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HISTORY OF THE GUILLOTINE

Primitive ancestors of the guillotine were used in Ireland, England and Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries. Several known decapitation devices such as the Italian Mannaia, the Scottish Maiden, and the Halifax Gibbet are well documented and may pre-date the use of the French guillotine by as much as 500 years. The following deals mostly with the modern guillotine from the late 18th Century until today. It is not meant to be a complete history or even a complete overview of the history as this would take hundreds of pages. Instead consider it a brief introduction to the subject highlighted by a few good pictures.

DOCTEUR GUILLOTIN

Contrary to popular belief, Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was not the inventor of the machine. He was a medical doctor and lawmaker who in 1790 proposed that the death penalty should be equal for all, regardless of social rank and nature of the crime. It would be carried out by a swift mechanical device to eliminate suffering. His idea was derided at first but later the National Assembly revived it and them adopted it in 1791.

The document making the death penalty "by mechanical decapitation" the law of the land in the Kingdom of France was signed both by Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the National Academy of Surgery, and by Louis the 16th., who was still King of France. Dr. Louis was the author of the technical portion of the document. He explained that this method was the only "humane" mode of execution which insured the condemned a swift and painless death. A copy of the law was distributed to all the provinces for immediate implementation. To the right are the four pages of an original 1792 copy of the law sent to the department of Orne and hand-marked as No 76

The ministry of justice proceeded quickly following the enactment of the law. They assigned the task of designing and building Dr. Guillotin’s machine to Antoine Louis, who hired a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt to actually construct it from his design. This pair were the defacto inventors of the modern guillotine. The prototype built by Mr. Schmidt may or may not have had the characteristic angled blade. The machine was tested on animals and cadavers to insure its reliability. It was first used in the execution of Nicolas Pelletier, a common criminal, on the 25th of April 1792. The deadly machine quickly moved on to more famous victims such as Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Danton, Robespierre, and many others. Tobias Schmidt lost the contract for building additional machines, therefore we do not know the precise details and appearance of his original apparatus.

A great number of guillotines were manufactured in the following few years to meet the demands of the blood-thirsty Revolutionary Government. Guillotines were dispatched to every province and city in France and soon after to conquered neighboring countries as well.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GUILLOTINE – 1792

These guillotines were all of similar construction using Tobias Schmidt's principles but maybe not his actual design. They are usually referred to today as "The 1792 Model Guillotine". Due to the large number of these guillotines manufactured during the years of the great Terror (1793-1794), several machines from this early batch have survived to this day. Among the surviving “1792” machines are the ones displayed in museums in Venlo (Netherlands), Liege and Brugge (Belgium), as well as one stored in Musée national d'histoire et d'art in Luxembourg. This guillotine represents one of the best preserved examples of a 1792 machine.

Newer versions of the 1792 design were built in the 1800s and can be seen in photos from New Caledonia, Reunion Island, and Senegal. These photos are dated from the early part of the 20th Century. The design of these machines is very similar to the oldest known 1792 version so they would fall under the general category of a 1792 model. The machine from Reunion Island was used until 1954. It was returned to France in 1984 and is currently stored in the basement of Musée National des Prisons in Fontainebleau along with the Berger guillotine used in Martinique in 1964 and 1965. Both disassembled guillotines are visible in this photo.

The photo on the left shows a nearly complete original 1792 guillotine with its integral scaffold. Photo is undated but probably taken around 1918 inside a cathedral in Northern France or Belgium.

The vertical posts were 3.7 to 4.5 meters tall and made of oak. The grooves for the blade were carved into the wood and are not lined. The boards for locking the head in place (the “lunette”) were also made of oak and had no metal liner as on later machines. Even the lunette tracks were just carved grooves in the wood. There was no mechanism to hold the lunette open or to lock it in place when closed. The front and rear support braces were also made of wood and were pinned in place with dowels making the machine very difficult to disassemble. The bascule (teeter board) was shorter than on the modern machine but tilted and slid forward as on the newer version. The slide mechanism was made up of a wood carriage traveling in wood grooves. The triangular blade was secured to a heavy oak block which traveled up and down in the post grooves. The blade was hoisted up with a rope running over two small pulleys lodged in slots within the top crossbar.

Taken From: http://boisdejustice.com/History/History.html