The History of the Guillotine

The guillotine was made both famous and infamous as an instrument of death during French revolution. Despite its name, the role of the person whose last name the device bears was pushing for a more humane way of conducting executions. Before and during the 1700s, many crimes from petty theft to murder were punishable by death. While people of importance such as nobles were beheaded, many commoners were put to death using slow, tortuous methods.

The most common method of capitol punishment in the middle ages was hanging and drawing and quartering. Originally devised to punish piracy in the thirteenth century, hanging drawing and quartering involved hanging the victim until he was nearly dead, then drawing him out on a rack naked, having the victim's penis and testicles cut off, his innards drawn out and then his body was cut into four pieces and displayed around the city of his execution.. While hanging, drawing, and quartering was the most common method of execution for men, other forms such as the wheel were no less gruesome. Executions were often carried out as public spectacles to deter people from committing crimes. Women received it as a punichment as it required nudity and even a dead nude woman was considered to be immodest.

As the age of enlightenment dawned in Europe, great thinkers and philosophers decried the commonly used methods of executions and sought kinder ways of killing the condemned. Beheadings and hangings were less cruel than other execution methods such as the Wheel, but still forced the victim to suffer greatly. As beheading was the kindest form of capitol punishment available at the time, the idea of a decapitation machine would eventually lead to the creation of the guillotine.

The guillotine would reach the height of its popularity during the French revolution when many nobles were systematically drug from their homes in executed, at first for the cause of liberty, equality, and justice, but the invention of Dr. Antoine Louis quickly became an instrument of terror. As the popularity of the device grew, improvements would be made to the guillotine such as a 45 degree angled blade, shallow depressions to align the victim's head, a metal bucket to catch the prisoner's head and a metal tray to catch the prisoner's head were added.

Although the French revolution may have made the guillotine infamous, the guillotine as a beheading machine would continue to see use into well into the 20^th century in many parts of Europe including France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, and Switzerland. In the United States., hanging would remain popular until the invention of the electric chair by Thomas Edison. The last execution by guillotine occurred in France in 1977.

Sources:

http://wywy.essortment.com/guillotinehisto_rgxj.htm