by Lacey Simmons

Created on: August 18, 2008   Last Updated: February 08, 2010

In the 1700's executions in France were open to the public to watch, many people gathered as it were an event. Capital punishment was the way of punishment for the majority of crimes in the 1700's. Before the guillotine came along there were a few different methods of execution depending on your financial class. Poor criminal's common method was quartering, which was where victims had each limb tied to an oxen and the oxen were driven in different directions tearing the victim apart. Upper class criminals could pay their way to a less painful way of execution, their two methods used were beheading and hanging.

The Guillotine received its name from Doctor Joseph Guillotine who had no part in the engineering or design for the contraption. Doctor Guillotine had just made a suggestion of a better method being used that would be quicker and effortless. German engineer Tobias Schmidt built the prototype for an ideal machine. Schmidt suggested using a diagonal blade instead of a round blade for a cleanlier and effortless cut. When the machine was finished it was equipped with a rope to raise and drop the blade, severing the victim's head from their body. The time it took for the blade to fall down to stop took a seventieth of a second. The falling speed of the blade was two foot a second. The design of the original guillotine stood fourteen foot high with a weight of 1278 pounds, The blade itself weighed eighty-eight pounds.

October 6, 1791 a law was passed that "every person condemned to death should be beheaded." Guillotining became the official means of execution on March 20, 1792. The first public guillotining was that of Nicolas Jacques Pelletie on April 25, 1792 at Place Degreve. Thousands of people were publicly guillotined during the French revolution with crowds surrounding them to watch.

Noted improvements to the guillotine were made in 1870 by assistant executioner Leon Berger. He added a spring system which stopped the mouton at the bottom of groves. Berger also added a lock/blocking device at the Lunette and a new release mechanism for the blade.

Guillotining remained the official method of execution in France until France abolished the death penalty in 1981. The last public execution in France was that of Hamida Djandoubi a torture-murderer on September 10, 1977 in Marseilles, France. While the guillotine was used it took 15,000 lives. Since then the guillotine has become a piece of history.

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