10 blood-chilling facts about the guillotine - a murder weapon built with good intentions

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Mechanical devices to decapitate prisoners on death row have been used in Europe for centuries. However, the most widely used guillotine was in France during the French Revolution. Below are 10 specific guillotine facts dating back to the Age of Terror.

1. Creation of the guillotine

The creation of the guillotine dates back to the end of 1789, and it is associated with the name of Joseph Guillotin. Opponent of the death penalty, which was impossible to abolish in those days, Guillotin advocated the use of more humane methods of execution. He helped to develop a device for rapid decapitation, in contrast to the earlier used swords and axes, which was called the "guillotine".

In the future, Guillotin made a lot of efforts so that his name was not associated with this murder weapon, but nothing came of it. His family even had to change their last name.

2. Lack of blood

The first person to be executed by the guillotine was Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, sentenced to death for robbery and murder. On the morning of April 25, 1792, a huge crowd of curious Parisians gathered to watch this spectacle. Pelletier climbed the scaffold, painted blood red, a sharp blade falling on his neck, his head flying into a wicker basket. The bloody sawdust was raked up.

It all happened so quickly that bloodthirsty audiences were disappointed. Some even began to shout: "Bring back the wooden gallows!" But, despite their protests, guillotines soon appeared in all cities. The guillotine made it possible to actually turn human deaths into a real conveyor belt. So, one of executioners, Charles-Henri Sanson, executed 300 men and women in three days, as well as 12 victims in just 13 minutes.

3. Experiments

Beheading devices were known even before the French Revolution, but during this period they were significantly improved, and the guillotine appeared. Previously, its accuracy and effectiveness were tested on live sheep and calves, as well as on human corpses. In parallel, in these experiments, medical scientists studied the influence of the brain on various functions of the body.

4. Vietnam

In 1955, South Vietnam separated from North Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam was created, the first president of which was Ngo Dinh Diem. Fearing coup plotters, he passed Law 10/59, according to which anyone suspected of having links with the Communists could be jailed without trial.

There, after horrific torture, the death sentence was eventually passed. However, in order to fall victim to Ngo Dinh Diem, it was not necessary to go to jail. The ruler traveled through the villages with a mobile guillotine and executed all suspects of disloyalty. Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were executed and their heads hung everywhere.

5. A lucrative Nazi endeavor

The revival of the guillotine came during the Nazi period in Germany, when Hitler personally ordered a large number of them to be produced. The executioners became quite wealthy people. One of the most famous executioners of Nazi Germany, Johann Reichgart, was able to buy himself a villa in a wealthy suburb of Munich with the money he earned.

The Nazis even contrived to generate additional income from the families of the beheaded victims. Each family was billed for each day the accused was held in prison and an additional bill for the execution of the sentence. Guillotines were used for almost nine years, and 16,500 people were executed during that time.

6. Life after the execution …

Do the eyes of the executed see anything in those seconds when his head, cut off from the body, flies into the basket? Does he retain the ability to think? It is quite possible, since the brain itself is not injured in this case, for some time it continues to perform its functions. And only when its supply of oxygen stops, loss of consciousness and death occurs.

This is evidenced by both eyewitness testimony and experiments on animals. So, King Charles I of England and Queen Anne Boleyn, after cutting off their heads, moved their lips, as if they were trying to say something. And doctor Borieux notes in his notes that, twice referring to the executed criminal Henri Longueville by name, 25-30 seconds after the execution, he noticed that he opened his eyes and looked at him.

7. Guillotine in North America

In North America, the guillotine was used only once on the island of St. Pierre to execute a fisherman who killed his drinking companion. And although the guillotine was never used there, legislators often advocated its return, some motivated this by the fact that the use of the guillotine would make organ donation more affordable.

Although proposals to use the guillotine were rejected, the death penalty was widely used. More than 500 executions were carried out in the state of Georgia from 1735 to 1924. At first it was a hanging, later replaced by an electric chair. In one of the state prisons, a kind of "record" was set - it took only 81 minutes to execute six men in the electric chair.

8. Family traditions

The executioner profession was despised in France, society shunned them, and merchants often refused to serve. They had to live with their families outside the city. Due to a damaged reputation, it was difficult to marry, so the executioners and their family members were legally allowed to marry their own cousins.

The most famous executioner in history was Charles-Henri Sanson, who began to carry out death sentences at the age of 15, and his most famous victim was King Louis XVI in 1793. Later, the family tradition was continued by his son Henri, who beheaded the king's wife, Marie Antoinette. His other son, Gabriel, also decided to follow in his father's footsteps. However, after the first decapitation, Gabriel slipped on the bloody scaffold, fell from it and died.

9. Eugene Weidman

In 1937, Eugene Weidman was sentenced to death for a series of murders in Paris. On June 17, 1939, a guillotine was prepared for him outside the prison, and curious spectators gathered. For a long time it was not possible to calm the bloodthirsty crowd, because of this, the time of the execution even had to be postponed. And after the beheading, people with handkerchiefs rushed to the bloody scaffold to take the handkerchiefs with Weidman's blood as souvenirs home.

After that, the authorities, in the person of French President Albert Lebrun, banned public executions, believing that they rather arouse disgusting base instincts in people than serve as a deterrent to criminals. Thus, Eugene Weidman became the last person in France to be publicly beheaded.

10. Suicide

Despite the falling popularity of the guillotine, it continued to be used by those who decided to commit suicide. In 2003, 36-year-old Boyd Taylor from England spent several weeks constructing a guillotine in his bedroom, which was supposed to turn on at night while he was sleeping. The decapitated body of his son was discovered by his father, awakened by a noise similar to the sound of a chimney falling from the roof.

In 2007, the body of a man was discovered in Michigan, who died in the forest from a mechanism he built. But the worst was the death of David Moore. In 2006, Moore built a guillotine from metal tubing and a saw blade. However, the device initially did not work, and Moore was only seriously injured. He had to get to his bedroom, where he had 10 Molotov cocktails hidden away. Moore blew them up, but they didn't work as planned.

And if the guillotine was created from humane considerations and was designed to facilitate a person's forced departure to another world, then "Pear of Suffering" - an instrument of torture that forced people to confess to anything.