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The Guillotine 1792 - 1977. |
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
There is a credible recording of an execution by a similar machine in
However, it was Dr. Guillotin (Deputy of Paris) who on
The Constituent Assembly duly passed a decree making beheading the only form of
execution on
It was clear that some sort of machine was required and after consultation with
Dr. Antoine Louis, the Secretary of the
The first one was built in
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.
It worked well enough and its first execution was that of Nicholas-Jacques
Pelletier for robbery with violence on
Guillotines were soon supplied to all Departments in
The "Terror" began on the 10th of August 1792 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
In June of 1793, the guillotine was temporarily moved to the Place St. Antoine
where 96 people were decapitated in five 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 the speed and humanity of it compared to the
other methods then available. It was used by
Germany and the “Fallbeil”.
More people were guillotined in
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 three minutes if required, which
it often was. It has been claimed that it took just 90 minutes to guillotine 75
prisoners at Breslau Prison. The Nazis
created a number of Execution Centers to which
persons were brought who had been sentenced in the areas surrounding the Centers.
There the guillotine was permanently installed, as opposed to the earlier
organization which had demanded that the executioner come to the place where
the prisoner was, erect his machine and kill him there.
In 1940, the following organization was established:
At Berlin-Plötzensee executions were held for the
area of
Frankfurt(Main)-Preungesheim was the execution centre
for
Four executioners were appointed:
One for Berlin-Plötzensee and Brandenburg: Wilhelm Röttger (1942-45), Johann Reichhart for Dresden, Frankfurt,
Munich, Stuttgart and Vienna, possibly Friedrich Hehr for Hamburg, Cologne,
Weimar, and Wolfenbüttel and an unknown man for Breslau, Königsberg, and Posen.
Friedrich Hehr continued in the role of executioner for the British after 1945
at
In
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.
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
French guillotines had two uprights, 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 four 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 seven feet
(2,250 mm) in around 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 operating 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 in German) was similar
to the French style but not as high, as the photo of the one in Plötzensee prison in
Two guillotinings described.
Marie Margarete (Grete) Beier.
Grete Beier, the 22 year old daughter of the Mayor of Freiburg in
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 police and the 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 arms 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 three 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
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 three 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 nine 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 four 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.
Some 6000 people were
guillotined in
In the 20th century, the 580Kg. guillotine would be sent from
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.
Guillotinings had got
steadily fewer during the 20th century and
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.
French women
executed.
Death sentences on women were very rare and were
almost always commuted in the 20th century. From 1887 to 1939 no women was
executed in
Georgette Thomas (aged 25) and her husband, Sylvain
Henri, (aged 30) were guillotined in public on the 24th of January 1887, at Romorantin, 100 miles south of
A large number of reporters travelled down from the capital, to cover the
almost unique execution of a woman. That it was a joint husband and wife
execution heightened the public interest. Georgette disrupted the performance
by proceeding to remove her clothes, trying to distract the executioners from
their duties. Louis Deibler was so upset
that he vowed never to execute another woman - even if it cost him his job.
Female
executions under Nazi Occupation during World War II, under the Vichy
government of Philippe Petain.
Five women guillotined during World War II, they were
:
On the 8th of January 1941, Elisabeth Ducourneau,
(35) was executed at
Georgette Monneron (30) was guillotined at the Petite
Roquette women’s prison in
The 8th of June 1943 saw the execution of Germaine Philippe Besse (29) at
Saintes for the abuse and murder of her stepson.
Czeslawa Sinska (nee Bilicki) (33) was executed on the 29th of June 1943 at
Chalon for the murder of her husband.
Her lover helped with the murder but did not get the death penalty.
Marie-Louise Giraud, (39) a laundress, was guillotined at the Petite Roquette
women’s prison in
Four women were executed under the
"
45 year old Lucienne Thioux
(45) was executed at Melun on 11th of December 1947. She had drowned her
husband Paul, 73, on their wedding night, March the 2nd 1946 at Ussy-sur-Marne by throwing him off a bridge. She had to be dragged from the cell to the
guillotine, urinating in fear and shouting "I did nothing! I did nothing!
On the 21st of April 1949. Geneviève Calame (née Danelle)
was executed by firing squad in
During 1948 Madeleine Mouton was guillotined in
On the 22nd of April 1949. Germaine Leloy-Godefroy (31) was guillotined at
It is reported that when she was woken up at
4:30," she turned pale and dressed
in silence, assisted by two inmates with whom she shared her cell.
"
Following a meeting with the chaplain Moreau, she wrote a long letter, went to
confession and attended the mass. After the blessing, she refused rum and
cigarettes. She was led into the prison yard and the blade fell at 5.50 am. She
was described as "A very
dignified woman, she spoke in a soft voice. She died murmuring prayers.”
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 seven 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
and the Bois de Justice site.
