AN EXECUTIONER’S SALARY

Evening Star, Issue 19797, 22 February 1928, Page 13

AN EXECUTIONER’S SALARY

QUAINT POSITION IN FRANCE AH HISTORIC OFFICE M. Dcibler has just asked for an increase of salary (writes a Paris correspondent), and there is some discussion in France as to what is to be done about the matter. M. Dcibler is the public executioner; but, officially as well as colloquially, he still bears the old, brutal name of bourroau, a name which has not changed since the picturesque days when kings were rather ready with their orders to the man who, in England, would have been called the headsman. There has, indeed, been no reason for the kind of alteration in his title which in our country made him become the hangman; for, although it was not until the eve of the Revolution common people acquired the privilege—no doubt eagerly sought—of having their heads cut off like nobles, instead of being done to death in some more ignominious way, they have never aiterwards lost that privilege, although, ever since that time, the cutting has been done by machinery instead of by hand. Dr Gnillotin, who jnsrsunded the Assembly to accept the principle of executionary equality, was very much annoyed when the machine adopted for putting it into practice was named after him; hut the machine, the principle, and tho name have alike survived. Tho name is, by the way, also used for the kind of window with a rising sash, very common in England, but quite rare in France. . It may bo said that if the title m the bourreau has never changed, lus family name did not change lor nearly two hundred years ejther; for, from the time of Louis XIV. to that qt Napoleon 111., the bourreau of Pans was always called Sanson, and tho job passed from father to son.

THE' BOURREAU’S PERQUISITES. In tho old days it was not badly paid, although payment chiefly took the form of perquisites. The bourreau was allowed to go into tho markets and take a certain share of the contents of all baskets over which ho stretched out his hand. Those rather indefinite rights afterwards became a fixed toll upon market produce. Nobody desnes that the present payment, which takes the form of a salary, shall bo exchanged for either of those cailioi forms of remuneration; but it is generally admitted that the bourreau does not earn enough, and one cutic remarks that his is only another example of the scandalous way m which the State underpays head work m Franco, , , .. , It is also suggested that M. Doibler, in his own defence, ought to join a Trades Union, although it might bo inconvenient if ho downed—-or, rather, if he refused to down—tools; but although such a body might have been formed at the lime of the- Revolution, when work was plentiful, and the Convention established a separate bourreau for every department in the countrv, the number was reduced by Louis Philippe, and after 1870 there remained only one for Algeria.. Hie Corsican bourreau has since been abolished, perhaps because it was considered that he was spoiling the tradition of tho vendetta and unduly cuitailin'g the number of bandits, upon whose survival in the maquis the importance of Corsica as a tourist centre is admitted so largely to depend. DIMINISHING DUTIES.

As it is, even a single bourreau for the wholo of France now has considerable difficulty in filling up bis time. It is, no doubt, occasionally possible to get a peculiarly atrocious murderer condemned to death, if Ids ease does not got into the papers, or if when it has got into papers, it can be shown that tho assassin has been messy in his disposal ol the body by laying to get rid of it, cither in the kitchen stove or in a portmanteau. In all other cases an ingenious, eloquent, and emotional advocate can be pretty siiui of getting his client acquitted. Tho plea of uncontrollable and pardonable passion was even allowed, the other day, to extend to a man who had killed his aged mother-in-law, because he discovered that she was trying to spite him by selling off a farm, which she could not otherwise prevent his inheriting. Thus are property and Urn expectation of property more sacred in Franco oven that life. Consequently, it is argued that n juries will not convict, why waste pnjvlie monev in having a bourreau at alf Let M. Deibler retire, and then simply do not. appoint anyone else. -Q ,a l’ would he one way of abolishing capital punishment, which ' abolition for some time formed part of the Socialist programme. An honorary and_ unpaid bourreau might bo nominated, m order to keep in existence the name of an office which is linked with so much in the past history of France, but it would ho understood that he would never he asked to officiate. Iho parties of the Extreme Left would find no difficulty in designating a distinguished politician for the post. Have they not, indeed, often used the word to describe SI. Poincare and whom they are pleased to associate with responsibility for tho war 0