Editing Guillotine (section)

== France ==
=== Etymology ===
For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a ''louisette''. However, it was later named after French [[physician]] and [[Freemason]] [[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin]], who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a special device to carry out executions in France in a more humane manner. A death penalty opponent, he was displeased with the [[breaking wheel]] and other common, more grisly methods of execution and sought to persuade [[Louis XVI of France]] to implement a less painful alternative. While not the device's inventor, Guillotin's name ultimately became an eponym for it. Contrary to popular myth, Guillotin did not die by guillotine but rather by natural causes.<ref>{{cite web |access-date=June 5, 2020 |title=Origins of the Guillotine |url=https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/head-man/ |website=Snopes.com|date=4 September 2011 }}</ref>

=== Invention ===
French surgeon and physiologist [[Antoine Louis]] and German engineer Tobias Schmidt built a prototype for the guillotine. According to the memoir of the French executioner [[Charles-Henri Sanson]], [[Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI]] suggested the use of a straight, angled blade instead of a curved one.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mémoires de Sanson|last=Sanson|first=Charles-Henri|year=1831|location=Tôme 3|pages=400–408}}</ref>

=== Introduction in France ===
[[File:Anonymous - Portrait de Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), médecin et homme politique. - P1052 - Musée Carnavalet (cropped).jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin]] after whom the guillotine was named]]
On 10 October 1789, physician [[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin]] proposed to the [[National Assembly (French Revolution)|National Assembly]] that [[capital punishment]] should always take the form of decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism".<ref>R. F. Opie (2003) ''Guillotine'', Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd, p. 22, {{ISBN|0750930349}}.</ref>

Sensing the growing discontent, [[Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI]] banned the use of the [[breaking wheel]].<ref name="MM">{{cite video| people = Executive Producer Don Cambou | title = Modern Marvels: Death Devices | publisher=A&E Television Networks |date =2001}}</ref> In 1791, as the [[French Revolution]] progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class, consistent with the idea that the purpose of [[capital punishment]] was simply to end life rather than to inflict unnecessary pain.<ref name="MM" />

A committee formed under [[Antoine Louis]], physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery.<ref name="MM" /> Guillotin was also on the committee. The group was influenced by beheading devices used elsewhere in Europe, such as the Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja, which had been used since Roman times{{Citation needed|date=September 2022}}), the [[Maiden (beheading)|Scottish Maiden]], and the [[Halifax Gibbet]] (3.5&nbsp;kg).<ref name="SaturdayMag">
{{Cite journal
| last = Parker
| first = John William
| date = 26 July 1834
| title = The Halifax Gibbet-Law |journal=[[The Saturday Magazine (magazine)|The Saturday Magazine]]
| page = 32
| issue = 132
}}
</ref> While many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, a number of them also used a crescent blade to behead and a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim's neck.<ref name="MM" />

Laquiante, an officer of the [[Strasbourg]] criminal court,<ref name="Croker1857">{{cite book |last=Croker |first=John Wilson |title=Essays on the early period of the French Revolution |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_fQZoAAAAMAAJ |access-date=21 October 2010 |year=1857 |publisher=J. Murray |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_fQZoAAAAMAAJ/page/n519 549]}}</ref> designed a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and [[harpsichord]] maker, to construct a prototype.<ref>Edmond-Jean Guérin, [http://www.histoirepassion.eu/spip.php?article1360 "1738–1814 – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin : biographie historique d'une figure saintaise"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720164546/http://www.histoirepassion.eu/spip.php?article1360|date=20 July 2011}}, ''Histoire P@ssion'' website, accessed 2009-06-27, citing M. Georges de Labruyère in ''le Matin'', 22 Aug. 1907</ref> Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype. France's official executioner, [[Charles-Henri Sanson]], claimed in his memoirs that King Louis XVI, an amateur locksmith, recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to cut through all necks; the neck of the king, who himself died by guillotine years later, was offered up discreetly as an example.<ref>Memoirs of the Sansons, from private notes and documents, 1688–1847 / edited by Henry Sanson. pp 260–261. {{cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft_djvu.txt |title=Memoirs of the Sansons, from private notes and documents, 1688–1847 / Edited by Henry Sanson |year=1876 |access-date=2014-05-09 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20140511015142/https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft_djvu.txt |archive-date=11 May 2014 |df=dmy-all }} accessed 28 April 2016</ref> The first execution by guillotine was performed on a highwayman, [[Nicolas Jacques Pelletier]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crimemuseum.org/library/execution/guillotine.html|title=Crime Library|publisher=National Museum of Crime & Punishment|access-date=13 June 2009|quote=[I]n 1792, Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be put to death with a guillotine.|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090201092331/http://www.crimemuseum.org/library/execution/guillotine.html|archive-date=1 February 2009|df=dmy-all}}</ref> on 25 April 1792<ref>{{cite book|title=Chase's Calendar of Events 2007|isbn=978-0-07-146818-3|url=https://archive.org/details/chasescalendarof00edit|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=McGraw-Hill|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/chasescalendarof00edit/page/291 291]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Ruth|last=Scurr|title=Fatal Purity|isbn=978-0-8050-8261-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yLxpgYt4dJcC&pg=PA222|year=2007|publisher=H. Holt|location=New York|pages=222–223}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Jeffery|last=Abbott|title=What a Way to Go|isbn=978-0-312-36656-8|url=https://archive.org/details/whatwaytogo00geof|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=St. Martin's Griffin|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/whatwaytogo00geof/page/144 144]}}</ref> in front of what is now Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. All citizens condemned to die were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to the [[Place du Carrousel]].

The machine was judged successful because it was considered a humane form of execution in contrast with more cruel methods used in the pre-revolutionary ''[[Ancien Régime]]''. In France, before the invention of the guillotine, members of the [[nobility]] were beheaded with a sword or an axe, which often took two or more blows to kill the condemned. The condemned or their families would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to achieve a quick and relatively painless death. Commoners were usually hanged, which could take many minutes. 

In the early phase of the [[French Revolution]], before the guillotine's adoption, the slogan ''[[À la lanterne]]'' ({{lit|To the lamp post!}}) symbolized popular justice in revolutionary France. The revolutionary radicals hanged officials and aristocrats from street lanterns and also employed more gruesome methods of execution, such as [[Breaking wheel|the wheel]] or [[Death by burning|burning at the stake]].

Having only one method of civil execution for all regardless of class was also seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was then the only civil [[capital punishment in France|legal execution method in France]] until abolition of the death penalty in 1981,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20051020135642/http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/abolition-peine-mort/code-penal-dalloz.shtml Pre-1981 penal code, article 12]: "Any person sentenced to death shall be beheaded."</ref> apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, or for the death sentences passed by military courts,<ref>Pre-1971 Code de Justice Militaire, article 336: "Les justiciables des juridictions des forces armées condamnés à la peine capitale sont fusillés dans un lieu désigné par l'autorité militaire."</ref> which entailed [[execution by firing squad]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20051020135642/http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/abolition-peine-mort/code-penal-dalloz.shtml Pre-1981 penal code, article 13]: "By exception to article 12, when the death penalty is handed for crimes against the safety of the State, execution shall take place by firing squad.".</ref>

=== Reign of Terror ===
[[File:Execution of Louis XVI.jpg|thumb|The execution of [[Louis XVI of France|King Louis XVI]]]]
[[File:Exécution de Marie Antoinette le 16 octobre 1793.jpg|thumb|Queen [[Marie Antoinette]]'s execution on 16 October 1793]]
[[File:Execution robespierre, saint just....jpg|thumb|The execution of [[Maximilien Robespierre]]; the person who had just been executed in this drawing is [[Georges Couthon]]. Robespierre is the figure marked "10" in the [[tumbrel]], holding a handkerchief to his shattered jaw.]]
Louis Collenot d'Angremont was a royalist famed for having been the first guillotined for his political ideas, on 21 August 1792. Before and during the [[Reign of Terror]] (between June 1793 and July 1794) about 17,000 people were guillotined, including former [[Louis XVI of France|King Louis XVI]] and Queen [[Marie Antoinette]] who were executed at the guillotine in 1793. Towards the end of the Terror in 1794, revolutionary leaders such as [[Georges Danton]], [[Louis Antoine de Saint-Just|Saint-Just]] and [[Maximilien Robespierre]] were sent to the guillotine. Most of the time, executions in Paris were carried out in the Place de la Revolution (former Place [[Louis XV of France|Louis XV]] and current [[Place de la Concorde]]); the guillotine stood in the corner near the Hôtel Crillon where the City of Brest Statue can be found today. The machine was moved several times, to the [[Place de la Nation]] and the [[Place de la Bastille]], but returned, particularly for the execution of the King and for Robespierre.

For a time, executions by guillotine were a popular form of entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators, with vendors selling programs listing the names of the condemned. But more than being popular entertainment alone during the Terror, the guillotine symbolized revolutionary ideals: equality in death equivalent to equality before the law; open and demonstrable revolutionary justice; and the destruction of privilege under the ''[[Ancien Régime]]'', which used separate forms of execution for nobility and commoners.<ref>{{Cite book|title="The Guilloine and the Terror"|last=Arasse|first=Daniel|publisher=Penguin|year=1989|location=London|pages=75–76}}</ref> The Parisian ''[[sans-culottes]]'', then the popular public face of lower-class patriotic radicalism, thus considered the guillotine a positive force for revolutionary progress.<ref>{{Cite book|title="Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins During the French Revolution "|last=Higonnet|first=Patrice|publisher=Harvard|year=2000|location=Cambridge, MA|pages=283}}</ref>

=== Resumption of use ===
[[File:France - Public execution on Guillotine 1897.jpg|thumb|A 20 April 1897 public execution by guillotine in front of the prison of [[Lons-le-Saunier]]. The man about to be  beheaded, Pierre Vaillat, robbed and  killed two elder siblings on Christmas Day 1896. He was convicted of his crimes on 9 March 1897.]]
After the [[French Revolution]], executions resumed in the city centre. On 4 February 1832, the guillotine was moved behind the [[Saint-Jacques Tower|Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie]], before being moved again, to the [[La Roquette Prisons|Grande Roquette prison]], on 29 November 1851.

In the late 1840s, the Tussaud brothers Joseph and Francis, gathering relics for [[Madame Tussauds]] wax museum, visited the aged [[Henry-Clément Sanson]], grandson of the executioner [[Charles-Henri Sanson]], from whom they obtained parts, the knife and lunette, of one of the original guillotines used during the Reign of Terror. The executioner had "pawned his guillotine, and got into woeful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property".<ref>Leonard Cottrell (1952) ''Madame Tussaud'', Evans Brothers Limited, pp. 142–43.</ref>

On 6 August 1909, the guillotine was used at the junction of the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé, behind the [[La Santé Prison]].

The last public guillotining in France was of [[Eugen Weidmann]], who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on 17 June 1939 outside the prison Saint-Pierre, rue Andre Mignot 5 at [[Versailles, Yvelines|Versailles]], which is now the Tribunal Judiciaire de Versailles. The proceedings caused "disgusting" and "unruly" behaviour among spectators. The “hysterical behavior” by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-04-01 |title=The Last Public Execution by Guillotine, 1939 |website=Rare Historical Photos |url=https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-public-execution-guillotine-1939/ |access-date=2024-04-22 |language=en-US}}</ref>

[[Marie-Louise Giraud]] (17 November 1903 – 30 July 1943) was one of the last women to be executed in France. Giraud was convicted in Vichy France and was guillotined for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area on 30 July 1943. Her story was dramatized in the 1988 film [[Story of Women]] directed by [[Claude Chabrol]].

The guillotine remained the official method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981.<ref name="legifrance.gouv.fr"/> The final three guillotinings in France before its abolition were those of child-murderers [[Christian Ranucci]] (on 28 July 1976) in Marseille, [[Jérôme Carrein]] (on 23 June 1977) in Douai and torturer-murderer [[Hamida Djandoubi]] (on 10 September 1977) in Marseille. Djandoubi's death was the last time that the guillotine was used for an execution by any government.

=== Overseas departments and regions of France ===
In the Western Hemisphere, the guillotine saw only limited use. The only recorded guillotine execution in North America north of the Caribbean took place on the French island of [[Saint-Pierre, Saint Pierre and Miquelon|St. Pierre]] in 1889, of Joseph Néel, with a guillotine brought in from [[Martinique]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://grandcolombier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/zuzaregui.jpg |title=Archived copy |access-date=2017-11-21 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201035012/http://grandcolombier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/zuzaregui.jpg |archive-date=1 December 2017 |df=dmy-all }}</ref> 

In the Caribbean, it was used rarely in [[Guadeloupe]] and [[Martinique]]; its last use in the region was at [[Fort-de-France]] in 1965.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/27/travel/a-bit-of-france-off-the-coast-of-canada.html?pagewanted=all |title=A Bit of France off the Coast of Canada |newspaper=The New York Times |date=27 July 1986|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201135933/http://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/27/travel/a-bit-of-france-off-the-coast-of-canada.html?pagewanted=all |archive-date=1 December 2017 |df=dmy-all |last1=Wren |first1=Christopher S. }}</ref> In South America, the guillotine was only used in [[French Guiana]], where about 150 people were beheaded between 1850 and 1945: most of them were convicts exiled from France and incarcerated within the "bagne", or penal colonies. 

Within the Southern Hemisphere, it worked in [[New Caledonia]] (which had a bagne too until the end of the 19th century) and at least twice in [[Tahiti]].