Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (23 page)

GUILLOTINE

‘When the blade fell, it did not sever her head, which remained full of life. She was horribly convulsed, and her legs fell off the board, leaving her in an indecent position.’

Legend has it that on 27 May 1738, the wife of the King’s prosecutor, pregnant with her ninth child, was in the vicinity of the public scaffold on which a criminal was being broken on the wheel. So agonising were his screams that the lady went into premature labour, and so it could be said that the executioner was the midwife of the child born the next day – who was none other than Joseph Ignace Guillotin.

Be that as it may, the young Joseph grew up and, educated by the Jesuits, intended to take Holy Orders in a monastery in Bordeaux, but changed his mind and instead became a highly skilled and much sought-after doctor. Later, politics called, and he was elected a deputy of the Assembly, a representative of the people.

Humane by nature, he was concerned by the harshness and inequality of the capital punishments meted out to criminals. Highwaymen were broken on the wheel, sorcerers and witches burned at the stake, treasonable plotters were hanged and quartered, thieves and swindlers hanged, while offenders of high rank were given the privilege of being beheaded by the sword.

Pondering on the degrees of pain inflicted by the various methods, and the differing lengths of time taken to die, he concluded that the only fair way was that all those committing crimes which carried the death penalty should be executed in exactly the same way, and that the method should bring death as rapidly and therefore as mercifully as possible. As it was recognised that decapitation was the quickest, then that was the method which should be adopted. Moreover, since even a skilled executioner was prone to human error, the beheading should be achieved by means of a machine.

He raised his proposition in the Assembly in 1789. Although derided by some of his colleagues, most were enthusiastic, and it was agreed that at least the idea of putting all criminals to death in the same way, that of beheading by the sword, merited further consideration. By June 1791 this was approved; no more executions on the wheel, no burning, no hanging, no quartering; everyone, not just aristocrats, would now have the sword.

But, as with governments everywhere, passing a law was one thing, applying it in practice was quite another. For how, if all other methods of execution were abolished, could the executioners cope with the vastly extended queue of felons now eligible for the sword? The difficulties were almost insurmountable for, as the country’s leading executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson explained:

‘In order to accomplish the execution in accordance with the law it is necessary, even without any opposition on the part of the prisoner, that the executioner should be very skilful and the condemned man very steady, otherwise it would be impossible to accomplish the execution with the sword. After each execution the sword is no longer in a condition to perform another, being likely to break in two; it is absolutely necessary that it should be ground and sharpened afresh if there be several prisoners to execute at the same time. It would be needful therefore to have a sufficient number of swords all ready.

It must further be pointed out that swords have very often broken in the performance of such executions, and the Paris executioner possesses only two, at a cost of six hundred livres each.

It must also be taken into account that, when there are several condemned persons to be executed at the same time, the terror produced by this form of execution, owing to the immense amount of blood that is shed and flows everywhere, creates fear and weakness in the hearts of those who are waiting to die, however intrepid they may be. An attack of faintness forms an invincible obstacle to an execution. If prisoners cannot hold themselves up, and yet the executioner continues with the matter, the execution becomes a struggle and a massacre.

Even in the case of other modes of execution, very far from requiring the accuracy demanded by the sword, one has seen prisoners turning faint at the sight of their confederate’s death, or at least showing weakness and fear; all this is an argument against execution by beheading with the sword.

In other methods of execution it was very easy to hide these signs of weakness from the public because it was not necessary for their accomplishment that a prisoner should be firm and fearless (e.g. tied to the wheel or at the stake), but with the sword method, if the prisoner moved, the execution failed. How can one control a man who either will not or cannot hold himself still?

It is therefore indispensable that, in order to fulfil the humane intentions of the National Assembly, some means should be found to avoid delays, and assure certainty, by
fixing
the patient so that the success of the operation shall not be doubtful. By this the intention of the legislature will be fulfilled, and the executioner himself protected from any accidental effervescence of the public.’

The logic was inescapable. Without scores of skilled executioners, each with large stocks of fresh swords, plus felons guaranteed not to flinch while being decapitated, the idea just wouldn’t work.

So obvious was Sanson’s reasoned argument that in March 1792 a new decree was issued. A mechanical device should be designed without further delay, one capable of removing heads swiftly, impartially, accurately and as free of pain as possible.

Such a machine was perfectly feasible. The French penologists of the day were quite conversant with similar devices used in the past, such as Italy’s mannaia, England’s Halifax gibbet, Scotland’s maiden and Germany’s diele. Even China, in the days of the mandarins, had its own primitive but no doubt highly effective device, consisting of a 10-foot-long tree trunk, hinged at one end to a horizontal beam by means of a bronze pin, and held upright at an angle of 45 degrees or so by a loose support.

Fixed in a socket at the upper end of the trunk was a large triangular-shaped blade. Once the victim had been tied across the horizontal beam, the loose support was knocked away, allowing the heavy trunk to fall with devastating force, if not with precise accuracy, to sever the victim’s head.

In France itself, archives held accounts of the execution of the Maréchal de Montmorency who, in 1632, was decapitated by means of such a machine. As Puysegur reported in his
Memoirs
:

‘He went to the scaffold, on to which he entered through a window that had been made to lead to the said scaffold, which was set up in the courtyard of the town hall, and on which was a block where they made him put his head. In that part of the country, Toulouse, they make use of an axe, which is laid between two pieces of wood, and when the head is laid upon the block the rope is let go, and the axe comes down and separates the head from the body.

When he had placed his head on the block, the wound he had in his neck gave him pain, and he moved, saying: “I am not moving from fear, but my wound is hurting me.” The rope was released from the axe; the head was separated from the body. The one fell one side, and the other on the other side.’

In 1865 there was found at Lime, in the canton of Sains (Aisne) near the high road from Guise to Vervins, a huge flint hatchet weighing about 100 kilograms which, the antiquarians declared, had been used by the Gauls for chopping off heads – literally a Stone Age guillotine. Experiments were carried out with the disc of flint and were conclusive.

When it was suspended by a long rod and made to move after the fashion of a pendulum, the heads of sheep were easily cut off.

So Dr Guillotin, Sanson and a carpenter named Schmidt, having all the basic principles at their fingertips, got to work and then submitted their design to Antoine Louis, secretary of the Academy of Surgery and surgeon to his Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI. It is said that, while they were in the office, the king himself entered and examined the drawings closely. Far from being technically ignorant, his hobby being the study of locks and their mechanisms, he criticised the crescent-shaped configuration of the blade, suggesting rather that it should be triangular, and bevelled like a scythe. The accuracy of his suggestion was amply confirmed when, nine months later, the triangular blade removed his own head.

So closely was Antoine, the king’s surgeon, involved at the design stages that initially the machine was christened ‘The Little Louison’ or ‘The Louisette’. But it was soon named after Joseph Ignace, whose surname, Guillotin, was to go down in history as both a noun and a verb. This was not something of which he was proud; on the contrary, for whenever he was recognised in public, passers-by would tap the backs of their necks and wink at each other!

The machine was constructed then tested, severing the heads of sheep and calves instantly and cleanly. Absolute proof was required, however, and, some corpses being obtained, it was found that the necks of women and children also offered no resistance. Not so efficiently decapitated, though, were the heads of some male corpses, but this was rectified by increasing the height from which the blade was dropped.

For a description of the machine, who better to turn to than a member of the family, seven generations of which had served France as executioners? Henri-Clement Sanson, in his
Memoirs
of 1876, wrote: