THE DEADLY "WIDOW"

Shannon News, 23 August 1927, Page 1

THE DEADLY "WIDOW"

WILL THE GUILLOTINE GO?

There is increasing agitation in France for the abolition of th e guillotine. The official executioner of the republic is close on retirement age and a movement is now on foot to do away with "the widow" of sanguinary memory in favour of another method of carrying out the death penalty.

If this historic contrivance passes in favour of a more modern method, there will vanish from the scene an instrument that in its day too a greater total 'of lives in a short space of time than has any other punitive device, says the "New York Times."

A popular song lrst brought the guillotine to public notice and attached to it for perpetuity the name of a bonevol nt physician. He was not its inventor, but had before the Revolution advocated a machine for execution in place of the axe or sword. Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin himself narrowly escaped its blade himself, in the mad days of the Terror. Only a general gaol release as the fury waned, saved him from becoming a victim of "the widow,' which had taken its toll of such figures as the King and Queen of Fiance, Charlotte Corday, Danton, and Robespierre.

It is likely that the guillotine would never have sprung into the prominence it later received had it not proved in a time of revolt to be a quick method of disposing of exrentions en masse. Elected as one of the representatives of Paris in the National Assembly, Dr. Guillotin suggested to that body that, under the now penal code, prisoners should be executed by decapitation by a machine. It was the period of party faction and high feeling. A Royalist journal, "Los Actes des Apoties," promptly came out with a satirical song, the last line of which ran, 'They will call it the guillotine."

Pianomaker Drew Plan,

Guillotin talked with Sanson, the official executioner, about the proposed reform in the method of decapitation. In private life Sanson socms to have been a jovial enough fellow, addicted to tho violin, and to duets, with " friend. Tobias Schmidt, a pianoforte maker of Strasbourg. Schmidt, according to Sanson's grandson drew up a plan for a decapitating machine and offered it to Dr. Antoine Louis, Secretary of the College of Surgeons, who directed its construction. For a time the guillotine was known as "the Louiette." But in the end the old application stuck. Thus the guillotine was proposed by a physician and designed by a manufacturer of pianos. Strictly speaking, the instrument was not invented in France, for an earlier form of it was known in Italy and had also been used, although sparingly, in England and Scotland. The mechanical headsman was adapted fo r the punishment of capital crimes in 1791. The height of the Terror came and the guillotine became the centre of attraction for the Paris mob. Chairs were set out around it'and hired by the day. Tiny model guillotines were worn as dress ornaments by the women of the Re volution and toy guillotines for the children were hawked in the streets. So simple was the mechanism,, so swiftly could it work, that it undoubtedly contributed greatly to the judges increasing the number of aristocrats who passed beneath it. It came also to be a political weapon, used by men in power against their enemies. While it was set up in half a dozen or more squares in. Paris, the guillo-

tine is principally associated with, the tragc Place de la Revolution, now the Plac e de la Concorde; for it was here that Louis XVI mounted its steps and, later, Marie Antoinette. 'The widow" was prepared for work at any hour.

In thirteen months in the Place du Carrousel alone, the guillotine executed 1235 people, a sanguinary tribute to its efficiency. Its career came to an end with the passing of the fury of th e Terror, and the man whose name had been given to it lived to see it removed from a permament place in th e squares of the capital. Dr. Guillotine died at the age of 76 in 1814.