Last public execution in France by guillotine November 5th, 2015

Some time ago, we studied in great detail with you, and now let's remember 1939, France. There, at that time, the last PUBLIC execution was carried out by cutting off the head.

Born in Germany in 1908, Eugène Weidmann began stealing from a young age and did not give up his criminal habits even as an adult. While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime, Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.

June 17, 1938. Eugène Weidmann shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau in France where he killed the nurse Jeanine Keller.

They robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.

The National Security Administration eventually got on Weidman's trail. One day, returning home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman fired a pistol at the officers, wounding them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.

France became the last of the EU countries, which at the level of the constitution banned the use of the death penalty.

In France, under the old regime, regicides were executed by quartering. Wheeling, hanging by the rib and other painful punishments were also widespread. In 1792, the guillotine was introduced, and in the future, most executions, except for the verdict of a military court (in this case, it was the usual execution), were carried out through the guillotine (in the French Criminal Code of 1810, article 12 says that “everyone sentenced to death is cut off head"). Already on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed on the guillotine. This machine was not an original invention either by Dr. Guyotin, who proposed to introduce it as an instrument of capital punishment, or by his teacher, Dr. Louis; a similar machine was used before in Scotland, where it was called the "Scottish maid." In France, she was also called the Virgin or even the Forest of Justice. The purpose of the invention was to create a painless and quick method of execution. After the head was cut off, the executioner raised it and showed it to the crowd. It was believed that a severed head could see for about ten seconds. Thus, the head of a person was raised so that before death he could see how the crowd was laughing at him.

In the XIX-XX centuries, public executions took place on the boulevards or near prisons, where a large crowd always gathered.

March 1939. Weidman during the trial.

March 1939.

March 1939. Installation of special telephone lines for the court.

As a result of the sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison. On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidmann's pardon and commuted Million's death sentence to life imprisonment.

June 1939. Weidman in court.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidman met on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the whistle of the crowd were waiting for him.

June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine in anticipation of Weidmann's execution near the Saint-Pierre prison.

Among those wishing to watch the execution of the audience was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who at that time was 17 years old.

June 17, 1939. Weidman, on the way to the guillotine, passes by the box in which his body will be transported.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defurneau, immediately lowered the blade.

The crowd present at the execution was very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to soak handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs. The scene was so horrifying that French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions altogether, arguing that instead of deterring crime, they help awaken people's base instincts.

This was the last public execution in France, because of the obscene excitement of the crowd and scandals with the press, it was ordered to continue to arrange executions in prison.

The last execution by cutting off the head with a guillotine took place in Marseille, during the reign of Giscard d'Estaing, on September 10, 1977 (only three people were executed during his seven-year term - 1974-1981). Executed, of Tunisian origin, name was Hamid Jandoubi; he kidnapped and killed his former cohabitant, whom he had previously forced into prostitution, and tortured for a long time before his death. It was the last execution not only in France, but throughout Western Europe. François Mitterrand, shortly after taking office in 1981, introduced a complete moratorium on the death penalty, which was given the status of law.

General laughter!

So, in the name of promoting the principles of equality, humanism and progress, the issue of a decapitation machine designed to change the very aesthetics of death was raised in the National Assembly.

On October 9, 1789, as part of a discussion on criminal law, Joseph Ignace Guillotin (Joseph Ignace Guillotin 1738 - 1814), physician, lecturer in anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine and newly elected Parisian deputy, took the floor of the National Assembly.

Among his colleagues, he enjoyed a reputation as an honest scholar and philanthropist, and he was even appointed a member of a commission charged with shedding light on "witchcraft, wands and Mesmer's animal magnetism." When Guillotin put forward the idea that the same offense should be punished in the same way, regardless of the rank, rank and merit of the perpetrator, he was listened to with respect.

Many deputies have already expressed similar considerations: the inequality and cruelty of punishments for criminal offenses outraged the public.

Two months later, on December 1, 1789, Guillotin again delivered an impassioned speech in defense of equality before death, for the same execution for all.

"In all cases where the law provides for the death penalty for the accused, the essence of the punishment must be the same, regardless of the nature of the crime."

It was then that Guillotin mentioned the instrument of killing, which would later perpetuate his name in history.

The technical concept and mechanical principles of the device have not yet been worked out, but from a theoretical point of view, Dr. Guillotin has already come up with everything.

He described to his colleagues the possibilities of a future machine that would cut heads so simply and quickly that the convict would hardly even feel a “light breath on the back of his head.”

Guillotin ended his speech with a phrase that became famous: “My machine, gentlemen, will cut off your head in the blink of an eye, and you will not feel anything ... The knife falls with the speed of lightning, the head flies off, blood splashes, the person is no more! ..”

Most of the deputies were puzzled.

It was rumored that the Parisian deputy was outraged by the various types of execution provided for at that time by the code, because the screams of the condemned for many years horrified his mother and she had a premature birth. In January 1791, Dr. Guillotin again tried to win colleagues over to his side.

The "question of the car" was not discussed, but the idea of ​​"an execution equal for all", the refusal to brand the families of the convicted and the abolition of the confiscation of property were adopted, which was a huge step forward.

Four months later, at the end of May 1791, there were three days of debate in the Assembly on matters of criminal law.

During the preparation of the draft of the new criminal code, questions of the procedure of punishment, including the death penalty, were finally raised.

Proponents of the use of the death penalty and abolitionists clashed in furious disputes. The arguments of both sides would be debated for another two hundred years.

The former believed that the death penalty, by its clarity, prevents the recurrence of crimes, the latter called it legalized murder, emphasizing the irreversibility of a miscarriage of justice.

One of the most ardent supporters of the abolition of the death penalty was Robespierre. Several theses put forward by him during the discussion went down in history: “A person must be sacred to a person [...] I come here to beg not the gods, but the legislators, who should be the instrument and interpreters of the eternal laws inscribed by the Divine in the hearts of people, I came to beg them to strike out from the French code the bloody laws prescribing murder, which are equally rejected by their morality and the new constitution. I want to prove to them that, firstly, the death penalty is by its very nature unjust, and, secondly, that it does not deter crimes, but, on the contrary, multiplies crimes much more than it prevents them” [Maximilian Robespierre. It's about abolishing the death penalty. Translation by L.K. Nikiforov.].

Paradoxically, the guillotine functioned non-stop throughout the forty days of Robespierre's dictatorship, symbolizing the apogee of the legal use of the death penalty in France. Only between June 10 and July 27, 1794, one thousand three hundred and seventy-three heads fell from their shoulders, "like tiles blown by the wind," as Fouquier-Tainville put it. It was the time of the Great Terror. In total, in France, according to reliable sources, according to the verdicts of the revolutionary courts, between thirty and forty thousand people were executed.

Let's go back to 1791. There were more deputies who supported the abolition of the death penalty, but the political situation was critical, there was talk of "internal enemies", and the majority yielded to the minority.

On June 1, 1791, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly to retain the death penalty in the territory of the Republic. Debates immediately began, lasting several months, this time about the method of execution. All deputies were of the opinion that the execution should be as minimally painful as possible and as quickly as possible. But how exactly should they be executed? Disputes were reduced mainly to a comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of hanging and beheading. Speaker Amber suggested that the convict be tied to a post and strangled with a collar, but the majority voted for beheading. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, this is a quick execution, but the main thing was that commoners were traditionally executed by hanging, while beheading was the privilege of persons of noble birth.

So the choice of representatives of the people was partly an egalitarian revenge. Since the death penalty remains, “to hell with the rope! Long live the abolition of privileges and noble decapitation for all!

From now on, the concepts of varying degrees of suffering and shame will not be applicable to the death penalty.

In medieval England, they were hanged for the smallest thefts, and in large quantities. In the London Borough of Tyburn alone (a place of execution for commoners) during the reign of Edward VI, an average of 560 people were executed every year. For disciplinary offenses in the army and navy, they hung on a yardarm; for counterfeiting, they were boiled in boiling water or in oil (until the 17th century). In addition, deformities were used, such as cutting the nose, ears, and tongue. In general, according to the court verdict, 123 corpus delicti were punishable by death.

Hanging for theft was abolished at the beginning of Victoria's reign, however, this death penalty was still applied to those who committed the murder, unless the killer could prove his insanity. This order continued for another 130 years.

The last public execution in England took place on May 26, 1868: Michael Barrett, an Irish terrorist, was hanged in front of Newgate. The last public execution in Scotland had taken place two weeks earlier. However, non-public executions existed for a very long time: for example, they continued to hang after the Second World War.

In France

In France, under the old regime, regicides were executed by quartering. Wheeling, hanging by the rib and other painful punishments were also widespread, especially zealously used against the Huguenots and rebels in the reign of Louis XIV. In 1792, the guillotine was introduced, and subsequently most executions, except by a military court (in this case, execution was common), were carried out through guillotining (in the French Criminal Code of 1810, article 12 states that “everyone sentenced to death is cut off head"). Already on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed on the guillotine.

This machine was not an original invention either by Dr. Guyotin, who proposed to introduce it as an instrument of capital punishment, or by his teacher, Dr. Louis; a similar machine was used before in Scotland, where it was called the "Scottish maid." In France, it was also called the Virgin or even the Forest of Justice.

The guillotine was not canceled by the subsequent formation due to its extreme convenience. The execution was carried out for a long time only in public: the verdict on the convict said that he would “beheaded in a public place in the name of the French people” (il aura la tete tranchee sur une place publique au nom du peuple francais). Medieval rituals were also observed. So, on the last morning, the convict was announced: “Be of good cheer (surname follows)! The hour of redemption has come ”(Du courage ... l "heure de l" expiation est venue), after which they asked if he would like a cigarette, a glass of rum.

A separate article of the French criminal law was patricide (peine des parricides), for which they were also sentenced to death. At the same time, a shameful ritual was used before the execution, when the convicts were put on red shirts and forced to go to the execution barefoot, after which, on the scaffold, before the execution of the death sentence, their right hand was cut off (formally, this ritual was canceled only in the 1930s). It is known that Fouquier-Tenville, the supreme judge of the times of the Jacobin terror, ordered 53 people to be put in red shirts, allegedly executed for an attempt on Robespierre (the case was fabricated).

In the XIX-XX centuries, public executions took place on the boulevards or near prisons, where a large crowd always gathered. In 1932, Pavel Gorgulov, a Russian émigré, author of works signed by Pavel Bred, was executed in front of the Sante prison for the murder of the President of the Republic, Paul Doumer. Seven years later, on June 17, 1939, at 4:50 a.m., Eugene Weidmann, the murderer of seven people, was beheaded on the boulevard in Versailles. This was the last public execution in France; because of the obscene excitement of the crowd and scandals with the press, it was ordered to continue to arrange executions in prison conditions. Thus, apparently, the action of the "Outsider" by Albert Camus, where a public execution takes place in Algiers, takes place before 1939.

According to the verdict of a military court in France, the death penalty was carried out not on the guillotine, but through execution; Thus, Marshal Michel Ney (1815), Pierre Laval and other defendants of the trials of 1945-1946 were shot, the organizer of the assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, member of the OAS, Colonel of the French Army Jean Bastien-Thiry (1963).

The last execution by cutting off the head with a guillotine took place in Marseille, during the reign of Giscard d "Estaing, on September 10, 1977 (only three people were executed in his seven-year term - 1974--1981). The executed, of Tunisian origin, was called Hamida Djandoubi François Mitterrand, shortly after taking office in 1981 introduced a complete moratorium on the death penalty, which was given the status of law.

On February 20, 2007, France introduced a constitutional ban on the death penalty (828 deputies of the National Assembly and senators voted for this amendment to the 66th article of the constitution, only 26 voted against. France, thus, became the last of the EU countries that banned application of the death penalty.

France, Marseille

On September 10, 1977, Hamid Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder, was executed in Marseille; he became the last criminal to be executed by guillotine.

The guillotine as a device for carrying out the death penalty has been documented since the 13th century, when it was used in Ireland, Scotland and England, especially during the Republic of Oliver Cromwell, as well as in Italy and Switzerland.

During the French Revolution, the guillotine was introduced by decree of the National Assembly of France on March 20, 1792 as the only tool for the execution of capital punishment, regardless of the social status of the person sentenced to death. The idea of ​​​​this law was submitted in 1790 by the physician and revolutionary Joseph-Ignacy Guillotin, himself an opponent of the death penalty, he considered guillotining a more humane means of execution than hanging, beheading or shooting. Two years later, according to the project of the military surgeon Antoine Louis, a French version of such a device was built, it was tested on corpses, and on April 25, 1792, the first person, the ordinary thief Nicolas Pelletier, was executed on it on the Greve Square. The public, accustomed since the Middle Ages to "refined" torture, was disappointed by the speed of the execution.

Subsequently, the guillotine, as this device soon began to be called, was transported to the Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde), where over 10,000 people were executed during the years of the French Revolution, including the former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The leaders of the French Revolution were also guillotined - Georges Danton, Robespierre, Louis Saint-Just, Desmoulins. Contrary to popular belief, Joseph Guillotin himself was not executed by guillotine, but died of natural causes.

In 1868, the guillotine was improved - it became collapsible and transported to the place of execution, as a rule, to the square in front of the prison gates. Around the same time, the positions of regional executioners were abolished, and the main, Parisian executioner with assistants, if necessary, began to travel to various cities of the country.

In Germany, which introduced the guillotine in 1803, guillotine executions continued until 1949, and in the German Democratic Republic until 1960. Switzerland abandoned the use of the guillotine in 1940. The last public guillotine execution in France took place in 1939, and the last guillotine execution in general was on September 10, 1977. It was also the last death penalty in Western Europe.

In 1981, France abolished the death penalty as a form of punishment, automatically abandoning the guillotine as a means of executing a person.

Born in Germany in 1908, Eugène Weidmann began stealing from a young age and, even as an adult, did not give up his criminal habits.

While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime, Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.

1. June 17, 1938. Eugène Weidmann shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau in France where he killed the nurse Jeanine Keller.

They robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.

The National Security Administration eventually got on Weidman's trail. One day, returning home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman fired a pistol at the officers, wounding them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.

As a result of a sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc to 20 months in prison. On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidmann's pardon and commuted Million's death sentence to life imprisonment.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidman met on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the whistle of the crowd were waiting for him.

8. June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine in anticipation of Weidmann's execution near the Saint-Pierre prison.

Among those wishing to watch the execution of the audience was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who at that time was 17 years old.

9. June 17, 1939. On the way to the guillotine, Weidman passes by the box in which his body will be transported.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine, and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defurneau, immediately lowered the blade.

The crowd present at the execution was very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to soak handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs. The scene was so horrifying that French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions altogether, arguing that instead of deterring crime, they help awaken people's base instincts.

The guillotine, originally invented as a quick and relatively humane method of killing, continued to be used in private executions until 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi was executed behind closed doors in Marseille. The death penalty in France was abolished in 1981.