by Pam Uher

Created on: January 20, 2008   Last Updated: April 26, 2011

The guillotine, a macabre killing machine, was designed to replace the axe and sword at public
executions. It was named after French Physician Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin(1738-1814), who proposed in 1789 to do away with executions using clumsy tools like swords and axes. He argued that sometimes it could take up to 10 blows to sever a head completely from its owner, when using a sword. The screams and gushing blood made for a terrible scene that seemed inhumane to almost all involved (especially the masked executioners). Many tales have been told of Axe Executioners having to chase their victims around the death scaffold when the first few strikes didn't kill or sever the head from the body and of course the victims would try to escape!

It is thought, Dr. Guillotin took his description of the killing machine from books he read of executions at various places on the continent in the 1600's and very early 1700's. He felt the device would be a better way to execute the condemned than the ghoulish bloody scene many executions had become by using the sword. The beheading machine executions had seemed to fall from favor around 1700, until Dr. Guillotin called for their reinstitution as the primary instrument of death by execution; for he believed it was less painful and would display some mercy for the victim to the people who watched. The crowds were growing very restless about all the messy be-headings, especially of women and old people. The guillotine would go down in history as a symbol of the French Revolution and the French Aristocracies sadistic treatment of torture and death.

The aristocracy saw the beheading machine as the ultimate tool of fear and  hoped it would keep the masses of peasants under control. Plus it was supposedly,less painful for the victim and less messy for executioner. Yet, it accomplished the same result as the axe and dword - immediate death! Swoosh!

Unfortunately for the elite and indulgent French Aristocracy, it would become a weapon used upon them before the French Revolution was over!

The long view of World History shows that the French may not have been the first to use this efficient execution tool.

In Edinburgh there is an antique guillotine inscribed with the name "Madien", which was said to have decapitated the Regent Morton in 1581. Another interesting historical legend believes that the nursery rhyme"Mary Mary Quite Contrary", refers to Henry the VIII's daughter Queen Mary or 'Bloody Mary', as she is known. In the nursery rhyme the use of 'maids' may have been a reference to the beheading device called "Maiden", known today as the guillotine!

A small little known book ("Halifax and its Gibbet Law",1708), has a drawing of a beheading device that was used to punish thieves. It was called the Halifax Gibbet. In Germany a similar looking beheading device was called the 'Diele' or 'Dolabra' and is found in engravings dated 1550 and 1553.

Historical evidence indicates the guillotine had been around long before Marie Antoinette fell victim to its blade and Dr. Guillotin became honored by having the killing machine named for him. Yet, the guillotine would go down in modern history books as a symbol of the French Revolution and the French Aristocracy using sadistic methods of torture and execution on the 'common people'.

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