GRIM FIGURE PASSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1939, Page 8

GRIM FIGURE PASSES

MAN WHO EXECUTED 400.

DEATH OF MONSIEUR DE PARIS. Anatole Deibler, otherwise known as "Monsieur de Paris” and ‘‘‘The executor of high works,” who for 40 years had been Head Executioner to the French Republic, died suddenly at the age of 75 after a heart attack while he was entering an underground station recently. He was to have carried out an execution at Rennes, in Brittany, the next day a 1 dawn. A mild-mannered little man, with typical Gallic moustachios and "Imperial,” Deibler had long been a legendary figure, both by reason of his many years of service and the fact that his father, grand father, and great-grand-father before him had held the same high office, the first of the Deibler dynasty having succeeded to the renowned Sansons. In his private life he was a devoted husband and father, and one of the great sorrows of his existence was the death at the early age of five of his pnly son. to whoni he looked as thp heir of a great family tradition. He found spnie consolation, however, in the justifiable hope that his principal assistant, a nephew named Obrpcht, woulp succeed him and thus maintain tlje"hereditary principle. Ijeibler acted as assistant to his father, who retired in 1899 alter his 169th execution, and was duly appointed in his place. During his active career he dispatched over 400 criminals, among them Landrail and other outstanding personalities, with his “bois dp jiistipp,” as the guillqtipp is comrnqnly called. He fell on Jean days in 1906, when in anticipation of thp passage of a Bill abolishing the death penalty, lhe Budget Committee of the Chamber suppressed the funds available for his offlec. After 42 months of inactivity, during which time he was obliged to maintain at his own expense the two grisly machines in his possession—they wpre always beautifully kept—he came into his own again when the reprieve of a particularly brutal murderer swung public opinion in the other direction and heads once more begap 1q fall. It is not true that his revenue was on a per capita basis, his allowance being fixed at 18,000 francs a year. Dpi|i)ler was particularly conservative in his habits, and was faithful to the end to the horse-drawn cart in wpich he transported his grim apparatus to and from the railway station. This did not, however, mean that he was insensible to progress. Indeed, he made many improvements to his guillotines and proudly claimed that he had beaten all records for rapid executions. It was also his bb as t that he had not ah enemy in the world. No doubt—not in this world. —"The Times.”