Squalid Death Dramas of “Monsieur de Paris” Gay City Abhors the Guillotine

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 620, 23 March 1929, Page 28

Squalid Death Dramas of “Monsieur de Paris” Gay City Abhors the Guillotine

S the guillotine, adopted ' in France as the mode o£ capital punishment 1 from purely humanitarian a motives, destined to he abolished by reasons of its barbarity? Many leading French jurists, and a considerable portion of the Press, are of the opinion that horror of “the machine,” as it is vulgarly designated, is responsible for the increasing difficulty of getting French juries to convict even in the most flagrant of murder cases. Even the newspapers which were most violent in denouncing the “cruel and scientific” means of executing the Sacco-Vanzetti sentence have taken to suggesting that the guillotine is out-of-date, and that France should have recourse to some “more modern” method of extinction. Lethal gas and the electric chair have been suggested. To the thousands of tourists who visit Paris each year asking to see the spot in the Place de la Concorde where the fatal scaffold stood, and the heads of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Mme. Roland, and Robespierre fell under the knife, the guillotine is not a matter of reality. A very small percentage of them probably think of it as a present-day institution. They associate it with the frenzied scenes of the revolution, when the highwheeled carts bearing the victims rattled and jounced down the Rue St. Honore, while a populace mad with contagious excitement screamed Insults, gruesome jokes, vituperation, along the whole of the long route from the Conclergerie. The guillotine exists with scarcely any alteration since the days of the terror —a chunky, ugly scaffolding and wicket, with a weighted sliding knife, which is exactly the way one imagined the machine of the Terror. Very few Parisians know the house at 90 Rue de la Roquette, not tar from the site of the fallen Bastile, where this grisly contraption Is kept to-day. Some of the housewives in the district know about it, and cross the street as they go by, and whisper about It as they pass. The platform on which the instrument always stands is demountable, and the big cumbersome boards and posts, and the little wooden stairway that gives access, are piled in a heap on the floor of this shed. The machine itself, often covered with cobwebs, is shoved in a corner, with the blade removed, and wrapped in a case. Some say it is the very same that functioned in the Revolution. DINGY DEATH DRAMAS Like the machine, the execution has deteriorated into a dingy, sordid repetition of the drama. There is

nothing of heroics iu a modern guillotining—nothing but perhaps the sodden criminal courage of a victim now and then. In the dead of night the machine is loaded into a cart ami transported by. teamsters into the street in front of the Salpetriere. By the light of lanterns a number of workmen set it up, and the street about is corded to prevent the crowd from approaching the restricted area. Police or soldiers eventually appear, and make a cordon, talking nonchalantly. It is damp, and chill, and the spectators are few. There is a long delay, and then the executioner arrives. He is Anatole Deibler—otherwise “Monsieur de Paris”—and has none of the legendary qualities of the famous Sanson, who petitioned the Convention for the privilege of allowing his machine to stand permanently in the Place de la Concorde in order to spare him the incessant effort of erecting and displacing it. Deibler is small, and rather nervous. For years he had practically nothing to do, since the few criminals who received capital sentences were almost invariably pardoned by the warm-hearted President of the Republic. Deibler became discouraged, and tendered his resignation, which was not, however, accepted, and since then Deibler has even obtained a rise in pay. His salary was increased to 18,000 francs by Act of Parliament. Deibler has two assistants, who arrive early and put the machine in working condition. Then Deibler, who in his black derby hat and velvetcollared overcoat has more the air of a chief mechanic than of an executioner, arrives and inspects the machine and the preparations. He sees it tested himself. Then there is a long wait in the darkness. Groups of spectators converse in low voices, and smoke cigarettes. Slowly the blackness of the night fades toward the greyness that is day, and the square outlines of the guillotine stand out in relief. Outside the crowd has augmented. There are several hundred people—several thousand perhaps, if the crime has been sensational. But it is a silent crowd, and exhibits no signs of hysteria. Presently the prisoner, surrounded by guards and accompanied by the priest and his lawyer, appears in the street, and in a few minutes the law has been satisfied. It is said that Dr. Guillotine did njf invent the machine. It had been used in Germany, in other parts of Europe, and indeed a like contrivance had been known In the days of ancient Rome. He proposed it in a spirit of idealism in the desire that ciiminals should meet death with the least possible torture and suffering, and he was the first to regret the usage that turned it into an instrument for wholesale political assassination. To-day in France it is regarded with universal horror. Yet the fear of it does not seem to diminish crime. Despite unanimous condemnation, ths guillotine from time to time comes out from its retreat in the shed in the Rue de la Roquette—not knowing each time, it may be supposed, whether it is to be set up for action, or to be established in the Carnavalet Museum as a relic of Parisian history.