24 Apr 1792 Jahr - First Use of the Guillotine

Beschreibung:

On 10 October 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the National Assembly that capital punishment should always take the form of decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism."

Sensing the growing discontent, Louis XVI banned the use of the breaking wheel. In 1791, as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class, consistent with the idea that the purpose of capital punishment was simply to end life rather than to inflict unnecessary pain.

A committee formed under Antoine Louis, physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery. Guillotin was also on the committee. The group was influenced by beheading devices used elsewhere in Europe, such as the Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja, which had been used since Roman times), the Scottish Maiden, and the Halifax Gibbet (3.5 kg). While many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, devices also usually used a crescent blade to behead as well as a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim's neck.

Laquiante, an officer of the Strasbourg criminal court, designed a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and harpsichord maker, to construct a prototype. Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype. France's official executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson claimed in his memoirs that King Louis XVI (an amateur locksmith) recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to cut through all necks; the neck of the king, who would eventually die by guillotine years later, was offered up discreetly as an example. The first execution by guillotine was performed on highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792 in front of what is now the city hall of Paris (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). All citizens condemned to die were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to the Place du Carrousel.

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