History of the Guillotine – Forgotten History

Throughout history beheadings have been a primary method of execution. From ancient times until the present decapitation was considered efficient and reliable. During the Middle Ages in Europe there were beheading specialists traveling executioners who were paid to kill people convicted of major crimes. Other options were hanging burning at the stake drawing and quartering drowning being walled into starve to death and stoning but beheading was the most frequently used usually the axe or sword was used and most of the proficient executioners preferred the sword due to the length of the blade minimizing a mis-strike that could occur with the axe. But executions were to take a sharp turn in the 18th century. Who invented the guillotine? Why was it invented? When did it first come into use? How long was it used as a form of punishment? Hello I’m Colin Heaton a veteran of the United States Army and Marine Corps former history professor book author and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History.

Such was the skill of the professional executioner when King Henry VIII of England had his second wife Anne Boleyn the mother of Queen Elizabeth II executed on May 19th 1536 he hired the best specialist swordsman in Europe from Calais, France to handle the job. Boleyn’s death was swift and completed in one stroke but the practice was not perfect. In 1541 an inexperienced ax man butchered Margaret Paul Countess of Salisbury taking upward of 10 blows to dispatch noble woman. Mary Queen of Scots was executed on the orders of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I and it required three strikes of the ax before she lost her head. Henry’s fifth wife however Katherine Howard was not given the same courtesy and was executed by ax for adultery in 1542. Some people decided that a better method of execution needed to be devised the device that was created gets its name from Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotine a French physician and Freemason. He submitted his suggestion on October 10th 1789 to use the machine to carry out executions in France. His argument was that it was a less painful method and more efficient method of execution. On June 3rd 1791 the assembly decreed that the decapitating machine was to be the sole means of legal criminal execution and tasked the politician Pierre Louie Roederer with overseeing its construction.
Roederer contacted Guillotine on March 10th 1792 and he wrote to one of the potential contractors:
“Prejudice indeed exists but I have offers from other persons provided they should not have their names exposed as connected with the object.”
The stigma attached to being part of this operation made it difficult to find the right person until Roederer convinced a German Harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt to build the first guillotine. Their prototype was tested on sheep calves and human corpses and the original design was improved. The first execution by guillotine was robber and murderer Nicolas Jaques Petletier in 1792. The guillotine earned its infamy during the French Revolution where thousands were killed including King Louis XVI and his wife the former Austrian Archduchess Queen Marie Antoinette Habsburg-Bourbon executed on October 16th 1793. It was primarily due to the widespread use of the guillotine to wantonly killed that it became known as the “Reign of Terror”. In less than a year 300,000 suspected enemies of the revolution were arrested at least 10,000 died in prison and 17,000 were officially executed many by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution.
Ironically the very man who led the then Directorate and created the Reign of Terror Maximilien Robespierre a member of the Committee of Public Safety would himself be executed by the guillotine on July 28th along with 21 others without a trial in the Place de la Revolution. During the next few days another 82 Robespierre followers were executed ending the Reign of Terror. Although he did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty his name became an eponym for it. In fact according to Chambers Edinburgh Journal Guillotine bitterly regretted to the last moment of his existence his involvement with the machine that bore his name. The guillotine was used through France’s overseas colonies and even Germany found it a very expedient method of execution. Some of the more notable victims were the members of the White Rose Catholic Student anti-Nazi movement. Sophie Scholl her brother Hans and friend Christoph Probst were killed by guillotine on February 22nd 1943 for spreading defeatist literature and stirring resistance to the Nazi Party. Their friend Willi Graf was executed on October 12th 1943. They were just four of the 16,500 people killed this way during the war they were only four of the 3,009 people who were personally put to death by Nazi Germany’s most prominent executioner Johann Reichhart. Reichhart had later said after the war that:
“Sophie Scholl was the bravest person I ever executed.”
Today there stands a memorial to these brave young people at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich honoring their bringing the Nazi terror to light. The youngest victim was 17-year-old Helmuth Hubener for distributing anti-war leaflets in Hamburg. After his sentence he told the judges:
“Now I must die even though I have committed no crime. So now it’s my turn but your turn will come.”
Although it is believed the beheadings are a painless way to die there is scientific evidence that the brain retains some functions at least 90 seconds after being severed. On November 28th 1972 Frenchman Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems were guillotined Buffet for two counts of murder and Bontems for being an accessory, the victims being a nurse and a prison warden. Bontems was innocent and Buffet even stated that Bontems was innocent and he admitted that he had committed the crimes all alone. The case so traumatized Bontems’ lawyers Robert Badinter and Philippe Lemaire that Badinter would spend the rest of his life campaigning to end the death penalty. The guillotine remained the standard means of execution for condemned civilians in France until the death penalty was finally abolished due to Badinter’s efforts on September 30th 1981.