Guillotine

The guillotine (pronounced /ˈgijətin/ or /ˈgɪlətin/ in English; [gijɔtin] in French) was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a heavy blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from his or her body. The device is noted for long being the main method of execution in France and, more particularly, for its use during the French Revolution. The guillotine also "became a part of popular culture, celebrated as the people's avenger by supporters of the Revolution and vilified as the preeminent symbol of the Terror by opponents".[1]

Development
The guillotine became infamous (and acquired its name) in France at the time of the French Revolution; however, guillotine-like devices, such as the Halifax Gibbet and Scottish Maiden, existed and were used for executions in several European countries long before the French Revolution, the earliest reference to the Halifax Gibbet dating back to 1286. The first documented use of The (Irish) Maiden was in 1307 in Ireland,[2] and there are accounts of similar devices in Italy and Switzerland dating back to the 15th century. Nevertheless, the French developed the machine further and became the first nation to use it as a standard execution method.

Portrait of Dr. Guillotin

The Scottish Maiden, an older Scottish design. This example is an exhibit at the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Halifax engine
In August 1788 France’s High Executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, while attempting to execute a prisoner by breaking on the wheel, was assaulted by a mob who freed the prisoner, and destroyed the wheel. Sensing the growing discontent Louis XVI banned the use of the wheel.[3] In 1791 as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly (at the suggestion of Assembly member Joseph-Ignace Guillotin) sought a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class. Their concerns contributed to the idea that capital punishment’s purpose was the ending of life instead of the infliction of pain.[3] A committee was formed under Antoine Louis, physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery.[3] Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a professor of anatomy at the facility of medicine in Paris, was also on the committee. The group was influenced by the Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja), the Scottish Maiden, and the Halifax Gibbet. While these prior instruments usually crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, their device used a crescent blade and a lunette (a hinged two part yoke to immobilize the victim’s neck).[3] An apocryphal story claims that King Louis XVI (an amateur locksmith) recommended a triangular blade with a beveled edge be used instead of a crescent blade.[3]
On October 6, 1791, a law was passed that "every person condemned to death should be beheaded". Guillotin's suggestion had by then been almost forgotten and there was some debate on how exactly such sentences were to be carried out. Charles-Henri Sanson, the High Executioner, gave the opinion that beheading with a sword was cruel and uncertain, and a report by Antoine Louis, the secretary to the Académie Chirurgicale (Academy of Surgeons), dated March 7, 1792 recommended a machine such as Guillotin had previously described, but without mentioning Guillotin himself.[4]
Laquiante, an officer of the Strasbourg criminal court, made a design for a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and harpsichord maker, to construct a prototype. Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype; however, it was Schmidt who suggested placing the blade at an oblique 45-degree angle and changing it from the curved blade.[5]
Although Guillotin did not actually contribute to the machine’s design, it was his name that it would carry throughout history, thanks to a comic song about Guillotin and his proposal which appeared in the Royalist periodical, Actes des Apôtres, shortly after the 1791 debate;[4] the machine was originally called louison or louisette.
On April 25, 1792 the first victim of the device was a highwayman named Nicolas Jacques Pelletier. The crowds marveled at the machine's speed and precision.[3]
The basis for the machine's success was the belief that it was a humane form of execution, contrasting with the methods used in pre-revolutionary, ancien régime France. In France, before the guillotine, members of the nobility were beheaded with a sword or axe, while commoners were usually hanged, a form of death that could take minutes or longer. Other more gruesome methods of executions were also used, such as the wheel, burning at the stake, etc. In the case of decapitation, it also sometimes took repeated blows to sever the head completely, and it was also very likely for the condemned to slowly bleed to death from their wounds before the head could be severed. The condemned or the family of the condemned would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to provide for a quick and relatively painless death.
The guillotine was thus perceived to deliver an immediate death without risk of misses. Furthermore, having only one method of execution was seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was adopted as the official means of execution on March 20, 1792. The guillotine was from then on the only legal execution method in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, which entailed execution by firing squad.
When Guillotin himself died, it was not on his namesake as legend would have it, but instead of natural causes on May 26, 1814.