French guillotine exhibition opens 33 years after the last head fell

[mix]

Clair has pointed out that when it was suggested by Joseph Ignace Guillotin in 1789, the idea of making mechanical decapitation the uniform means of France's execution stemmed not from barbarity but from a desire to make death as quick and painless as possible for the victim, whether a prince or a pauper.

Hanging and hacking with hatchets were considered woefully inefficient.

"This machine was created out of humanist concerns as the least painful and most egalitarian means of death," Clair told Le Figaro, adding: "Its precision and ease of use also made it the starting point for mass industrial murders."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/16/guillotine-museum-france-paris

[Gman2]

1. I'd like to see that visited upon Fox talking heads, they arent using the rest anyway.

[Betty]

2. I didn't realize it had been used so recently

I figured this would have stopped being used at least hundred years ago or more.

[nealmhughes]

3. Nope, execution by firing squad by courts martials and guillotine in civil cases in La Belle France.

Literally capital cases,only, of course. But it has been 33 years since la Republique Francaise has executed anyone. They had to bring it to St. Pierre and Miquelon once in the 20th Century for an execution as there was no machine in the Atlantic. Had a busy run in French Indochina, back in the 30s when Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam were agitating for freedom from the Metro and under the traitor Petain and Hitler just loved it in Germany. It was considered the "great equalizer of the citizenry." Aristocrat or pauper, one sentence for treason and/or murder.

Consider that Britain could still burn or draw and quarter people back when the Revolution was afoot. Now they had not for a good generation or so, but the law held. The US colonies were still hanging Quakers and "witches" up to the 18th century in Mass. Other colonies were more "civilized," merely confiscating their goods, deporting them to the wilderness and beating them to the boundaries along the way after docking ears and cutting off noses. When Dickens was a boy, the theft of a loaf of bread could get one hanged at Newgate. By Vicky and her husband-first cousin's time they were growing a bit outraged at this, so it was reserved for the Irish, and generally indoors with only a few hundred tickets sold, mere transportation to Australia being sufficient on a ship that took months to get there with no fresh fruit and in chains most of the time, save for the weekly hosing above decks after the weekly hosing below.

This is what those who know not history would have us to return, the previous having obviously having been the best of all possible times, as we are all so rotten with our fancy smancy Kant and Hegel and Darwin and such rot, Martin King, Jesus Christ and "My Kingdom is not of this world," and "Let him without sin cast the first stone," and other rubbish fed by -- you all say it with me now, PROGRESSIVES!

[Stargazer99]

4. Progressives sure beat a conservative's values on

human life, religion or not.

[Stargazer99]

5. The French had it right

French Lords and the high born abusing the French commoner met this method.

[anigbrowl]

6. So did a good many of the revolutionists...at the hands of their colleagues

When they ran out of aristocrats, leaders of the French revolution turned on each other with equal enthusiasm. DUers who express admiration for the guillotine might be alarmed to discover it's a 'one size fits all' kinda device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

[apocalypsehow]

8. Precisely.

:thumbsup:

[mix]

9. baloney!

:rofl:

[hobbit709]

7. They need to set one up on Wall Street.