off the head as punched it away from the body by brute force.
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| The French chopping tetes off |
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nOn Marchn25th 1792, the National Assembly passed a recommendation that thenmachine, then known as a Louisette, be adopted in prisons across thencountry and it was first used on April 25th 1792, when a highwayman,nNicolas Jacques Pélletier, was beheaded in Paris. There was a feeling that the Louisettenwas simply too quick and denied the crowd the thrill of former executions, butnsoon it was the only form of execution permitted in France (other than firingnsquads in military cases). However, the zeal with which Guillotin advocated thenuse of the Louisette lead to his own name becoming associated with thenmachine, and a chance remark he made at a follow-up meeting of the NationalnAssembly,
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n“Now, with my machine, I cut off your head in the twinkling of anneye, and you never feel it,”n
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nresulted in his little quip being taken upnacross Paris – there was even a comic song written about it. Soon, the Louisettenwas known instead as the Guillotine, and the name has stuck ever since. Thenguillotine was used extensively during the Reign of Terror, when thousands lostntheir lives, including King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and atnone stage even Dr Guillotin was arrested and faced execution, although he wasnreleased when Robespierre was overthrown.
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| Off their heads … |
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nCoincidentally, another doctor, Dr JnB V Guillotin of Lyons, was beheaded on February 28th 1794 and thisnmay be the source of the tale that puts the other Dr Guillotin to the blade,
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n“J.nB. V. Guillotine, M.D., formerly of Lyons, was among the multitude of personsnwho have lately been executed there. He was charged with having correspondednwith persons at Turin.”n
n[Annual Register, 1794, vol 37]n
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nThenGuillotin family sought to distance their name from the machine and pressed thenFrench government to rename it, but their request was refused and so, withntypical Gallic ingenuity, the family changed their surname instead.
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| Marie Antoinette loses her head |
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