1792: Nicolas Pelletier, Madame Guillotine’s first kiss
April 25th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1792 — a surprisingly late date, just nine months before the king himself would die under its blade — debuted the iconic symbol of the French Revolution, the guillotine.
Today, it turned a thief and killer named Nicolas Pelletier from thug to trivia. Much more illustrious names would follow, and anon.
Though predecessors of the grim machine had been used centuries before in Scotland, Italy and Switzerland, the guillotine ushered in a distinctly modern era of technological application to capital punishment informed by egalitarianism — prior to the French Revolution, nobles and commoners had different modes of execution — and by legal and medical expertise aimed at minimizing pain.*
In fact, the device’s namesake, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, opposed the death penalty altogether; he approved scientific and “painless” execution as a stopgap measure.**
For his troubles, the humane doctor’s name became synonymous with terror, enough so that his descendants changed their handle. One wonders how the doctor judged his own legacy; certainly better for any condemned person to die on the guillotine than the breaking wheel, but the mechanical efficiency of the “French razor” and the depersonalization of the condemned in relation to the headsman and the witnesses also made possible the mass executions the French Revolution is known for.
Whither the ethical role of the physician dedicated to life in the protocol of dishing out death? It’s a strikingly current dilemma.
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Want to know more about how the guillotine was built? Want to build your own?
* Pain reduction was distinctly not the order of the day under the ancien regime. Often, quite the opposite.
** It was still another physician, Antoine Louis, who actually designed the decapitation machine; for a time, it was known as the Louisette. The working model was built from Louis’ design by a piano maker — and it may be more than coincidence that the science of constructing this mechanically complex musical instrument was also bursting with creativity on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution.
Also On This Date
Possibly Related Executions
- 1796: Mastro Titta’s first execution of many
- 1796: Lesurques, wrongly, and Couriol, rightly, for robbing the Lyons Mail
- 1803: Johannes Bückler, “Schinderhannes”
Entry Filed under: 18th Century, Beheaded, Capital Punishment, Common Criminals, Crime, Death Penalty, Execution, France, Guillotine, History, Milestones, Murder, Notable Participants, Public Executions, Theft
Tags: 1790s, 1792, april 25, death tech, doctors and the death penalty, ethics, joseph guillotin, joseph-ignace guillotin, louis xvi, nicolas pelletier
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8 Comments Add your own
1. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 22nd, 2008 at 2:18 am
[...] those pregnant, dangerous days, that upon the storming of the Bastille the guillotine had not yet been erected and from that traditional birthdate of the Revolution were eclipsed successively the Bourbon [...]
2. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | October 3rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
[...] Edison also opposed the death penalty. Like Dr. Guillotin, he was doing his part for humanity in the meantime … just with a little skin in the game. [...]
3. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | November 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
[...] on their own petard. These stories are not always dependable — contra rumor, for instance, Dr. Guillotin was not guillotined — and today’s protagonist may not have a firm hold on this small [...]
4. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | December 8th, 2008 at 1:49 am
[...] the case that if more clients of the national razor had displayed such naked humanity to onlookers, the guillotine’s technical and social capacity for mass butchery might have been [...]
5. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | March 26th, 2009 at 1:06 am
[...] was beheaded on the Maiden, a guillotine precursor that automated the chopping [...]
6. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 16th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
[...] first, when the guillotine was introduced, it was public sensation and executioners became celebrities with special edition postcards in [...]
7. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | October 22nd, 2009 at 3:52 am
[...] tumbrils may not have been running (actually, the Revolution’s iconic execution device had not yet even been created), but the “October Days” had enough to scare you, especially if you were a sensible [...]
8. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | November 21st, 2009 at 4:50 am
[...] with French law came French execution technology, whose proliferation in the train of Napoleon’s Grande Armee would bequeath the German [...]
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