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Public execution by guillotine. Execution by guillotine

The guillotine is a kind of pinnacle of executioner skill, which became one of the notorious symbols of the French Revolution. The mechanism that replaced man in the executioner's craft - was it simply a reflection of soulless terror or a way to show mercy? Let's look at Popular Mechanics together.

Guillotine (French guillotine) - special mechanism for enforcement death penalty by cutting off the head. Execution using a guillotine is called guillotining. It is noteworthy that this invention was used by the French right up to 1977! In the same year, for comparison, the manned spacecraft Soyuz-24 went into space.

The guillotine is designed simply, but it copes with its duties very effectively. Its main part is the “lamb” - a heavy (up to 100 kg) oblique metal blade that moves freely vertically along the guide beams. It was held at a height of 2-3 meters using clamps. When the prisoner was placed on a bench with a special recess that did not allow the convict to withdraw his head, the clamps were opened using a lever, after which the blade decapitated the victim at high speed.

Story

Despite its fame, this invention was not invented by the French. The “great-grandmother” of the guillotine is considered to be the “Halifax Gibbet,” which was simply a wooden structure with two posts topped by a horizontal beam. The role of the blade was played by a heavy ax blade, which slid up and down along the grooves of the beam. Such structures were installed in city squares, and the first mention of them dates back to 1066.

The guillotine had many other ancestors. The Scottish Maiden (Maiden), the Italian Mandaya, they all relied on the same principle. Decapitation was considered one of the most humane executions, and in the hands of a skilled executioner, the victim died quickly and without suffering. However, it was precisely the laboriousness of the process (as well as the abundance of convicts, who added more work to the executioners) that ultimately led to the creation of a universal mechanism. What was hard work for a person (not only moral, but also physical), the machine did quickly and without errors.

Creation and popularity

IN early XVIII centuries, there were a great many ways of executing people in France: the unfortunate were burned, crucified on hind legs, hanged, quartered, and so on. Execution by beheading (decapitation) was a kind of privilege, and only went to rich and influential people. Gradually, indignation at such cruelty grew among the people. Many followers of Enlightenment ideas sought to humanize the execution process as much as possible. One of them was Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed the introduction of the guillotine in one of the six articles he presented during the debate on the French penal code on October 10th, 1789. In addition, he proposed introducing a system of nationwide standardization of punishment and a system of protection for the criminal's family, which should not be harmed or discredited. On December 1, 1789, these proposals by Guillotin were accepted, but execution by machine was rejected. However, later, when the doctor himself had already abandoned his idea, other politicians warmly supported it, so that in 1791 the guillotine still took its place in the criminal system. Although Guillotin’s demand to hide the execution from prying eyes did not please those in power, and guillotining became popular entertainment - the convicts were executed in squares to the whistling and hooting of the crowd.

The first to be executed by guillotine was a robber named Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier. Among the people, she quickly received such nicknames as “national razor”, “widow” and “Madame Guillotin”. It is important to note that the guillotine was in no way associated with any specific layer of society and, in a certain sense, equalized everyone - it was not for nothing that Robespierre himself was executed there.

From the 1870s until the abolition of the death penalty, the improved Berger system guillotine was used in France. It is dismountable and installed directly on the ground, usually in front of the prison gates, and the scaffold was no longer used. The execution itself takes a matter of seconds; the headless body was instantly pushed by the executioner’s assistants into a prepared deep box with a lid. During the same period, the positions of regional executioners were abolished. The executioner, his assistants and the guillotine were now based in Paris and traveled to the places to carry out executions.

End of story

Public executions continued in France until 1939, when Eugene Weidmann became the last victim "under open air" Thus, it took almost 150 years for Guillotin’s wishes to conceal the execution process from prying eyes to be realized. The last government use of the guillotine in France occurred on September 10, 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi was executed. The next execution was scheduled to take place in 1981, but the alleged victim, Philippe Maurice, was granted clemency. The death penalty was abolished in France that same year.

I would like to note that, contrary to rumors, Dr. Guillotin himself escaped his own invention and safely died of natural causes in 1814.

The use of a death machine called the guillotine was proposed by the doctor and member of the National Assembly Joseph Guillotin back in 1791. However, this mechanism was not the invention of Dr. Guillotin; it is known that a similar weapon was previously used in Scotland and Ireland, where it was called the Scottish Maid. Since the first execution, in nearly 200 years of use, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people who were executed using this grisly device. We invite you to learn a little more about this killing machine and once again be glad that we live in the modern world.

Making a guillotine

The creation of the guillotine dates back to the end of 1789, and it is associated with the name of Joseph Guillotin. Being an 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 develop a device for rapid decapitation (decapitation) in contrast to the previously used swords and axes, which was called the “guillotine”.

Subsequently, Guillotin made a lot of efforts to ensure that his name was not associated with this murder weapon, but nothing worked out for him. His family even had to change their last name.

No blood

The first person executed by 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 onto the scaffold, painted blood red, the sharp blade fell on his neck, his head flew into a wicker basket. The bloody sawdust was raked up.

Everything happened so quickly that the spectators, thirsty for blood, were disappointed. Some even started shouting: “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. Thus, one of the executioners, Charles-Henri Sanson, executed 300 men and women in three days, as well as 12 victims in just 13 minutes.

Experiments

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

Vietnam

In 1955, South Vietnam separated from North Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam was created, with Ngo Dinh Diem becoming its first president. Fearing coup plotters, he passed Law 10/59, under which anyone suspected of communist ties could be jailed without trial.

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

A Profitable Nazi Endeavor

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

The Nazis even managed to make additional profits from the families of beheaded victims. Each family was billed for each day the defendant was held in prison and an additional bill for the execution of the sentence. The guillotines were used for almost nine years, and 16,500 people were executed during this time.

Life after execution...

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

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

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 while drunk. Although the guillotine was never used there again, legislators often advocated for its return, some arguing that using the guillotine would make organ donation more accessible.

Although proposals to use the guillotine were rejected, the death penalty was widely used. From 1735 to 1924, more than 500 death sentences were carried out in the state of Georgia. At first it was hanging, which was later replaced by the 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.

Family traditions

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

The most famous executioner in history was Charles-Henri Sanson, who began executing death sentences at age 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 beheading, Gabriel slipped on the bloody scaffold, fell from it and died.

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. It took a long time to calm down the bloodthirsty crowd; because of this, the execution time 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 this, the authorities, represented by French President Albert Lebrun, banned public executions, believing that they arouse disgusting base instincts in people rather than serve as a deterrent for criminals. Thus, Eugene Weidman became the last person in France to be publicly beheaded.

Suicide

Despite the declining popularity of the guillotine, it continued to be used by those who decided to take their own lives. In 2003, 36-year-old Boyd Taylor from England spent several weeks constructing a guillotine in his bedroom that would turn on at night while he slept. His son's headless body was discovered by his father, who was awakened by a noise that sounded like a chimney falling from the roof.

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

Guillotine

Guillotine. After existing for two centuries, it was abolished in 1981. Photo "Sigma".

“Holy guillotine”, “path to repentance”, “folk razor”, “patriotic truncation”, “transom”, “widow”, “Capetian tie”, later “window”, “machine”, “lathe” - that’s just some of the nicknames that people used to call the guillotine. Such a variety of names was explained both by the popularity of the guillotine and the fear that it inspired.

The French machine for cutting off heads was invented by two doctors: Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Louis, a humanist and scientist.

The first put forward the idea of ​​universal equality before death, which can be realized with the help of an improved knife, and the second materialized this idea. Each of them deserved the right to give their name to this first achievement of industrial technology in the field of killing.

Last public execution in June 1939. Eugene Weidmann was guillotined at Versailles. Photo. Police archive. D.R.

At first the car was called “Luizon”, “Luisette” and even “Mirabelle” - in honor of Mirabeau, who supported this project, but in the end the name “guillotine” was assigned to it, although Dr. Guillotin always objected to such excessive gratitude. According to numerous testimonies, “he was extremely saddened by this.” Disappointed in his “invention,” Guillotin abandoned his political career and actively became involved in the restoration of the Medical Academy, then, miraculously avoiding “the embrace of his goddaughter,” he opened an office.

Several numbers

Between 1792 and 1795:

- According to some data, from 13,800 to 18,613 guillotinations were carried out by court verdict. 2,794 are in Paris during the Jacobin dictatorship. In addition, approximately 25,000 beheadings were carried out as a result of simple administrative decisions. In total, during the period of the revolution, from 38,000 to 43,000 executions by guillotine took place.

Including:

- former aristocrats: 1,278 people, of which 750 are women.

- wives of farmers and artisans: 1467.

- nuns: 350.

- priests: 1135.

- commoners of different classes: 13,665.

- children: 41.

Between 1796 and 1810:

There are no reliable statistics available. Some sources give an average of 419 sentences per year between 1803 and 1809, of which 120 were death sentences. In total there are about 540 guillotined.

From 1811 to 1825: 4,520.

From 1826 to 1850: 1,029.

From 1851 to 1900: 642.

From 1901 to 1950: 457.

From 1950 to 1977: 65.

- Total: 6,713 guillotinations over 165 years from 1811 to 1977. The large number of executions in the period 1811–1825 is explained by the fact that “mitigating circumstances” did not apply then. Introduced in 1832, they saved the head of almost every second convict. Since 1950, the decline of the death penalty begins.

From 1792 to 1977:

- There will be 45,000-49,000 beheadings in France, excluding the period 1796–1810.

From 1968 to 1977:

- 9,231 people were found guilty of crimes punishable by guillotine.

- The prosecutor's office demanded 163 death sentences.

- 38 death sentences were imposed.

- 23 were not subject to appeal, 15 were appealed through the cassation court.

- In 7 cases the sentence was carried out.

Average annual figure:

- 850 possible death sentences, 15 at the request of the prosecutor's office, 4 sentences passed; 1 execution every two years. According to revolutionary statistics:

- 2% of those guillotined were of noble origin.

- from 8 to 18% - political opponents.

- from 80 to 90% are commoners, murderers, swindlers.

From 1950 to 1977:

- According to sociological research J-M. Bessette, which examined 82 guillotines:

- middle age convicts - 32 years.

- every second person guillotined was under 30 years old, 15% were between the ages of 20 and 24 years.

- 20% - single or divorced.

- 70% are workers.

- 5% - artisans, traders, office workers.

- more than 40% were born abroad.

From 1846 to 1893:

- 46 women were guillotined.

From 1941 to 1949:

- 18 women were executed by guillotine, 9 in the period 1944–1949. for contact with the enemy. One of them, named Marie-Louise Giraud, was executed in 1943 for helping to perform abortions. Since 1949, all women sentenced to death have received pardon.

- The last woman executed was Germaine Godefroy.

She was guillotined in 1949.

- The last woman convicted was Marie-Claire Emma.

She was pardoned in 1973.

Robespierre guillotines the executioner, beheading all the French. Revolutionary engraving. Private count

Torture, hanging, wheeling, quartering, beheading with a sword were the legacy of despotic, obscurantist eras; against this background, the guillotine for many became the embodiment of “new ideas” in the field of justice based on humanistic principles. In practice, she was the “daughter of the Enlightenment,” a philosophical creation that established new type legal relations between people.

On the other hand, the ominous instrument marked the transition from ancient, “homegrown” methods to mechanical ones. The guillotine heralded the beginning of an era of "industrial" death and "new inventions of new justice", which would later lead to the invention gas chambers And electric chair, which also owe their appearance to the synthesis social sciences, technology and medicine.

Jean-Michel Bessette writes: “The man-made, in a certain sense, inspired component of the executioners’ work disappears, and along with it something human is lost... The guillotine is no longer controlled by a person, it is not the mind that moves his hand - a mechanism operates; the executioner turns into a mechanic of the judicial machine..."

With the advent of the guillotine, killing becomes a clear, simple and quick process that has nothing in common with old-fashioned methods of execution, which required certain knowledge and skill from the performers, and they were people not without moral and physical weaknesses and even dishonesty.

General laughter!

So, in the name of promoting the principles of equality, humanity and progress, the question of a beheading machine designed to change the very aesthetics of death was raised in the National Assembly.

On October 9, 1789, as part of a discussion on criminal legislation, Joseph Ignace Guillotin, a physician, anatomy teacher at the Faculty of Medicine and newly elected Parisian deputy, rose to the podium of the National Assembly.

He had a reputation among his colleagues as an honest scientist and philanthropist, and was even appointed to a commission tasked with shedding light on Mesmer's "witchcraft, wands and animal magnetism." When Guillotin put forward the idea that the same offense should be punished equally, regardless of the rank, title and merits of the perpetrator, he was listened to with respect.

Many deputies have already expressed similar considerations: the inequality and cruelty of punishments for criminal offenses outraged the public.

Two months later, on December 1, 1789, Guillotin again gave an impassioned speech in defense of equality in death, for the same execution for all.

“In all cases where the law provides for the death penalty for the accused, the essence of the punishment must be the same, regardless of the nature of the crime.”

It was then that Guillotin mentioned the instrument of killing, which would later immortalize his name in history.

Technical concept and mechanical principles the actions of the device had not yet been worked out, but from a theoretical point of view, Dr. Guillotin had already thought of everything.

He described to his colleagues the possibilities of a future machine that would cut off heads so simply and quickly that the convict would hardly even feel “a slight breath on the back of his head.”

Guillotin ended his speech with a phrase that became famous: “My machine, gentlemen, will cut off your head in the blink of an eye, and you will not feel anything... The knife falls with the speed of lightning, the head flies off, blood splashes, the man is no more!..”

Most of the deputies were puzzled.

There were rumors that the Parisian deputy was outraged by the various types of executions provided for by the code at that time, because the screams of the condemned for many years terrified his mother and she had a premature birth. In January 1791, Dr. Guillotin again tried to win over his colleagues to his side.

The “machine question” was not discussed, but the idea of ​​“execution equal for all”, the refusal to stigmatize the families of convicts and the abolition of confiscation of property were adopted, which was a huge step forward.

Four months later, at the end of May 1791, the Assembly debated questions of criminal law for three days.

During the preparation of the draft of the new criminal code, issues of punishment procedures, including the death penalty, were finally raised.

Proponents of the death penalty and abolitionists clashed in fierce debate. The arguments of both sides will be discussed for another two hundred years.

The former believed that the death penalty, by its visibility, prevents the recurrence of crimes, the latter called it legalized murder, emphasizing the irreversibility of a miscarriage of justice.

One of the most ardent supporters of the abolition of the death penalty was Robespierre. Several theses put forward by him during the discussion went down in history: “Man must be sacred to man... I come here to beg not the gods, but the legislators, who should be the instrument and interpreters of the eternal laws inscribed by the Divine in the hearts of people, I came here to beg them to cross out from the French code bloody laws prescribing murder, equally rejected by their morality and the new constitution. I want to prove to them that, firstly, the death penalty is inherently unjust, and, secondly, that it does not deter crimes, but, on the contrary, multiplies crimes much more than it prevents them.”

Paradoxically, throughout the forty days of Robespierre's dictatorship, the guillotine functioned non-stop, symbolizing the apogee of the legal use of the death penalty in France. Only in the period from June 10 to July 27, 1794, one thousand three hundred and seventy-three heads fell from their shoulders, “like tiles torn off by the wind,” as Fouquier-Tinville would say. This was the time of the Great Terror. In total, in France, according to reliable sources, from thirty to forty thousand people were executed according to the verdicts of the revolutionary courts.

Let's go back to 1791. There were more deputies who supported the abolition of the death penalty, but the political situation was critical, there was talk of “internal enemies,” and the majority gave way to the minority.

On June 1, 1791, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly to retain the death penalty in the territory of the Republic. A debate immediately began that lasted several months, this time about the method of execution. All deputies were of the opinion that the execution should be as minimally painful as possible and as quick as possible. But how exactly should one execute? The controversy centered mainly on comparative analysis advantages and disadvantages of hanging and beheading. Speaker Amber proposed tying the condemned man to a post and strangling him with a collar, but the majority voted for beheading. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, it is a quick execution, but the main thing was that hanging was traditionally the execution of commoners, while beheading was the privilege of those of noble birth.

Characteristics of the guillotine

"Dr. Louie's Daughter."

- Height vertical racks: 4.5 m.

- Distance between posts: 37 cm.

- Height of folding board: 85 cm.

- Knife weight: 7 kg.

- Cargo weight: 30 kg.

- Weight of bolts securing the knife to the load: 3 kg.

- Total weight of the decapitating mechanism: 40 kg.

- Knife drop height: 2.25 m.

- Average neck thickness: 13 cm.

- Execution time: ±0.04 seconds.

- Time to cut the neck of a convicted person: 0.02 seconds.

- Blade speed: ± 23.4 km/h.

- Total machine weight: 580 kg.

This machine must consist of the following parts:

Two parallel oak posts, six inches thick and ten feet high, are mounted on the frame a foot apart, joined at the top by a crossbar, and supported by supports at the sides and rear. On inside the posts have longitudinal grooves square section, an inch deep, along which the side ridges of the knife slide. At the top of each rack, under the crossbar, there are copper rollers.

Made by a skilled metal craftsman, this hard-hardened knife cuts with its beveled blade. The length of the cutting surface of the blade is eight inches, the height is six.

The blade on top is the same thickness as an axe. This part contains holes for iron hoops, by which a load weighing thirty pounds or more is secured. In addition, on the top surface, a foot across, there are square inch-wide tabs on both sides that fit into the grooves of the posts.

A strong long rope passed through a ring holds the knife under the top bar.

The wooden block on which the neck of the person to be executed is placed is eight inches high and four inches thick.

The base of the block, one foot wide, corresponds to the distance between the posts. Using removable pins, the base is attached to the posts on both sides. On top of the block there is a recess for the sharp edge of a beveled knife. The side grooves of the racks end at this level. A notch must be made in the center to properly position the neck of the person being executed.

To prevent a person from raising his head during execution, above the back of the head, where the hairline ends, it must be secured with an iron hoop in the shape of a horseshoe. The ends of the hoop have holes for bolting to the base of the top of the block.

The executed person is placed on his stomach, his neck is placed in the hole of the block. When all preparations are completed, the performer simultaneously releases both ends of the rope holding the knife, and, falling from above, it, due to its own weight and acceleration, separates the head from the body in the blink of an eye!

Any defects in the above parts can be easily identified by even the most inexperienced designer.

Signed: Louis. Scientific Secretary of the Surgical Society.

So the choice of representatives of the people was partly an egalitarian revenge. Since the death penalty remains, “to hell with the rope! Long live the abolition of privileges and noble beheading for all!

From now on, the concepts of varying degrees of suffering and shame will not apply to the death penalty.

Sword or axe?

Ratified on September 25, amended on October 6, 1791, the new criminal code read:

“All those sentenced to death will have their heads cut off,” specifying that “the death penalty is a simple deprivation of life and it is prohibited to torture the convicted person.”

All criminal courts in France received the right to impose death sentences, but the method of carrying out the sentence was not determined by law. How to cut off a head? Saber? With a sword? An ax?

Due to the lack of clarity, executions were suspended for some time, and the government began to address the issue.

Many were concerned by the fact that beheadings “the old fashioned way” often turned into a horrific spectacle, which contradicted the requirements of the new law - a simple, painless killing that excluded preliminary torture. However, given the possible awkwardness of the executioner and the complexity of the execution procedure itself, the torment of the condemned seemed inevitable.

The state executioner Sanson was most concerned. He sent a memorandum to Justice Minister Adrien Duport in which he argued that lack of experience could lead to the most dire consequences. Presenting a lot of arguments against beheading with a sword, he, in particular, stated:

“How can one endure such a bloody execution without trembling? In other types of execution it is easy to hide weakness from the public, for there is no need for the condemned to remain firm and fearless. But in this case, if the convict grumbles, the execution will be disrupted. How to force a person who cannot or will not hold on?...

Profession: guillotine worker

“The chief executor of sentences in criminal cases,” as the executioner should be called, worked on a semi-legal basis. His duties were not regulated. He was not a civil servant, but an employee.

In France, as elsewhere, this workshop existed according to the caste principle. Positions were distributed among their own complex system intra-shop unions, including marriages, which led to the formation of entire dynasties.

If there was no heir, the most experienced assistant to the retired executioner was appointed to the vacant place. Since the executioner’s work was paid by the piece, his salary was not officially listed anywhere. Fighting for the abolition of the death penalty, deputy Pierre Bass tried to get the corresponding allocations from the budget of the Ministry of Justice, which amounted to 185,000 francs per year, abolished.

According to the "Historian of the Executioners" Jacques Delarue, on July 1, 1979, the main executioner received 40,833 francs per year net after paying 3,650.14 francs to the Social Security Fund plus remunerations amounting to about 2,100 francs. First class assistants received 2111.70 francs per month. The salary was subject to income tax.

The notorious “basket premium” of 6,000 francs for each “head”, according to Jacques Delarue, was pure fiction. Thus, the main executive earned less than the secretary, and his assistants earned less than the janitor. Not enough for a person who had legal right kill your own kind. Moreover, his work was fraught with risk.

Neck cutting machine

Based on humanistic considerations, I have the honor to warn about all the incidents that may occur in the event of execution by sword...

It is necessary that, guided by philanthropy, deputies find a way to immobilize the convicted person so that the execution of the sentence cannot be called into question, so as not to prolong the punishment and thereby strengthen its inevitability.

This way we will fulfill the will of the legislator and avoid unrest in society.”

Photographer

One of the executioner’s assistants, who performed a particularly important duty, was undeservedly forgotten. In thieves' jargon he was called a "photographer." Often it was thanks to him that executions did not turn into massacres. He made sure that the convict stood straight, did not pull his head into his shoulders, so that the back of his head lay exactly on the line of fall of the knife. He stood in front of the guillotine and, if necessary, pulled the convict by the hair (or ears, if he was bald) for a “final adjustment.” “Freeze!” Finding the right angle, or rather - correct position and earned him the nickname Photographer.

As Marcel Chevalier says in an interview about the time when he worked as an executioner’s assistant: “A photographer is a truly dangerous profession! Yes, yes, putting a person down is dangerous. If Obrecht had let go of the blade too quickly, my arms would have been cut off!”

The Minister of Justice reported the fears of the Parisian executioner and his own concerns to the directorate of the Paris department, which, in turn, informed the National Assembly.

Responding to Duport’s request, who recommended “as soon as possible to decide on a method of execution that would meet the principles of the new law,” the deputies decided that “enlightened humanity should improve the art of killing as soon as possible.” And they asked the Surgical Society to make a report on the topic.

The scientific secretary of the eminent institution, Dr. Louis, personally began to study this pressing problem. Dr. Louis was the most famous physician of his time and had extensive experience in medico-legal and legal matters.

Within two weeks, he summarized his observations and presented his conclusion to the deputies.

Recalling that his report is based on clinical observations and takes into account the requirements of law, science, justice and humanitarian considerations, the scientist confirmed that the fears were not unfounded. Dr. Louis gave the example of the execution of Monsieur de Lolly. “He was on his knees, blindfolded. The executioner hit him on the back of the head. The first blow failed to cut off the head. The body, unimpeded, fell forward, and it took three or four more blows from the sword to complete the job. The spectators watched in horror at this, so to speak, chopping block.”

Dr. Louis offered to support Dr. Guillotin and create a machine for cutting necks. “Given the structure of the neck, in the center of which there is a spine consisting of several vertebrae, and their joints are almost impossible to identify, quick and accurate separation of the head from the body cannot be ensured by the performer (executioner), whose dexterity depends on many reasons. For reliability, the procedure must be carried out by mechanical means, with a deliberately calculated force and accuracy of impact.”

Philanthropy calendar

In France, before the revolution, a decree of 1670 was in force, providing for 115 possible cases application of the death penalty. A nobleman was beheaded, a highwayman was carved up in the city square, a regicide was quartered, a counterfeiter was boiled alive in boiling water, a heretic was burned, a commoner caught stealing was hanged. As a result, before the revolution, an average of 300 performances were recorded per year.

1791 The new code reduces the number of crimes punishable by death from 115 to 32. A court of people's assessors was established, and the method of death penalty was unified - guillotining. The right to pardon has been abolished.

1792 The first execution by guillotine of a certain Jacques-Nicolas Peletier.

1793 Appointment of an executioner in each department of the Republic.

1802 Restoring the right to pardon as the prerogative of the first person of the state. At this moment - the First Consul.

1810 The new criminal code increases the number of offenses punishable by death from 32 to 39. Introduces an additional penalty of cutting off the hand for parricide before beheading. Complicity and attempted murder are subject to the death penalty; in fact, 78 types of crimes are subject to the guillotine.

1830 The revision of the criminal code leads to a reduction in the number of crimes punishable by death from 39 to 36.

1832 The jury is allowed to consider mitigating circumstances. Abolition of certain types of torture, including the iron collar and cutting off the wrist. The revision of the criminal code reduces the number of crimes punishable by death to 25.

1845 The number of crimes punishable by capital punishment reaches 26. The introduction of the death penalty for organizing railway accidents that resulted in human casualties.

1848 The death penalty for political crimes has been abolished, the number of “death” articles has been reduced to 15.

1853 In the Second Empire, 16 articles punishable by death.

1870 The guillotine is no longer installed on the scaffold. There remains one executioner with five assistants for the entire territory of the state and one more for Corsica and Algeria.

1939 Public beheadings have been abolished. The public is no longer allowed to attend executions. According to Article 16, the following are now allowed to participate in the procedure:

- chairman of the jury;

- an official appointed by the Prosecutor General;

- local court judge;

- court secretary;

- defenders of the convicted person;

- priest;

- director of a correctional institution;

- the Commissioner of Police and, at the request of the Prosecutor General, if necessary, members of the public security forces;

- prison doctor or any other doctor appointed by the Prosecutor General.

It is worth noting that the executioner and his assistants do not appear on the list.

1950 The death penalty has been introduced for armed robbery. For the first time in more than a hundred years, for an attempt on property, and not on a person’s life.

1951 The press is prohibited from reporting on executions and is ordered to confine itself to the protocols.

1959 Fifth Republic. The new code, directly following from the 1810 edition, contains 50 articles under which the death penalty is imposed.

1977 On September 10, the guillotine was used for the last time at Baumette prison (Marseille), executing Djandoubi Hamid, a 28-year-old bachelor of no occupation, guilty of murder.

1981 On September 18, the National Assembly votes in favor of abolishing the death penalty with 369 votes in favor, 113 against, and 5 abstentions. On September 30, the Senate passes the law without amendments: 161 votes for, 126 against. In the interval between these dates, the jury of the Upper Rhine handed down the last death sentence to a certain Jean Michel M..., who was wanted.

Taste Blood

After the beheading of Louis XVI, his body was taken to the Madeleine cemetery. The horse harnessed to Sanson's cart stumbled, and the basket, where the head and body of the sovereign lay, overturned onto the highway. Passers-by rushed - some with a scarf, some with a tie, some with a piece of paper - to collect the blood of the martyr. Some tasted it and thought it was “damn salty.” One even filled a couple of thimbles with dark red clay. After the execution of Henry II, Duke of Montmorency in Toulouse, soldiers drank his blood to adopt “valor, strength and generosity.”

Dr. Louis also recalled that the idea of ​​a beheading machine was not new; primitive examples had existed for a long time, in particular, in some German principalities, in England and Italy. In fact, the French did not invent the machine, but rediscovered it.

In addition, the speaker made several clarifications regarding the “knife,” the main part of the future machine. He proposed improving the horizontal knife of previous “cut-heads” with a significant innovation - a 45-degree beveled edge - in order to achieve greater efficiency.

“It is well known,” he writes, “that cutting tools with a perpendicular impact they are practically ineffective. Under a microscope you can see that the blade is just a more or less thin saw. It is necessary that it slides over the body that is to be cut. We will be able to achieve instant decapitation with an ax or knife, the blade of which is not a straight line, but an oblique one, like an old reed - then when striking, its force acts perpendicularly only in the center, and the blade freely penetrates into the object it divides, exerting an oblique effect on the sides, which guarantees achievement of the goal...

It's not difficult to build a car that won't crash. Decapitation will be carried out instantly, in accordance with the spirit and letter of the new law. Tests can be carried out on carcasses or live sheep.”

The doctor ended his report with technical considerations: “Let’s see if there is a need to fix the head of the executed person at the base of the skull with a collar, the ends of which can be fastened with dowels under the scaffold.”

Members of the Legislative Assembly, as it became known on October 1, were shocked by what they heard and may have been embarrassed to publicly discuss the death machine project. But the scientific approach made a strong impression on them, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief: a solution to the problem had been found. Dr. Louis's report was published. On March 20, 1792, a decree was ratified that “all those sentenced to death will be beheaded in the manner adopted as a result of consultations with the scientific secretary of the Surgical Society.” As a result, the deputies authorized the executive branch to allocate the funds necessary to create the machine.

Not once in the two centuries until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 was the guillotine mentioned in the French criminal code. Guillotining has always been designated by the wording - “a method adopted as a result of consultations with the scientific secretary of the Surgical Society.”

As soon as the idea of ​​a “shortening machine” was formalized into law, all that remained was to bring it to life in the shortest possible time. It was decided to appoint Pierre Louis Roederer, a member of the bureau of the Paris municipality, who distinguished himself in the discussion of financial and judicial laws, to be responsible for the production of the prototype.

Roederer began by consulting with the author of the idea, Dr. Guillotin, but quickly recognized him as a theoretician and turned to the practitioner - Dr. Louis, the only one who was able to translate the idea into reality. He put the doctor in touch with Gidon, a carpenter who worked for the government. Accustomed to the construction of scaffolds, he fell into deep and understandable confusion. Dr. Louis compiled detailed description devices, detailing the project as much as possible. This description became the most detailed document on the guillotine in history, confirming the fact that Dr. Louis was its real inventor.

Based on the technical specifications, Gidon prepared an estimate of the work within 24 hours and on March 31, 1792, handed it over to Dr. Louis, who handed it over to Roederer. The estimate was 5,660 livres - a huge amount for those times.

Gidon said that it would cost that much money to make a prototype, and if “the costs of the first machine seem excessive, then subsequent devices will cost much less, given that the experience of creating the first prototype will remove all difficulties and doubts.” He assured that the car would last at least half a century. Perhaps Gidon asked for so much to get rid of the order. An ancient, inviolable tradition forbade the carpenter fraternity from making execution instruments.

Be that as it may, the government, represented by the Minister of Public Taxation Clavier, rejected Guidon’s estimate, and Roederer asked Louis to find “ good master"with reasonable claims.

This was the German Tobias Schmidt, a harpsichord master from Strasbourg, who periodically gave concerts. Schmidt, who considered himself a man of art, wrote to the doctor after the publication of his report and offered his services, assuring that he would be honored to produce a “beheading machine” that could bring happiness to humanity.

1932 Execution. Two baskets: one for the body, the other for the head. Photo. Private count

Preparation for execution. Photo. Private number

Dr. Louis contacted Schmidt: he was already actively developing the topic, designing his own version of the machine. Louis asked him to leave his “personal research” and calculate the proposed project.

Less than a week later, Tobias Schmidt presented an estimate of 960 livres, almost six times less than Guidon's. Clavier haggled for the sake of appearance, and the amount was 812 livres.

Schmidt showed passionate zeal and made the car in a week. The only thing he changed in Dr. Louis's design was the height of the posts along which the knife slid: fourteen feet instead of ten. Gidon in his estimate increased it to eighteen feet.

A knife with a blade beveled at an angle of 45°, made by another master, weighed forty kilograms, including weight, instead of sixty.

1909 Execution of Béruyer in Balance (Drôme department).

Tests could begin. First on sheep, then on corpses. On April 19, 1792, according to some sources - in Salpêtrière, according to others - in Bicêtre, the guillotine was assembled in the presence of people participating in the project, among whom were members of the government, doctors Louis and Guillotin, Charles-Henri Sanson and hospital staff.

The car met all expectations. The heads were separated from the body in the blink of an eye.

After such convincing results, nothing stood in the way of the “wonderful machine” entering official service as quickly as possible.

On April 25, 1792, it was installed on the Place de Grève to put to death a certain Jacques-Nicolas Peletier, convicted of robbery with violence, who thus acquired the dubious fame of the discoverer of the guillotine. Peletier's execution marked the beginning of the incessant movement of the knife. Soon thousands of heads will be cut off from shoulders on the guillotine. Over two centuries, from 1792 to 1981, in addition to the thirty-five to forty thousand executed during the years of the Jacobin dictatorship, about eight to ten thousand heads would be cut off at the guillotine.

In accordance with the law adopted in France, from now on everyone had to be executed equally, and delegated representatives of the Republic traveled around the country with a guillotine in a van. The condemned had to wait, and each court required its own guillotine.

The decree of June 13, 1793 determined their number at the rate of one per department, for a total of eighty-three vehicles. Thus a new serious market appeared.

As the first builder of the guillotine, Tobias Schmidt claimed and received the exclusive right to manufacture it. However, in the harpsichord workshops of the master, despite the reorganization and hiring of additional workers, it was impossible to fulfill orders of a semi-industrial nature. Soon, complaints arose against Schmidt's production. The quality of the machines supplied to them did not fully meet technical specifications, and the obvious shortcomings of several devices prompted competitors to offer their services.

A certain Noel Clarin almost captured the market by offering to build the perfect guillotine for five hundred livres, including painting it red.

Roederer asked officials from various departments to inspect Schmidt's cars and provide him with a detailed report on their merits and defects.

Kings of the Guillotine

After the adoption of a law declaring that there was only one full-time executioner left in the country, seven executioners were replaced in France:

Jean-François Heidenreich (1871–1872). They said about him that he was too sensitive for his service. He participated in more than 820 executions.

Nicolas Roche (1872–1879). Introduced the wearing of a top hat during executions.

Louis Debler (1879–1899). Son of the executioner Joseph Debler. Received the nickname Lame. Executed at least 259 convicts. In particular, he beheaded Ravachol Caserio, the murderer of President Sadi Carnot.

Anatole Debler (1899–1939). Son of Louis Debler. Replaced the cylinder with a pot. He claimed that he spent less time chopping off heads than pronouncing the word “guillotine” syllable by syllable. 450 convicts owe their deaths to him, one of them is Landru.

Henri Defourneaux (1939–1951). The brother-in-law of the previous executioner married his niece, who was the daughter of the executioner’s assistant. From the bowler hat he moved on to a gray felt hat. We owe him the last public execution in France - at Versailles in 1939. During the war, he continued to “practice” in Sante prison on the heads of patriots. At the end of the war, he was still in his position, in particular, he beheaded Dr. Petiot, convicted of 21 murders.

André Obrecht (1951–1976) Nephew of the previous executioner. He was selected from 150 applicants after a vacancy was advertised in the Journal Ofisiel. He worked as an assistant executioner since 1922, at the time of his appointment he took part in 362 executions. Then he cut off 51 more heads, including Emile Buisson, “public enemy number 1,” and Christian Ranucci.

Marcel Chevalier (1976–1981). Husband of the previous executioner's niece and Obrecht's assistant since 1958. As chief executioner, he carried out only two beheadings, one of which was the last in France (the execution of Hamid Dzhanboudi, September 10, 1977).

Johann Baptist Reichart (1933–1945). Some people didn't like Reichart, but he became the real king of the guillotine. By nationality, Reichart was not French, but German. Johann Baptist Reichart, a loyal servant of Nazi justice, became the last in a dynasty of executioners that had existed since the 18th century.

He carried out 3,010 executions, of which 2,948 were by guillotine. After the war, Reichart entered the service of the Allies. It was he who was entrusted with preparing the hanging of Nazi criminals convicted at the Nuremberg trials. He gave several advanced training lessons to Sergeant Wood, the American executioner who carried out the executions. After these executions, he retired and lived near Munich, devoting himself to breeding dogs.

Preparations for the execution of Vashe. Engraving by Dete. Private count

The document signed by the architect Giraud stated that the “Schmidt machine” was well conceived, but not perfected.

The shortcomings were explained by haste, and the master was recommended to make some improvements: “The grooves and strips are made of wood, while the first should be made of copper, and the second of iron... The hooks to which the rope with the load is attached are fastened with round-headed nails instead of reliable ones screws with nuts..."

It was also advised to attach the footrest to the guillotine, and attach the brackets higher to ensure greater stability of the entire apparatus.

Finally, it was pointed out that it was necessary to equip each machine with two sets of weights and knives, “to have a replacement in case of possible breakdown.”

The report ended with the sentence: “If you pay the master five hundred livres per car on the condition that he will make all these changes and supply all the necessary accessories, he will, without a doubt, take up the job.” Tobias Schmidt retained the guillotine market, missing out only on an order for nine machines for Belgium (then a French territory), they were built by a certain Iver, a carpenter from Douai.

Tobias made the required changes, in particular, installing copper grooves to improve the sliding of the knife and introducing a semi-mechanical load release system.

Tobias Schmidt made a fortune in the production of death machines, but, having fallen in love with the dancer Chamrois, a protégé of Eugene Beauharnais, he went broke.

The modified guillotine completely satisfied demand for three quarters of a century, but philanthropists, inventors and entrepreneurs of all stripes did not abandon their attempts to deprive Schmidt of his monopoly.

During the Jacobin dictatorship, one of them proposed to the Committee of Public Safety to build machines with four and even nine knives to speed up the process. In 1794, in Bordeaux, the carpenter Bürge, by order of the chairman of the Extraordinary Military Tribunal, made a four-knife guillotine, but it was never put into use.

The second, with nine blades, was made by the mechanic Guyot. Tests carried out in Bicetre did not give positive results.

Guillotines with one knife really couldn’t cope with the number of people executed. Mass shootings and drownings became commonplace. In 1794, Turreau even ordered executions with bayonets in the name of saving ammunition.

Later, proposals appeared to make guillotines solid cast in order to avoid assembling beams. Or vehicles on wheels to eliminate the complex process of installation and dismantling.

After the execution of Charlotte Corday, the question arose about the possible preservation of consciousness after beheading, and one Munich professor proposed a machine for “truly humane” executions that would meet the highest moral aspirations.

Franz von Paula Ruithuisen was a famous person - a chemist, zoologist and anthropologist.

After conducting numerous tests on animals, he proposed building a guillotine with an additional knife that would separate the hemispheres of the brain. “You can also provide,” he writes, “an additional knife to cut the spine, spinal cord, or, in extreme cases, the aorta, to cause rapid blood loss.”

Although the respected scientist covered the costs of making the prototype, his contemporaries were not interested in his proposal.

Schmidt's wonderful guillotine remained “on the throne” until 1870, when Justice Minister Adolphe Cremieux ordered two portable machines to speed up the transition from life to death. In addition, he ordered the guillotine to be removed from the pedestal and installed directly on the ground. A wave of indignation arose: “We shouldn’t die like pigs!” - the journalists were unanimously indignant, defending human dignity.

It was these portable machines, “paid for and ordered by the vile overthrown government,” that the Communards would burn in April 1871 on Place Voltaire, “as a slavish instrument of monarchical domination, in the name of purification and the triumph of new freedom.” Before the “head-cutting machine” had been burned, “it was reborn from the ashes”: at the beginning of 1872, the Minister of Justice ordered new ones.

Obstinate suicide bomber. Cover of Petit Magazine. 1932 Private. count

Cabinetmaker and assistant executioner Leon Berger was assigned to revive the guillotine.

Taking the burned cars as a starting point, Leon Berger made significant changes to the design of the guillotine, which has since been recognized as perfect and has subsequently undergone only minor modifications.

“Berge's machine” was distinguished, in particular, by the presence of springs in the lower part of the vertical posts. They were intended to cushion the knife at the point of impact. Then the springs were replaced with rubber rollers, which provided less recoil, dampening the speed of the fall of the load moving along the grooves. This is how the “voice” of the guillotine changed. But the main change in the “1872 series” concerned the knife trigger mechanism. Its locking and unlocking now depended on a metal arrowhead-shaped spike located at the top between the pads mechanical device. The pads were opened using a lever (which was later replaced with a regular button), releasing the indicated spike, and with it the knife with a load.

Delivery of a guillotine in a German prison. 1931 Private count

Finally, we improved the sliding of this entire mass by installing rollers at the ends of the load moving along the grooves of the racks.

Henceforth, the racks were placed on beams located directly on the ground. A willow basket trimmed with zinc and oilcloth was placed next to the machine. First the head and then the body of the executed person were placed in the basket. Despite technological innovations and significant “improvement in performance” in cutting off heads, the guillotine caused some concern in the minds of the “bureaucrats”.

Under the old regime there were one hundred and sixty executioners in the country, assisted by from three hundred to four hundred assistants.

After a decree issued in June 1793, each department was assigned a guillotine and an executioner, thus bringing the number of officially registered executors to eighty-three.

For the profession, this was the beginning of a decline that will only get worse.

When the fever of the revolutionary times subsided and the criminal code was adopted in 1810, the law softened.

With the introduction of “mitigating circumstances” and the abolition of the death penalty for certain types of crimes in 1832, the number of executions decreased and executioners had much less work to do. The law of 1832 dealt a fatal blow to the class. It provided for a gradual reduction in the number of executioners by half by abolishing the positions of those who stopped working due to illness or death.

A decree of 1849 determined that from now on there would be only one chief executioner in each department with an appellate court.

Thus the number of executioners was reduced to thirty-four. The decree of November 1870 “finished off” the estate, according to which all chief executioners and their assistants, after the ratification of this decree in each administrative unit of the state, were released from work. Henceforth, justice had to be content with the services of one main - Parisian - executioner, who had five assistants. They were authorized to carry out executions throughout the Republic, transporting the guillotine by train. At the time of the abolition of the death penalty, there were three guillotines in the French Republic, two of them were kept in the Parisian prison of Santé, one for executions in Paris, the second for the provinces. The third guillotine was located on the territory of one of the overseas colonies, in the hands of the local madmen.

Considering the advantages and merits that were recognized for the guillotine at the time of its invention and a century and a half later, it is surprising that it did not conquer the whole world.

For unclear reasons, it was used only in France and its overseas possessions. In Belgium it began to be used in 1796, when part of the country was annexed. For some time, the guillotine existed in French territories in Northern Italy and in the German Rhine principalities. There was another guillotine in the middle of the 19th century in Greece. Only Nazi Germany widely used this method of execution, with the difference that their guillotines did not have a folding board. It is worth noting that the Anglo-Saxon countries opposed the guillotine most actively. The British believed that beheading was the prerogative of “high-born” heads, but they nevertheless began to consider the problem.

Having examined the issue, the Royal Commission (1949–1953) stated: “We are confident that the injuries sustained by the guillotine will shock the public opinion of our country.”

Thirty-three beheadings per hour

However, the commission acknowledged that " correct execution punishment" must meet three criteria: "to be humane, effective and decent", and the guillotine is "easy to administer and effective".

In reality, the French method, washed with the blood of the noble class, contradicted national chauvinism and persistent anti-French sentiment.

But was this decapitation machine as efficient as it was made out to be?

Installing the device does not take much time, and guillotining looks like a completely merciful method, because it happens quickly.

At the moment the knife falls on the back of the convict's head, the speed is equal to square root double the acceleration constant multiplied by the height of the fall. If it is known that the drop height of the load is 2.25 m, the knife itself weighs 7 kg, the load - 30 kg, total weight mounting bolts - 3 kg, which in total gives 40 kg with slight friction, it turns out that the knife falls on the back of the convict's head at a speed of 6.5 m/sec. In other words - 23.4 km/h. As a result, provided that the resistance is considered to be negligibly small, the cutting time for an average neck with a diameter of 13 cm is two hundredths of a second. From the start of the knife to its stop, that is, cutting off the head, less than half a second passes.

Exclusive rights of the guillotined

According to the decree, a person executed by guillotine was subject to a whole series measures:

- Separate camera.

- 24-hour surveillance.

- Handcuffs outside the cell.

- Special form.

- Release from work.

- Extra food and unlimited number of transfers.

- The sentence can be carried out only after a pardon is refused.

- The convicted person can be sure that he will not be executed on Sunday, July 14 or during a religious holiday.

- If a convicted woman declares her pregnancy, she can be guillotined only after being cleared of pregnancy.

- Over the past thirty years, a death sentence has been carried out on average after 6 months.

- Prohibition of guillotining of convicted persons under 18 years of age and over 70 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime.