Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  This run for the border occurred on at least two ocassions. A convicted felon called Dinnis was suc­cess­ful in avoiding the drop of the axe and fled the parish. It is believed that while making his escape he was stopped and asked if Dinnis was to be beheaded that day. With a smile, he was said to have replied, ‘I trow not’ – meaning ‘I think not’ – and he continued on his way! One man who was not so lucky was John Lacy, who managed to leave the parish by way of Hebble Brook, only to return seven years later be­lieving that he was in the clear. He wasn’t, and on 29 January 1623 Lacy was promptly brought once again to the Halifax gibbet. This time there was no escape.

  The only other known way to secure a reprieve was to avoid the third method of conviction, that of confession. Provided the suspected felon was not in possession of the stolen goods, a confession was required in order to obtain a conviction. Without this, the authorities had no option but to exonerate the supposed thief. This would seem to have been quite a glaring loophole, that is until one realises that, at that time, death itself was considered preferable to committing an act of perjury, as this was seen as a sin against God.

  The Fall of The Gibbet

  From its early beginnings, death by the Halifax gibbet was the final act in the lives of many condemned thieves, but its reign over the West Yorkshire townsfolk came to an end in 1650, following closely after the demise of King Charles I. Many historians believe that the two were connected, as the country became ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­caught up in civil war it is likely that pressure from parliament forced the cessation. Yet there exists no solid reason why the Halifax gibbet severed no more necks beyond this point.

  There are, however, details of its final operation and the last victims thereof. On 30 April 1650, a double execution took place in the town of Halifax. The heads that rolled belonged to Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell, who were arrested for theft several days before. According to the ancient tradition, four constables were summoned to verify the extent of their crimes. It was recorded that 14.6 metres (16 yards) of russet and 5.4 metres (6 yards) of cinnamon-coloured kersey – a kind of coarse woollen cloth – had been purloined along with two colts from a man called Durker Green which were all brought before the court to ascertain their value. With one horse alone priced at 48 shillings, the verdict was inevitable and, as it was a Saturday, they were taken to the gibbet that very day and swiftly dispatched.

  As the blade fell down on the necks of these two thieves so did the curtain on the Halifax gibbet. The contraption was either dismantled or left to perish upon the raised dais in the market square; its finale pre-empting the overture of the French machine by almost 140 years. It would make a surprise return in the 20th century not to take heads but purely to turn them, as a full-size replica was built on the original site at Gibbet Street in 1974 before being dismantled again in April 2003.

  The Guillotine

  Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

  In eighteenth century France, free thought and philoso­phical expression were the desires of the day, and it was into such an atmosphere that the most famous of all execution styles was born. The rights of everyone, even the unlawful man, were considered by the free thinkers who resided in the newly em­powered people’s parliament, the National Assembly. They wished to bring an end to the unnecessary suffering of the condemned. Thanks to an ancient penal code, there existed more than 100 capital offences and numerous cruel and sadistic forms of execution, including judicial torture known as ‘the question’, all of which were greatly in need of reform or, indeed, abolition.

  While there was no real desire to abolish the death penalty, there was a belief that the practice could be cleaned up and made more efficient. The usual beheadings by axe or sword ran the risk of multiple swings by unskilled executioners. Hanging prolonged the agony by slowly strangling the victims and burning or the breaking on the wheel were both torturous and humiliating. A particularly gruesome example of such a long drawn-out execu­tion came to serve as a major catalyst for change. The unfortunate victim was Robert-Francois Damiens, who had attacked Louis XV with a penknife in 1757. His punish­ment consisted of con­­sider­able torture behind the walls of the Conciergerie prison, followed by a public display of punishment. He was torn with red-hot pincers and had molten lead poured into his wounds, then he was hanged before being pulled four ways by horses in an attempt at dismemberment. This was only achieved after his limbs were ‘loosened’ by the executioner. Such appalling acts of judicial violence would soon have no place in a rapidly changing France.

  Legend has it that the man charged with the conception of the guillotine was born following a scene of such barbaric suffering. It is said that Joseph Ignace Guillotin prematurely entered the world on 28 May 1738 when his mother, Catherine Martin, witnessed a man being broken on the wheel in the town of Santes. Despite such a traumatic delivery, it would be hard pressed to find a more philanthropic existence than that of Guillotin. After seven years of following Holy Orders, he turned his attention to medicine and graduated by 1770 with a thesis on the prevention of rabies, before being appointed as Doctor-Governor of Medicine in Paris. However, Joseph was in his fifties before he achieved true renown. In 1789, he was elected to the National Assembly where he presented his suggestions for reform, paving the way for the creation of his namesake: the guillotine.

  The Proposal

  Joseph Guillotin’s election to the National Assembly in 1789 came at an ideal time. Revolution was in the air. Before he delivered his proposals, the Bastille had been stormed and King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette had been removed from the Versailles Palace. Just five days after the relocation of the monarchy, Guillotin delivered his proposals for penal reform. These consisted of six articles all aimed at ending the suffering of those involved in criminal proceedings. These articles endeavoured to re-evaluate judicial punishment, echoing Dumas’ Musketeer sentiment of ‘one for all and all for one’. They called for a single universal mode of punish­ment for the most serious crimes regardless of rank or estate and specifically, that this punishment should be decapitation by means of a simple and efficient mechanism.

  Despite the shifting mood, change was not immediate. The assembly chose to adjourn on several occasions to consider the good doctor’s proposals, reconvening over the next two years to ratify one or more of the articles. By 3 June 1791, the Assembly finally approved the article relating to decapitation and by 20 March 1792 all six articles had become law. Progress was achieved albeit in piece­meal fashion and now they had the legal capacity to implement the new penal code. Unfortu­nately, the Assembly had nothing to implement. A device which was in keeping with the humanitarian motives was needed. This would require the involvement of several men includ­ing one Dr Guillotin, who would be instrumental in its invention.

  The Manufacture of the Guillotine

  Guillotin’s idea of a simple machine may have been inspired by two events. He is thought to have witnessed the construction of a bridge for which a manual pile-driver was used that hammered the supports into the ground. There is also the belief that the theatre was his muse; specifically a stage production entitled Les Quatres Fils Aymon in which a simple beheading device was used for an execution scene. Without belittling the legend, it is realistic that the forerunners of the guillotine covered earlier in this book were greater influences. Similarly, while Guillotin was responsible for preparing the founda­tions for his namesake, his influence in its actual design was minimal.

  The true designer of the guillotine was Dr Antoine Louis. An acquaintance of Guillotin, Louis was not only the royal physician but permanent secretary to the academy of surgeons, and he had some experience in developing innovative designs. He was initially asked to submit a report to the assembly focusing on the design of such a machine. He responded swiftly, sug­gesting the device should follow the example of the Halifax gibbet and Scottish maiden to ensure a quick and efficient mode of execution. He created a detailed technical specification echoing t
hese machines, with one or two improve­ments. The proposed machine should allow for the immobilisa­tion of the prisoner and this would be achieved in two ways. Firstly, the condemned would be secured to a tilting board called the bascule and secondly the head and neck would be held firm beneath the blade by the lunette or ‘little moon’ . The lunette was in effect a pillory which closed around the neck. This revamped head remover now had a design. Next, they needed someone to build it.

  The first carpenter they approached was a Monsieur Guedon, who estimated the construction costs at a total of 5,660 livres. It would be made from high quality chestnut and include a 15-kilogram (33- pound) blade and a lunette made from iron. On 5 April 1792, his quote was passed to Claviere, the Minister of Taxes, who deemed the price too high. He called for a further costing from another carpenter. This led them to German-born harpsichord maker and inventor Tobias Schmidt, who resided in the Commerce-St-Andre district and was well known by the assembly for his countless submissions of inventions such as a fire escape ladder, hydraulic diving equipment and a modernised plough. He had even invented his own beheading machine, so was certainly qualified to undertake such a project. Schmidt returned with an estimate of just 960 livres, considerably undercutting Guedon, and on 10 April 1792 it was agreed that he would build the new appliance while Guedon was hired to construct the scaffold. Two weeks later the guillotine was be ready to take its first head.

  The Trial of Lady Guillotine

  Schmidt got straight to work on the device, and by the following day he was ready to test its efficacy. Here, at his workshop on the rue Saint Andre-des-Arts, the guillotine claimed its first living victims. Schmidt obtained two sheep and two calves from the local abattoir on which to try out the crescent-shaped blade and, by all accounts, this trial run went without a hitch.

  The machine now required human test subjects and to this end, Dr Michael Cullerier, the chief surgeon at Bicetre hospital was asked to provide Schmidt with fresh human cadavers as well as a more practical location for this pre­liminary analysis. On Tuesday 15 April 1792, a select group of witnesses gathered along with the doctors Guillotin and Louis to watch the posthumous execution of several corpses. The curved blade cut through the first neck with ease but with the second more muscular frame it failed to cleanly separate the head from the body, leaving strands of sinew and tendon still linking the two. With this grisly sight came the realisation that there was a clear fault with the machine and those entrusted to create this humane, efficient device with­drew to ascertain what the defect was and how best to correct it.

  The answer lay in one of three possible alterations: the height of the uprights could be raised to increase the drop of the blade, the mouton – the crosspiece containing the blade – could be made heavier or the actual blade could be redesigned. Louis and Guillotin agreed that by focusing on the latter, the efficiency of the machine would be improved and so they chose to install an oblique blade to replace the curved edge. Further tests revealed that when the blade hit at a forty-five-degree angle it sliced cleanly through rather than hacking at the neck, leaving no ghastly con­nection between head and body. The trial runs were now complete and the necessary adjust­ments had been made, the machine was ready for action.

  The Debut

  From commission to construction in just over a month, the development of the guillotine had moved almost as swiftly as the speed of execution it would soon deliver. However, for one man the wait had been agonisingly slow and painful. Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier, a highwayman found guilty of robbery and violent assault on the rue Bourbon-Villeneuve, had been waiting for ten long weeks for the arrival of his final day on earth. He was imprisoned until the simple machine had been devised. Finally, on the 25 April 1792, the guillotine was unveiled at the Place de Greve in Paris. It had been painted bright red – an unnecessary step as Pelletier’s blood was about to provide it with a fresh coat! It was probably this thought, along with the protracted wait, that caused the prisoner – also clad in red - to faint upon seeing the new machine. He had to be carried up Guedon’s scaffold, unconsciously proving the necessity of the bascule and lunette. His blackout would have rendered the old method of execution near-impossible.

  To the humanitarians, the guillotine’s debut was a success. It took just over two hours to assemble and the execution lasted only one minute, inflicting mini­mal suffering on the condemned. However, the general public were not as compassionate as their represent­atives in the National Assembly. The crowds that flocked to the first appearance of this new execution style were ultimately disappointed with the event. They berated its efficiency and called for a return to the (far from trusty) gallows. The guillotine’s swift slice lacked drama; a boon in the eyes of the philanthropist but the people who were used to see­ing pain and suffering at such events desired a horror show. Despite this conflict the guillotine would very quickly become a part of French culture, embraced by the ordinary men and women of the street. Black humour prevailed, with inappropriate merchandise such as toy guillotines sold to children, who executed mice for fun. Even members of the criminal community had dotted lines tattooed around their necks along with the words: ‘Cut Here!’ It may not have provided the horror show they wanted, but what it lacked in savagery the guillotine soon made up for in quantity.

  The Reign of Terror

  The guillotine soon became the instrument of the masses. Created for its swiftness and efficiency, it would prove perfect as the tool by which society would bring the aristocracy to its knees. Lines of unfortunate noblemen and noblewomen queued to be touched by the blade of Lady Guillotine as if par­taking in some mass knighting ceremony. The revolutionary tribunal sentenced between 15,000 and 40,000 people to be cut by what was also nicknamed the ‘National Razor’. Many of its victims had been found guilty of spurious crimes. The ultimate quarry came on 21 January 1793. King Louis XVI had already been ousted from his royal home and confined in the Tuileries Palace, but this was stormed by hordes of his subjects on 12 August 1792, whereupon he was charged, convicted of treason and sentenced to death after a three-day trial.

  After this initial purge in Paris, the guillotine soon toured the country and then parts of Europe, dispens­ing its speedy sentence. While the device was a perma­nent fixture in the capital, copies were built to be transported from town to town. The dreadful drop of the blade was witnessed by Charles Dickens in nineteenth century Italy, and later featured in his novel, The Tale of Two Cities. This device could well have sported the improvements made by Leon Berger, an assistant executioner and carpenter, who between 1870 and 1872 developed a spring system that prevented the mouton from damaging the lunette after the drop, as well as a superior release mechan­ism for the blade. These refinements helped the guillotine endure well into the twentieth century.

  The last public use of the guillotine in France took place on 17 June 1939, when multiple murderer Eugene Weidmann took to the scaffold in front of the Saint Pierre Prison in Versailles. It was subsequently ruled that all further executions should take place behind the closed doors of La Sante Prison and it was here that Madame Guillotine was incarcerated, along with the condemned, until her final performance on 27 November 1972, when she took the heads of Claude Buffet and Roger Bontemps. While these ended her reign in Paris, it would be another five years until she retired altogether, exacting her unique method of execution upon torture-murderer Hamida Djandoubi on the 10 September 1977. At long last, France abolished the death penalty in 1981.

  The Sanson Dynasty

  The introduction of the guillotine in 1792 was supposed to symbolise a revolutionary commitment to equality for all – but ironically this did not extend to the executioners who used and maintained it on a daily basis.

  In fact nowhere in Europe were executioners more shunned by society than in France. Many ordinary people saw executioners, or ‘the borreaux’ as they were known, as mystical beings rather than fellow humans. They were originally employed to carry out the king’s work and so were seen a
s an extension of his divine right. For this reason the borreaux were viewed as simultaneously holy and unclean.

  Executioners and their families were made to live outside city or town walls and local tradesmen often refused to serve them. They did not pay taxes and were exempt from military service. Marriage with other families was sometimes diffcult, and so members of the borreaux were legally allowed to marry their cousins in order to ensure the continuation of the bloodline. Their children were refused schooling, and so enjoyed the perks of private tuition. As a result the children of these families were often well-educated and comparitively cultured, many of whom spoke fluent English. Unfor­tunately though, the low posi­tion of their birth meant they had little or no choice but to follow the profession of their fore­fathers: that of professional killer.

  Perhaps the most famous dynasty of French executioners were the Sansons, who supplied France with executioners for over 200 years. It all began, as many great stories do, with a romantic liason between an injured serviceman and his nurse.

  Charles Sanson I

  Charles Sanson de Longval was born in Abbeville in 1653. As a young man he harboured military ambi­tions, and so as soon as he came of age he entered the regiment of the Marquis de la Boissier. One day, while stationed at Dieppe, Sanson was riding through the countryside when he fell from his horse. The accident landed him in hospital, where he met and fell deeply in love with his nurse. However, this was no ordinary young woman. She may have been employed to save lives, but her father – Master Pierre Jouanne – was employed to take them. Charles was shocked to discover that his girlfriend was actually the daughter of the executioner for Dieppe and Rouen. Despite this bombshell, the relationship continued unabated, until Sanson’s regiment threatened him with dismissal for associating with such disgraceful company. Sanson immediately resigned from the army and prepared to leave the area. It was during a farewell visit to the Jouanne household that his plans changed forever, and with them the destiny of his children, grand­children and great-grandchildren to come.