Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you a classic episode
Speaker 1: of Invention. Is the show old enough to have classics? Now?
Speaker 1: If so, this is a classic? Yes, I think it?
Speaker 1: Yet why not? I think this might have been the
Speaker 1: first episode of the show we recorded. Was yeah, I
Speaker 1: was looking back. This is the first episode we put out.
Speaker 1: We went in there grizzly, and now it's Halloween, so
Speaker 1: we figured let's replay this grizzly classic of Invention. Right,
Speaker 1: it's seasonally appropriate, but it also turned out to be
Speaker 1: I thought, a very nuanced and interesting subject. So this
Speaker 1: is our early episode of Invention on the guillotine. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy. Welcome to Invention, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. I'm Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And you might know Robert and I
Speaker 1: from our other show Stuff to Blow your Mind, our
Speaker 1: other show in the house Stuff Works Network. But today
Speaker 1: you apparently have somehow wandered into our brand new Curiosity
Speaker 1: Store of Inventions, where we explore human ingenuity, for good,
Speaker 1: for ill, all of the stuff that comes out of
Speaker 1: our imaginations and becomes the technology we use every day
Speaker 1: or maybe just read about in history books. Yes, the
Speaker 1: hallowed halls of technological, systematic, and cultural invention, the very
Speaker 1: human machines, customs, and systems that altered the course of history.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking about one of the most useful
Speaker 1: inventions of all time. It's got to be the and Robert,
Speaker 1: before I say it, do you say it like a
Speaker 1: French guy's name, or like what a fish breathes with?
Speaker 1: I go with guillotine because it sounds a little more
Speaker 1: like an open face sandwich that way, and also it
Speaker 1: has the the G has more of a sound to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like how it sounds kind of like the minotar
Speaker 1: the guillotine. But but apparently guillotine in English is also
Speaker 1: somewhat acceptable pronunciation. I don't think there's a firm uh
Speaker 1: ruling one way or another from the lords of English pronunciation. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing is for certain as we we venture into
Speaker 1: this world of the guillotine. Beheadings themselves are just a
Speaker 1: time honored way for one human being to kill another.
Speaker 1: It's a wound that still can't be repaired, and it is,
Speaker 1: without questions certain death. Now one thing I was thinking
Speaker 1: about to illustrate this is what would you even say
Speaker 1: is the quote cause of death in a beheading? So well,
Speaker 1: blood loss, loss of oxygen to the brain. Basically, it
Speaker 1: just cuts off. It cuts off your all your plumbing
Speaker 1: systems from all of your your your your thinking systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes it makes you think about how often when
Speaker 1: you hear phrases like clinically dead, that can refer to
Speaker 1: something about circulation, like the cessation of the heartbeat. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so when you separate the head from the body,
Speaker 1: I guess you've got to be really rigorous about what
Speaker 1: you mean by dead. Though I guess it also happens
Speaker 1: pretty quickly so you don't have to worry about it
Speaker 1: too much. But yeah, all the blood comes out of
Speaker 1: the head, immediate loss of blood pressure, which means the
Speaker 1: brain can't get oxyd gin, which means the brain can't work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I it's something that's just cemented in our mythology as well, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to kill a vampire, you want
Speaker 1: to kill a medusa, you want to kill a highlander,
Speaker 1: what do you do? You cut their head off? There
Speaker 1: is something just supernaturally potent about this form of death. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's absolutely true, and you see that in
Speaker 1: a lot of archaeological finds of beheadings from human history. Like,
Speaker 1: here's a kind of strange fact. A lot of times
Speaker 1: when you find beheaded humans from ages past, there appears
Speaker 1: to be evidence that the people were beheaded posthumously. Why
Speaker 1: did that happen? There are a lot of ways you
Speaker 1: could explain it. I mean that you would take a
Speaker 1: dead person and cut off their head. Maybe there's some
Speaker 1: sort of ritual function going on here, might be a
Speaker 1: human sacrifice. Maybe there's some kind of symbolic form of
Speaker 1: justice being done, if it's the corps of a criminal
Speaker 1: or an enemy or something. But a lot of times
Speaker 1: it appears like it might be a form of apotropaic magic,
Speaker 1: the kind of magic you would use to ward off
Speaker 1: evil or bad spirit. It's in the same way that
Speaker 1: you might find a skeleton from hundreds of years ago
Speaker 1: with an iron rod driven through its hard or with
Speaker 1: a brick in its mouth, and say the tombs underneath Venice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a dismantling of the the individual that that
Speaker 1: seems evident in these acts um you know, and we
Speaker 1: see acts of ritual decapitation dating back thousands of years.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's evidence in Brazil that dates back to
Speaker 1: at least nine thousand BC, and it's UH and in
Speaker 1: it we find a human skull draped and amputated, hands
Speaker 1: palm side down, covering the face as if as if
Speaker 1: in grief. That's from place called Lapa Dosanto in UH
Speaker 1: in South America and Brazil, and a lot of bones
Speaker 1: have been discovered there. And it's not always easy to
Speaker 1: determine how to read the intention behind what you see
Speaker 1: in these people. But the yeah, there were all kinds
Speaker 1: of forms of of apparently posthumous mutilation going on in
Speaker 1: the way these bones are arranged. For example, sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: find skulls they're full of finger bones inside the skulls.
Speaker 1: What was going on? What made the people want to
Speaker 1: do that? It seems like it may well have formed
Speaker 1: some kind of magical intention, but what was it? Indeed,
Speaker 1: we can only guess now. Another kind of significance that
Speaker 1: beheading has often had in the ancient world was that
Speaker 1: it was one of the many forms of execution practiced
Speaker 1: of course in ancient Greece and Rome, UH and in
Speaker 1: fact our terms decapitation and capital punishment both come from
Speaker 1: the Latin from capit meaning head, so like capital punishment
Speaker 1: is punishment of the head, or that you you pay,
Speaker 1: you pay for a crime with your head by separating
Speaker 1: it from the other stuff. Uh. And there's some evidence
Speaker 1: that the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed beheading as not
Speaker 1: a particularly harsh punishment, but more as a particularly noble
Speaker 1: and honorable form of execution. And you see strains of
Speaker 1: this thinking carried into much more recent times, like when
Speaker 1: beheading was deployed as an execution method throughout the history
Speaker 1: of England. Not always, but it was most often reserved
Speaker 1: for the aristocracy, while common criminals might more often be
Speaker 1: killed and what was considered a less dignified way like hanging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously be headings in general have probably been
Speaker 1: occurring as long as we've had weapons fine enough to
Speaker 1: inflict the blow. Uh, you know, as long as we
Speaker 1: had you know, something that couldn't knock or cut a
Speaker 1: head off. And then when you start looking at these, uh,
Speaker 1: the the use of the of of a sword or
Speaker 1: an axe and execution, you know, a lot of it
Speaker 1: comes down to the craftsmanship of that weapon, but also
Speaker 1: the skill of the individual using it. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a real kicker, isn't it. I Mean, when you contract
Speaker 1: somebody to do a job for you, a lot of times,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a previous relationship with you, you
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of work they're gonna do. You
Speaker 1: want to find those people you can trust, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to find a trust or the execution er that
Speaker 1: you know is going to cut your head off right right,
Speaker 1: Like if you really got to put yourself in the
Speaker 1: in the shoes of the condemned here right. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you don't want to be stone to death. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be thrown into that burlap sack
Speaker 1: with two wild animals and thrown into the river. You
Speaker 1: would probably prefer a nice, clean beheading, but nobody wants
Speaker 1: a less than perfect beheading. If the local warlord is
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, that's one thing. Uh, you know, unless, however,
Speaker 1: you're worried about the war lord inflicting an intentionally less
Speaker 1: than perfect stroke, you know, out of personal malice. If
Speaker 1: if it's a professional executioner that's doing the honors, well
Speaker 1: that's either really good or really bad, depending on how
Speaker 1: you look at it. Like the idea of a trained
Speaker 1: specialist doing the ded That sounds good. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, at death via the sort of person who
Speaker 1: either seeks this line of work out or is not
Speaker 1: suited for any other form of labor, that's a little
Speaker 1: uh frightening, I would say. Plus, do you really want
Speaker 1: to be toward the bottom of an executioner's list for
Speaker 1: the day after they're tired from swinging that big old axe,
Speaker 1: like it's your turn on Friday afternoon? Yeah? Like you
Speaker 1: kind of I want to be up there. I would
Speaker 1: want to be up there first, let to get that
Speaker 1: that first blow in on me. I must admit I
Speaker 1: don't think I had ever much considered the horrors of
Speaker 1: a weak strike from the executioner until Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: came around, and then that I suddenly began to think, like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this could go very wrong. But George R. Martin did
Speaker 1: not make up this concept, obviously, of of being weak
Speaker 1: at swinging the executioner sword or the acts. History is
Speaker 1: replete with stories of botched beheadings, and they are horrific
Speaker 1: and unfortunately sometimes kind of funny. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you a couple uh, this one is not so funny.
Speaker 1: And this concerns Mary, the Queen of Scots. So during
Speaker 1: the reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First of England
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century, there was obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: anxiety about succession because Elizabeth had been born to King
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth and his second wife Anne Boleyn, after
Speaker 1: Henry's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been annulled,
Speaker 1: and obviously lots of people at the time, especially some Catholics,
Speaker 1: had opinions about that right. And Elizabeth's cousin, Mary Stewart,
Speaker 1: was born to James the Fifth of Scotland, who was
Speaker 1: descended from a legitimate royal line, and so many Catholic
Speaker 1: supporters thought, well, maybe Mary actually has a more legitimate
Speaker 1: claim to the throne than Elizabeth does. And so Mary
Speaker 1: was eventually implicated in an assassination plot against Elizabeth in
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty six, at least she was allegedly involved in it,
Speaker 1: and she was sentenced to execution in fifty seven. So
Speaker 1: you've got Mary Stewart, Mary Queen of Scott's, going to
Speaker 1: her execution, and the story goes that she's blindfolded and
Speaker 1: she gets helped to the block and the executioner wearing
Speaker 1: all black, raises up his axe to kill her, but
Speaker 1: instead of cutting through her neck, he misses, and he
Speaker 1: hits her on the head, and then some report that
Speaker 1: she murmurs Sweet Jesus in shock before the executioner raises
Speaker 1: his axe a second time and then strikes again and
Speaker 1: still fails to cut her head off completely. And finally
Speaker 1: he quote just sawed through what remained of her neck.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's rough for Mary. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is presumed a main event be heading here.
Speaker 1: So right, this is before a royal audience, right, so
Speaker 1: this would have to be either an active just just
Speaker 1: just an utterly inepped executioner, or one that is intentionally
Speaker 1: doing a bad job out of mouth. It's like there
Speaker 1: seems to be very little room in between. It's hard
Speaker 1: to understand what happened here because you know, we only
Speaker 1: have accounts from the time, which may not even be
Speaker 1: fully reliable. We're relying on what people told us they
Speaker 1: saw there, right, And there could be some objective in
Speaker 1: crafting a version of the tale that sounds more inapt
Speaker 1: than it actually was. But it actually gets worse because
Speaker 1: apparently so it's described sometimes that the executioner appeared horrified
Speaker 1: at what was going on. But the headsman, after he
Speaker 1: got her head off, he took hold of the severed
Speaker 1: head and he held it up in front of the
Speaker 1: crowd so he could hold up the severed head and
Speaker 1: say God save Queen Elizabeth. But he grasped Mary's head
Speaker 1: by the hair, and it turned out the hair was
Speaker 1: a wig, so the head fell down and rolled away,
Speaker 1: leaving him holding only a hacked up, bloody wig while
Speaker 1: proclaiming his true queen. And then another part of the story,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not to be believed, is that after Mary's
Speaker 1: head rolled away, her lips kept moving as if she
Speaker 1: was talking or praying. Okay, some of that sounds like
Speaker 1: it might have been embellished, but it also sounds like
Speaker 1: this guy was a real hack, no pun intended. Well,
Speaker 1: I got an even worse hack for you, because there
Speaker 1: was a seventeenth century English executioner named jack Ketch. Catch
Speaker 1: spelled as like catch up, catch yeah, or like what's
Speaker 1: the kid in the Pokemon's I have no idea. Our
Speaker 1: very knowledgeable producer Paul just tells me it is ash
Speaker 1: catch him. Okay, I guess he's got to catch him.
Speaker 1: All right, it's like jack Ketch him right, the harr rider.
Speaker 1: That's what comes to my mind. I don't well anyway,
Speaker 1: this is jack Ketch K E T C H so
Speaker 1: Jack Ketch birthday unknown died in six six who was
Speaker 1: notorious for being a complete screw up at his job
Speaker 1: and bungling executions. A couple of examples. In sixteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: Catch performed the beheading of William Lord Russell, who was
Speaker 1: convicted for treason in his role of in his role
Speaker 1: in the Rye House plot, which was against King Charles
Speaker 1: the Second of England, and Catches beheading of Russell was
Speaker 1: reportedly just this clumsy horror, with Catch whacking Russell again
Speaker 1: and again with the axe, but repeatedly failing to get
Speaker 1: his head off. And apparently after this, Catch defended himself
Speaker 1: by complaining that Russell wouldn't hold still. And then you
Speaker 1: got the second one later, James, Duke of Monmouth, he
Speaker 1: went to the block for the Monmouth Rebellion of sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, and he tried to pay Catch not to
Speaker 1: screw up his execution. He's recorded as saying, quote, here
Speaker 1: are six guineas for you, pray do your business well
Speaker 1: do not serve me as you did, my Lord Russell.
Speaker 1: I have heard you struck him three or four times.
Speaker 1: Then Monmouth gave three more guineas to his servant who
Speaker 1: was standing nearby, and told his servant to pay Catch
Speaker 1: only if Catch did the beheading correct to Lee. And
Speaker 1: then Catch said, I hope I shall. Then Monmouth asked
Speaker 1: to feel the axe blade, and he did, and he
Speaker 1: complained that this is too dull, and Catch said, no,
Speaker 1: it's sharp enough, it'll be heavy enough. So Monmouth got
Speaker 1: down in place to accept his fate, and Catch brought
Speaker 1: the axe down on Monmouth, and at this point it
Speaker 1: is reported that after he got hit, Monmouth lifted his
Speaker 1: head up and turned around and glared at Catch angrily.
Speaker 1: Then he got back down so Ketch could hit him again,
Speaker 1: and Catch hit him several more times, failing each time
Speaker 1: to be head him. Then Catch got frustrated and tried
Speaker 1: to walk away and quit in the middle of the execution,
Speaker 1: while Monmouth was still alive. But the crowd yelled at
Speaker 1: him and told him to go back and finish it,
Speaker 1: so finally he went back. After some more blows and
Speaker 1: the use of a knife, he finally managed to get
Speaker 1: the Duke's head off. Well, that's awful. This guy is
Speaker 1: a true hack. I wonder if that's where the word
Speaker 1: hat comes perhaps. Uh yeah, But so you had people
Speaker 1: whose job it was to administer what I guess was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the more humane form of execution at
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, this is different than being you know, uh,
Speaker 1: tortured and hanged and drawn and quartered and all that.
Speaker 1: But he this is obviously not going the way it's
Speaker 1: supposed to. And if we're going inspired by the Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman model, something is obviously wrong here, Like not
Speaker 1: only is it unnecessarily painful, this does not really seem
Speaker 1: like an honorable death. This seems humiliating. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: noble about this, you know, it's this is not a
Speaker 1: finely craft instrument wielded by a by and by an
Speaker 1: expert practitioner. This is just a clumsy exercise and horror.
Speaker 1: But what if mechanical controls could be set in place
Speaker 1: the same level of perfection, regardless of whoever you know
Speaker 1: happens to be wearing the hood, how tired they are,
Speaker 1: what sort of weapon they're using, or what sort of
Speaker 1: six stuff they're into. A machine that cannot get tired,
Speaker 1: it can't hesitate or engage in unfair punishment. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna judge you based on your your royal or commoner status.
Speaker 1: A good blade, some gravity, and a simple frame with
Speaker 1: a necklock, well that would be the guillotine. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will discuss some precursors to the guillotine and
Speaker 1: the guillotine itself. All right, we're back. So the guillotine
Speaker 1: of late eighteenth century France, which I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 1: about before, that was involved in the French Revolution, the
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror, the first French Republic. That guillotine was
Speaker 1: not the first human head removal machine, not by a
Speaker 1: long shot. And we're not saying it was. You know
Speaker 1: that it was predated by people swinging in axe or
Speaker 1: a sword with their hands, of course it was. But
Speaker 1: there were organized machines for doing this job more efficiently
Speaker 1: and in a more consistent way before the guillotine was
Speaker 1: instituted in France, right, and they worked along the same principles.
Speaker 1: They maybe they weren't quite as refined, but essentially the
Speaker 1: idea is there that we should say that it was
Speaker 1: only in the aftermath of the French Revolution that people
Speaker 1: began referring to decapitation machines as guillotine. That's where the
Speaker 1: name comes from. Yes, they had equally less refined names.
Speaker 1: They had more grizzly names. One finds we'll meet a
Speaker 1: couple in a moment. So as for who invented the
Speaker 1: first general decapitation machine, this is totally unknown, lost to history,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we don't even know for sure how
Speaker 1: many societies used a device like this. There there are
Speaker 1: a lot of tales, but many of these tales might
Speaker 1: not even be true. We don't know for sure, right,
Speaker 1: And then how often is the individual uh celebrated for
Speaker 1: creating such a thing? As we'll discover the naming of
Speaker 1: the guillotine, and it doesn't really relate to the individual
Speaker 1: or individuals that created it, right. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of people who create execution devices don't want to be
Speaker 1: associated with And when you find the people who do
Speaker 1: want to be associated with them or don't mind, you've
Speaker 1: got to kind of wonder about those people. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of known mechanical beheading devices from
Speaker 1: England that predated the French guillotine, and one is known
Speaker 1: as the Halifax Gibbet, so the how. Halifax is a
Speaker 1: town in West Yorkshire in England, and it had this
Speaker 1: infamous beheading machine known as the Halifax Gibbet, which was
Speaker 1: allegedly used mostly to punish petty theft. So people would
Speaker 1: steal some small sum of money or something worth not
Speaker 1: very much, some cloth or something, and into the Halifax
Speaker 1: Gibbet they would go. It was described in an eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven history by an author named William White in
Speaker 1: the following way quote. The executions always took place on
Speaker 1: the Great market day in order to strike the more
Speaker 1: terror into the neighborhood. When the criminal was brought to
Speaker 1: the gibbet, which stood a little way out of the town,
Speaker 1: where part of the stone platform may still be seen
Speaker 1: on Gibbet Hill. The execution was performed by means of
Speaker 1: an engine, which was raised upon a plat form four
Speaker 1: ft high and thirteen feet square, faced on every side
Speaker 1: with stone, and ascended by a flight of steps. In
Speaker 1: the middle of this platform was placed two upright pieces
Speaker 1: of timber fifteen feet high, joined at the top by
Speaker 1: a transverse beam. Within these was a square block of
Speaker 1: wood four ft and a half long, which moved up
Speaker 1: and down by means of grooves made for that purpose.
Speaker 1: To the lower part of the sliding block was fastened
Speaker 1: in iron axe of the weight of seven pounds and
Speaker 1: twelve ounces. The axe, thus fixed, was drawn up to
Speaker 1: the top by a cord and pulley. At the end
Speaker 1: of the cord was a pin, which, being fixed to
Speaker 1: the block, kept it suspended till the moment of execution.
Speaker 1: When the culprit, having placed his head on the block,
Speaker 1: the pin was withdrawn and his head was instantly severed
Speaker 1: from his body. If the offender was condemned for stealing
Speaker 1: an ox, a sheep or a horse, the end of
Speaker 1: the rope was fastened to the beast, which, being driven,
Speaker 1: pulled out the pin and thus be came the executioner.
Speaker 1: In other cases, the bailiff for his servant cut the
Speaker 1: rope and allowed the axe to descend. It's a little
Speaker 1: unnecessary complexity involving fim animals, but otherwise the basic principles
Speaker 1: of the guillotine as we've come to know it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more or less there there. There might be some
Speaker 1: design refinements we come on later, but this is the idea.
Speaker 1: It's it's a reliable consistent machine that's not going to
Speaker 1: mess up, right. And of course it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: it was necessarily a custom blade, or maybe it was,
Speaker 1: but it's very much based on the design of an
Speaker 1: axe blade. Yeah, and when you see illustrations it looks
Speaker 1: like just a large axe head on the bottom of
Speaker 1: a huge wooden block. Uh So, this beheading machine of
Speaker 1: Halifax was famous enough that the English poet John Taylor
Speaker 1: referenced it alongside the notoriously tough police of Kingston upon
Speaker 1: Hull in a poem uh that that I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty good. He writes, there is a proverb and a
Speaker 1: prayer withal that we may not to Three strange places
Speaker 1: fall from Hull, from Halifax, from Hell. 'tis thus from
Speaker 1: all these three good Lord deliver us at Halifax. The
Speaker 1: law so sharp doth deal that whoso more than one
Speaker 1: threepence doth steal. They have a lynn that wondrous, quick
Speaker 1: and well. Since thieves all headless unto Heaven or Hell.
Speaker 1: From Hell, each man says, Lord, deliver me, because from
Speaker 1: Hell can no redemption be men may escape from Hull
Speaker 1: and Halifax, but sure in Hell there is a heavier tax.
Speaker 1: It sounds pretty grim, well, I like how it's sort
Speaker 1: of captures two themes there. One is that how the
Speaker 1: Halifax jibbit is deadly and something to be feared, but
Speaker 1: it also contrasts it with the supposed tortures of Hell.
Speaker 1: I guess you can emphasizing that, well, it's not as
Speaker 1: torturous as many of the other methods that are being used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's almost describing it like it's a like it's a
Speaker 1: plane ticket to too greater rewards are suffering depending on
Speaker 1: how one supernatural revenge fantasy is hang out here. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I like that it is to
Speaker 1: a certain extent farm animals, uh you know. Notwithstanding, it
Speaker 1: is to a certain extent saving the horrors of an
Speaker 1: afterlife for those imagined afterlife and not trying to um
Speaker 1: embody them too much in the act of execution itself. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: whether that's actually a good thing or not, we can
Speaker 1: discuss later, but it does seem to be there's at
Speaker 1: least there's at least a superficial kind of humaneness to write,
Speaker 1: even though it seems to be being lumped on people
Speaker 1: who commit extremely pack crimes and not and no matter
Speaker 1: what you think, really probably deserving of death. But there's
Speaker 1: some strange stories about how people reacted to what happened
Speaker 1: with at the Halifax Gibbitt. The story in Thomas Wright
Speaker 1: tells a legend quote of a countrywoman who was writing
Speaker 1: by the gibbet on her hampers to the market just
Speaker 1: at the execution of a criminal when the acts chopped
Speaker 1: his neck through with such four that the head jumped
Speaker 1: into one of her hampers, or as others say, seized
Speaker 1: her apron with the teeth and they're stuck for some time.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that's true, or at least the teeth.
Speaker 1: I don't believe. Again, we're coming back to the sort
Speaker 1: of inherent comedy. I mean, it's true gallows humor, uh
Speaker 1: that comes with beheading executions. But there's an interesting observation
Speaker 1: from the Halifax historian John Crabtree, who has a sort
Speaker 1: of attitude about what stories like this mean. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: it is useless employing words about this fair, but the
Speaker 1: circumstance may serve to show with what apathy the country
Speaker 1: people regarded this mode of punishment. Their minds were evidently
Speaker 1: hardened by such exhibitions, and the fact develops the inadequacy
Speaker 1: of such awful administrations of justice to produce that proper
Speaker 1: moral and salutary effect which might have been anticipated. Such scenes,
Speaker 1: often repeated, appear to harden, rather than soften, to stoop
Speaker 1: fi rather than awakened, the sensibilities of man's nature. And
Speaker 1: I think we should come back to that thought later on. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, so what else do we have in terms
Speaker 1: of proto guillotine machines. Well, a quicker story is just
Speaker 1: a copy essentially of the Halifax Gibbet, known as the
Speaker 1: Scottish Maiden. So James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton,
Speaker 1: who was the ruler of Scotland from fifteen seventy two
Speaker 1: to fifteen seventy eight, he was alleged at some point
Speaker 1: to have introduced the decapitation machine to his country of Scots,
Speaker 1: inspired by the Halifax Gibbett. Allegedly, he at some point
Speaker 1: traveled through Halifax and he was so inspired by the
Speaker 1: gibbet that he thought, well, I should share this same
Speaker 1: technology with my countrymen. So a similar machine was built
Speaker 1: out of oak, and it could be transported around the
Speaker 1: country to perform beheadings wherever, but it was often accepting
Speaker 1: the condemned at Edinburgh, and according to the National Museums
Speaker 1: of Scotland, crimes that could get you sent to the
Speaker 1: Scottish Maiden included murder, incest, stealing, treason, adultery, forgery and robbery.
Speaker 1: But there's an ironic twist, so James Douglas, the Earl,
Speaker 1: fourth Earl of Morton was a supporter of James the sixth,
Speaker 1: and Morton opposed the Catholic faction of Mary, Queen of
Speaker 1: Scott's who he discussed earlier, Mary Stewart, and he was
Speaker 1: eventually implicated in a plot to murder Mary's second husband,
Speaker 1: Lord Darnley, and was put to death in June, decapitated
Speaker 1: by the Scottish Maiden that he brought to Scotland. Ah,
Speaker 1: there's your poetic justice, and legends of that kind will
Speaker 1: appear again and again in this episode. Actually, well, yes,
Speaker 1: and even beyond this episode, because this isn't that a
Speaker 1: common theme? The man destroyed by his own invention, by
Speaker 1: his own machine. It happens enough in the movies that
Speaker 1: you should think it happens more often in reality. Though
Speaker 1: in the movies is especially common when that invention is
Speaker 1: some kind of hybrid animal, like I created a shark ape,
Speaker 1: and you know, it swings from the trees, taking bites
Speaker 1: out of people who could have known my arcape would
Speaker 1: turn on me, and yet it always happens. Alright. So,
Speaker 1: as we've been discussing, there were similar devices already used
Speaker 1: in Europe and had been for centuries before the guillotine
Speaker 1: came around. But the individual who is often credited as
Speaker 1: the inventor of the guillotine, uh is a French surgeon
Speaker 1: and physiologist Antoine Louis, who lives seventeen through seventeen two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is often credited as the inventor, though based on
Speaker 1: what I was reading, it appears to me it was
Speaker 1: maybe designed by some sort of committee of which Louis
Speaker 1: was the leader. Right. And this is actually all the
Speaker 1: more fitting U when we really get to the heart
Speaker 1: of the guillotine here, because it is this this thing
Speaker 1: that is it is this utilization of technology and this
Speaker 1: there's a there's an air of civility to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this taking something that is kind of that is
Speaker 1: rather barbaric and making it a little less so. Well,
Speaker 1: it's bureaucratic violence. Yes, it very much embodies the idea
Speaker 1: of retrie bet of violence by the state. Taken out
Speaker 1: of the emotional hands of the single executioner and placed
Speaker 1: into the hands of a disembodied machine that is created
Speaker 1: by a committee through drafts. Yes, you know, we have
Speaker 1: another episode that we're recording this week on vending machines.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing this the similarities involved here, this this
Speaker 1: these sometimes these struggles over what exactly is happening when
Speaker 1: a machine does the bidding of a human. If a
Speaker 1: machine is vending, say, blasphemous literature, as we're discussing this
Speaker 1: other episode, then who is it fault foresaid literature sale
Speaker 1: and uh, And there's a sense of that here too.
Speaker 1: It's like the bureaucracy has condemned you to death. The
Speaker 1: machine is actually doing the execution. We're just merely you know,
Speaker 1: pushing the button, pulling the string, et cetera, to carry
Speaker 1: out this judgment. Right, But we do at least have
Speaker 1: Antoine Louis to associate with the creation of the machine,
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't just him alone, but because of
Speaker 1: his association with it, it was often early on it
Speaker 1: was hold names, not the guillotine yet, but names like
Speaker 1: the Louisette or the louis Zone, which doesn't have as
Speaker 1: much of a ring to it. I kind of like it.
Speaker 1: I could see executions by the Louisette. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it would have grown on us. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: later it definitely came to be named after Joseph Ignace
Speaker 1: Guillotan who lived seventeen thirty eight through eighteen fourteen. He
Speaker 1: was a physician. Uh, he was a National Assembly member,
Speaker 1: and he played a major role in passing legislation that
Speaker 1: made death by machine the law. The loose idea here
Speaker 1: is that it would this kind of legislation would provide
Speaker 1: the best possible version of beheading to all classes of society.
Speaker 1: And we do have to point out that, despite some
Speaker 1: urban legends out there, Guillotine himself was not killed by
Speaker 1: his own machine, and he wasn't actually a huge fan
Speaker 1: of execution either. It's not like he was a huge
Speaker 1: execution enthusiasts. Well, no, exactly the opposite. Guilloton opposed the
Speaker 1: death penalty. He wanted the abolition of the death penalty,
Speaker 1: but he didn't think that he could accomplish that directly. Right,
Speaker 1: this seemed the best reasonable next step. Right, It's like,
Speaker 1: if I can't we can't eradicate it, We're going to
Speaker 1: have it, we might as well make it clean and
Speaker 1: uh and fair to all involved. According to a popular legend,
Speaker 1: Guillotan was born when his pregnant mother was out walking
Speaker 1: one day and she overheard the screams of a condemned
Speaker 1: criminal being broken on the wheel. And breaking on the
Speaker 1: wheel was you know, a classic death by torture type method,
Speaker 1: where a person would be stretched out on a wheel
Speaker 1: in a kind of starfish post and they have their
Speaker 1: limbs broken with an iron rod or with a club.
Speaker 1: Just insane brutality. So he was very much opposed to
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, not only just the bar the
Speaker 1: barbaric nature of the execution, but the public nature of it,
Speaker 1: the idea that that women and children, uh, just innocent
Speaker 1: bystanders might just walk through town and witness such such
Speaker 1: are So he was thinking, maybe if less children end
Speaker 1: up watching this, the better, Yes, and make it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more systematic, it's more you know that the act
Speaker 1: itself is less flashy, and then we're just gonna make
Speaker 1: it less for performance. So Guillotam was not out there
Speaker 1: lobbying to get this machine named after his family, No, No,
Speaker 1: it just it ended up sticking. Now a cool little
Speaker 1: fact here that sounds like something right out of an
Speaker 1: Alan Moore comic book. But along with Benjamin Franklin, Uh,
Speaker 1: Guillotine investigated the work of Franz Mesmer of Mesmerism, you know,
Speaker 1: the the the form of hypnotism that we had back
Speaker 1: in the day. Uh, And they investigated him on behalf
Speaker 1: of King Louis the League of Extraordinary Gentleman exactly. So
Speaker 1: another way of thinking, you alluded to this a minute ago, Robert,
Speaker 1: like the idea that it would be the best method
Speaker 1: for all the classes. So another way of thinking about
Speaker 1: the motivation for the institution of the guillotine at this
Speaker 1: time in history was that it supposedly extended the democratic
Speaker 1: and egalitarian principles of the French Revolution to common criminals,
Speaker 1: essentially extending them the courtesy of the honorable beheading that
Speaker 1: was more often reserved for nobles and aristocrats instead of
Speaker 1: more shameful and common and painful deaths like hanging, burning,
Speaker 1: or breaking on the wheel, which you were more likely
Speaker 1: to get if you were just some lower class petty criminal. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the idea Guillotan had, thinking that this would
Speaker 1: shield children from the gruesome practice of execution, Unfortunately this
Speaker 1: did not work out. I was reading a section from
Speaker 1: a book called Children's Toys of Bygone Days, A History
Speaker 1: of playthings of all people's from prehistoric times to the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century by Carl Grober, published in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: and the author writes, quote, the worst monstrosity of the
Speaker 1: kind was the outcome of the French Revolution, which indeed
Speaker 1: was over rich in aberrations of east. The toy shops
Speaker 1: put on the market little guillotines with which little patriots
Speaker 1: could be head figures of aristocrats. There still survives some
Speaker 1: specimens of this pretty and diverting machine, one of which
Speaker 1: bears the date seventeen four, and he's got an illustration.
Speaker 1: These were not models, but pure toys. And in proof
Speaker 1: of this we have the king's evidence from one whom
Speaker 1: we should never suspect of wishing to give so bloodthirsty
Speaker 1: a toy to his little son. And here the author
Speaker 1: is speaking of the romantic poet Johann wolf Kan von Gurta.
Speaker 1: So Gruber tells the story and that in December seventeen
Speaker 1: Girta wrote a letter to his mother and Frankfort, asking
Speaker 1: if she would buy a toy guillotine for his little son.
Speaker 1: And she replied, dear son, anything I can do to
Speaker 1: please you is gladly done and gives me joy. But
Speaker 1: to buy such an infamous implement of murder that I
Speaker 1: will not do at any price. If I had authority,
Speaker 1: the maker should be put in the stocks, and I
Speaker 1: would have the machine publicly burnt by the common executioner.
Speaker 1: And I guess this is sort of the seventeen nineties
Speaker 1: equivalent of like asking your grandmother to buy you a
Speaker 1: copy of Doom for Christmas in the nineteen nineties. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you brought up Doom here. And just
Speaker 1: because it's it's easy for us to look back on
Speaker 1: this account and think, oh, these children of a more
Speaker 1: barbarous age. But go to any toy store and look
Speaker 1: at the machine gun based toys that are on display. There,
Speaker 1: all the various guns like true true murder weapons. Um,
Speaker 1: not even methods of bureaucratic execution, but weapons of just
Speaker 1: wanton violence. Uh, these are all represented in toys even today. Uh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: I can't help but think back on how much I
Speaker 1: wanted the slime pit when I was a kid. Do
Speaker 1: you know that this was a master's of the universe.
Speaker 1: Place set the device and basically you would lock he
Speaker 1: man or some other figure into the machine and it
Speaker 1: was like shape like a skull, and then it would
Speaker 1: dump slime on top of the head of the poor hero.
Speaker 1: And it was I think maybe the actual lore of
Speaker 1: it was like I would make them mutate or something,
Speaker 1: but it was very much Uh, it was very much
Speaker 1: like a guillotine, except instead of a blade, it was slime.
Speaker 1: It was like clearly an instrument of execution, of of
Speaker 1: ritualized death for your toys. So you're arranging an execution
Speaker 1: for he man exactly. So you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: of a toy guillotine. It makes perfect sense. Uh, we can't.
Speaker 1: We can only distance ourselves from such an idea so much.
Speaker 1: Though I also have to wonder I somehow detect between
Speaker 1: the lines. This could have been one of those situations
Speaker 1: where and Robert, I bet you're familiar with this, where
Speaker 1: a dad buys or requests a toy for his child
Speaker 1: because secretly he wants to play. Uh. In fact, Gerta
Speaker 1: wrote in Faust quote ages no second childhood age makes
Speaker 1: plain children. We were true children. We remain again much
Speaker 1: like it is today now we mentioned that Guillaton was
Speaker 1: responsible for introducing legislation that would eventually lead the French
Speaker 1: National Assembly to say, Okay, we're only going to be
Speaker 1: killing people by beheading machine. Now that that's that's going
Speaker 1: to be the new method of execution. That's what's humane,
Speaker 1: that's what the state should be up to. And so
Speaker 1: I think in just a minute we should turn to
Speaker 1: the machine itself. But I just wanted quickly before we
Speaker 1: do that, to discuss where it is that this rumor
Speaker 1: came from. The Guillotan was killed by the machine that
Speaker 1: he recommended putting in place for executions in France, and
Speaker 1: I think I know maybe a few threads of where
Speaker 1: the story came from. Obviously, we had that ironic story
Speaker 1: of the Earl of Morton earlier, right, right, so we
Speaker 1: can see how that might have influenced confused the telling, right.
Speaker 1: But then there are a couple of other examples. So
Speaker 1: Dr Antoine Louis, the secretary of the Academy of Medicine
Speaker 1: and physician to King Louis the one who we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, chairing that committee that designed the device. He
Speaker 1: was actually temporarily condemned to die in the machine that
Speaker 1: he designed or helped design, though he escaped this fate
Speaker 1: basically during a change of power. So he narrowly escaped
Speaker 1: going to the guillotine himself. And then King Louis the sixteenth,
Speaker 1: who was interested in mechanical engineering, is said to have
Speaker 1: made refinements to the design of the guillotine, of like
Speaker 1: recommending an angled blade while he was still in power,
Speaker 1: before the device was eventually turned on the king himself
Speaker 1: and on his wife Marie Antoinette. And so there's another
Speaker 1: kind of like creator and then killed by his creation.
Speaker 1: Irony there since he apparently or at least allegedly offered
Speaker 1: refinements to the design. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss the machine itself in more detail, and we'll
Speaker 1: also discuss its legacy. All right, we're back. So now
Speaker 1: we're at the machine itself, the French guillotine of the
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties and on word. And the question is was
Speaker 1: it actually built? Well, of course it was. This one
Speaker 1: was definitely built. Some of the inventions were discussing on
Speaker 1: this show, you know, maybe didn't get out of the
Speaker 1: blueprint phase. This definitely saw action. So after the legal
Speaker 1: standard of execution by machine was approved by the National
Speaker 1: Assembly in sev the construction of the machine was delegated
Speaker 1: to a politician named Pierre Louis red Areo, who I'm
Speaker 1: always going to struggle with that name, so I'll just
Speaker 1: call him Pierre here. Uh. He apparently had trouble finding
Speaker 1: a contractor who could build the machine since no one
Speaker 1: wanted their name associated with it, and eventually found a
Speaker 1: taker was a taker from Germany, and so the guillotine
Speaker 1: was constructed by a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt.
Speaker 1: Apparently he also supplied a leather sack that would catch heads.
Speaker 1: Now you could you just gotta wonder about Tobias. I
Speaker 1: can just imagine the scenario. It's like, so, honey, what
Speaker 1: are you working on today? I get this new contracted
Speaker 1: you know it pays well, it's gonna really help us
Speaker 1: out next month. Oh, who are you putting a hot
Speaker 1: harpsichord of chord for? Well, it's not quite a harpsichord. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining you in his shop while he's working
Speaker 1: on the guillotine, that harpsichord music is constantly playing. Dan
Speaker 1: Dan Dan Dan Dan Dy. Anyway, according to the memoirs
Speaker 1: of the French executioner Enrie Clements sans Song in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, saints On came from a line of a
Speaker 1: long line of executioners, and he so he has these
Speaker 1: memoirs about his family's exploits cutting off heads and performing
Speaker 1: executions in France, and his memoirs are considered probably only
Speaker 1: partially reliable. But his up close description of the workings
Speaker 1: of the guillotine is fairly straightforward. So I see, I
Speaker 1: feel like he's probably on the right track here. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read part of this and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go for an executioner's voice. Here do it. On
Speaker 1: a scaffold from seven to eight feet high, two parallel
Speaker 1: bars are made fast in one end. Their top part
Speaker 1: is united by a strong crossbar. To this crossbar is
Speaker 1: added a thick iron ring, and which is past a
Speaker 1: rope which fixes and retains a ram. This is perpendicularly
Speaker 1: armed with a sharp and broad blade, which gradually becomes
Speaker 1: broader on all its surface, so that instead of striking perpendicularly,
Speaker 1: it strikes sideways, so that there is not an inch
Speaker 1: of the blade that does not serve the ram ways
Speaker 1: from pounds, and its weight is doubled when it begins
Speaker 1: to slide down. It is enclosed in the groove of
Speaker 1: the bars. A spring makes it fast to the left bar.
Speaker 1: A band of iron descends along the outside of the
Speaker 1: same bar, and the handle is locked to a ring
Speaker 1: with a padlock, so that no accident is possible and
Speaker 1: the weight only falls from the executioner interferes to a
Speaker 1: way plank. Strong straps are fastened by which the criminal
Speaker 1: is attached under the armpits and over the legs, so
Speaker 1: that the body cannot move as soon as the way
Speaker 1: plank goes down. The head, being between the bars is
Speaker 1: supported by a rounded crossbar, are the executioner's assistants lower
Speaker 1: another rounded crossbar. The head, being thus grooved in a
Speaker 1: perfect circle, would prevents it from moving in any way.
Speaker 1: This precaution is indispensable in regard to the terrible inconvenience
Speaker 1: as of fear. The executioner then touches the spring. The
Speaker 1: whole affair has done so quickly that only the thump
Speaker 1: of the blade when it slides down and forms the
Speaker 1: spectators that the culprit is no longer of the living.
Speaker 1: The head falls into a basket full of brand and
Speaker 1: the body is pushed into another wicker basket line with
Speaker 1: very thick leather. That's a heck of a rating, Robert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was going to do a number on my throat.
Speaker 1: But I'm sorry. Maybe I should have taken part of it,
Speaker 1: but I was just enjoying listening to your Henri Clement. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a precision in his in his description of the
Speaker 1: act that I felt like I had had to capture
Speaker 1: now obviously, so he's described how the device works now,
Speaker 1: but they had to test it out before they can
Speaker 1: make sure to try it on a human, right, So
Speaker 1: you know you always wonder like, how do you test
Speaker 1: a guillotine? You put a watermelon in there? Do you
Speaker 1: gallagher it? Well, I suppose you could, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of a waste of a good melon, And ultimately you
Speaker 1: want to test it on the real thing, right, So
Speaker 1: they use dead bodies. Oh yeah, also farm animals like
Speaker 1: sheep and calves. Yeah, because you just I mean, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. You want to make sure you're cutting through
Speaker 1: actual vertebrate tissue there and most notably the neck and
Speaker 1: then on a officials installed and use the guillotine for
Speaker 1: the first time. Right, So, the first victim of the
Speaker 1: French guillotine was Nicholas Jacques Beltier, who was a highwayman,
Speaker 1: and he was executed where the machine was erected, at
Speaker 1: the Plasta Grev And they're so a large crowd came out,
Speaker 1: obviously to witness the first execution by the new machine.
Speaker 1: But it was reported that the crowd was somewhat unimpressed
Speaker 1: and they found the efficiency of the killing less entertaining
Speaker 1: than the forms of execution they were used to, even
Speaker 1: the more classic beheadings. Nevertheless, over time, the executions that
Speaker 1: the guillotine became a very popular spectator event during the
Speaker 1: reign of Terror, and you know, in generally afterwards when
Speaker 1: the guillotine was used, people would show up to watch.
Speaker 1: So we see a little success here. Like it was
Speaker 1: clearly less dramatic, uh, you know, there was less theater
Speaker 1: in the act. And yet at the same time, a
Speaker 1: few things are more dramatic in life than the ending
Speaker 1: of a life like this is the people. You can
Speaker 1: understand why people would still turn out even if you
Speaker 1: had made things a little more precise. Now, putting aside
Speaker 1: the question, I guess we can talk talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute, O or whether it's ever humane to just
Speaker 1: execute somebody? Was it actually true that the the guillotine
Speaker 1: was a more refined, more humane version of execution than
Speaker 1: what came before? Was it? Was it an improvement if
Speaker 1: you were somebody who was interested in reducing the suffering
Speaker 1: of humankind. Yeah, I mean you could again, you could
Speaker 1: say the concept is inherently controversial, but still others took
Speaker 1: issue with just how humane it was. So Prussian doctor
Speaker 1: Samuel Thomas summer Ing, who lives seventeen fifty five through
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty, he studied the cadavers of guillotine victims, and
Speaker 1: he argued that severed heads were still capable feeling and since,
Speaker 1: and he wrote an essay on this in seventeen So
Speaker 1: he he was something of a poly math. In addition
Speaker 1: to naming the twelve pairs of cranial nerves, he also
Speaker 1: invented a telegraphic system and made discoveries in paleontology, specifically
Speaker 1: with the pterodactyl fossils. They're not dinosaurs, folks, that's a
Speaker 1: different thing. So this was you know, this was not
Speaker 1: just it wasn't just some crazy guy coming up in Santa,
Speaker 1: the heads are still alive, you know, he was he
Speaker 1: was making an expert argument that, like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that this is great what we're doing. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little it's almost a little too precise. Yeah, the core
Speaker 1: takeaway of his essay on the humanity of the guillotine
Speaker 1: was that we can't rule out that it's possible that
Speaker 1: a severed head could still be having experience, could experience
Speaker 1: being severed now we knew. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of tales of this happening right of people running to
Speaker 1: check out the heads of the of the decapitated, in
Speaker 1: various doctors checking in and seeing what was going on
Speaker 1: with the eyes. And there was a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in this in determining what, you know, what happens to
Speaker 1: consciousness at death, Like this was a perfect clinical exercise
Speaker 1: for for weighing in on it. Yeah. The classic tales
Speaker 1: about this thin get repeated the most often are like
Speaker 1: seeing someone's cheeks flush with anger when they behold someone
Speaker 1: or who's someone who mocks them or something like that,
Speaker 1: or or who slaps them in the face, or thinking
Speaker 1: that that I severed head would be like looking at
Speaker 1: people as if it recognized them, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously there's a lot of indeliphment with these stories,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how much to trust them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really don't know how much to trust them. But
Speaker 1: we do know today that that any kind of activity
Speaker 1: scene in the heads after death, most of this is
Speaker 1: going to be reflective twitching of muscles. So, um, basically
Speaker 1: coma and brain death are probably going to occur within
Speaker 1: two to three seconds of decapitation due to interruption of
Speaker 1: blood flow to the brain. So just the massive sudden
Speaker 1: drop in blood pressure, Yeah, that's going to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So any tales of like, you know, confronting the head
Speaker 1: having any kind of like moment of human uh contact,
Speaker 1: even it it's just in the eyes. Uh, it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that that is all just embellishment of stories or
Speaker 1: just wishful thinking on the part of the observer. So
Speaker 1: what is the legacy of this machine, this this machine
Speaker 1: of bureaucratic violence. And if we try to look at
Speaker 1: it from with our perspective, from today, with our hindsight,
Speaker 1: and you know, with with the kind of value judgments
Speaker 1: we would make, was the guillotine a step forward or
Speaker 1: a step backward? Was it as uh, Giatan envisioned a
Speaker 1: more humane way of doing business when the state was
Speaker 1: just you know, couldn't be convinced not to kill people.
Speaker 1: Or did it perhaps enable a worse state of affairs
Speaker 1: where more people could be sent to their deaths with
Speaker 1: impunity than would have been the case otherwise. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you could probably go either way on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing is for certain. It it changed the way
Speaker 1: executions were performed in France for nearly two hundred years.
Speaker 1: It was actually used in France up until nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: that's when the last execution occurred via guillotine, before the
Speaker 1: outlying of capital punishment in one It also took on
Speaker 1: symbolic way. It's just this this symbol of the reign
Speaker 1: of terror and perhaps to a larger extent, a symbol
Speaker 1: of systematically violent rebellion. Yeah. I read one author point out,
Speaker 1: certainly not in defending the guillotine or the use of
Speaker 1: the guillotine, but it just pointing out a kind of
Speaker 1: strange irony that the guillotine now to us symbolizes this
Speaker 1: this horror, this horror period of bureaucratic violence, which it
Speaker 1: certainly was. But we look at that and we think
Speaker 1: of that period as a reign of terror, but don't
Speaker 1: think the same way. Say about the Napoleonic Wars killed
Speaker 1: far more people than the guillotine ever, did not that
Speaker 1: that makes the killings of the guillotine any less horrific.
Speaker 1: That's true, now, you know one the one thing about
Speaker 1: the weirdness of this whole situation that stands out. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from just the inherently weird nature of of a
Speaker 1: beheading machine machine that cuts off heads, there is still
Speaker 1: something highly symbolic going on here. I think to the
Speaker 1: means of an execution, and you'll typically see an expression
Speaker 1: of of power involved, say it's a physical strength or
Speaker 1: you know, vengeful spirit, or increasingly a culture's greatest technological achievements.
Speaker 1: Isn't it weird to think about how these methods climb
Speaker 1: the tree of developing technology. So starting with varying levels
Speaker 1: of tool proficiency, you know, axes and swords, weapons, weapon crafting,
Speaker 1: then we go into gunpowder, uh, you know, firing squads,
Speaker 1: electricity and the electric chair. It is weird to trace
Speaker 1: through history execution methods just sort of like tracking with
Speaker 1: whatever's the most interesting new technology we have available. Yeah,
Speaker 1: chemicals pharmaceuticals. Mean, why an electric chair that is just
Speaker 1: such a strange idea to even come up with. Ye.
Speaker 1: French philosopher Michelle Fuco he weighed in on this, and
Speaker 1: he pointed out that penal technology is of course an
Speaker 1: expression of power, but we also have to dwell in
Speaker 1: the fact that it does this through everyday technology, ubiquitous technology.
Speaker 1: So if it's something like electricity or even you know
Speaker 1: or even you know, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, Uh, it's it's taking
Speaker 1: aspects of everyday life and turning them into the the system,
Speaker 1: the tool of of justice. So like our everyday use
Speaker 1: of energy and the consumer economy, a constant reminder of
Speaker 1: the methods of death that the state can inflict upon
Speaker 1: people if they if they don't stay in line exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: one small area of the legacy of the guillotine comes
Speaker 1: down to its use in medical terminal alogy. So there
Speaker 1: are two primary means of amputation. Um in terms of
Speaker 1: like amputating a limb or what have you, you have
Speaker 1: flap amputations in which flaps of flesh are left so
Speaker 1: that you can fold them and close the stump of
Speaker 1: the wound. And then there are guillotine amputations which which
Speaker 1: are more of a straight down affair with no immediate
Speaker 1: concerns for flap tissue. So in guillotine amputation, it's more
Speaker 1: about cutting out infected tissue and making sure drainage of
Speaker 1: proper drainage occurs, and then secondary surgery is performed to
Speaker 1: create the flap tissue to close everything off into a stump.
Speaker 1: But obviously that's like a secondary appellation, like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have called that guillotine cutting in the surgical
Speaker 1: since before the guillotine, right, But it is certainly an
Speaker 1: example where if you're you, you encounter this terminology now
Speaker 1: in in medical science and uh, and it stems from
Speaker 1: the use of this execution device. That being said, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of medical terminology that stems from various weapons
Speaker 1: and so forth. Of course, so I want to come
Speaker 1: back to this question that we've been teasing throughout where
Speaker 1: you can't help, but wonder if Joseph Eskaton pushed us
Speaker 1: in exactly the wrong direction, if he was actually against
Speaker 1: the death penalty and trying to institute more humane treatment
Speaker 1: of criminals. You know, it's hard not to notice that
Speaker 1: by sanitizing a horrible act, it often seems like you
Speaker 1: make the act easier to carry out. And I mean,
Speaker 1: just think about how this applies to modern methods of
Speaker 1: state sanctioned killing, everything from lethal injection to drone strikes.
Speaker 1: Does the sanitizing and distancing and depersonalization opportunity provided by
Speaker 1: lethal technology encourage us to make ourselves able to kill
Speaker 1: more while feeling less about it? Yeah? I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: is the the botched at execution that we've discussed already,
Speaker 1: Are those not maybe a more honest depiction of what's
Speaker 1: going on? This this this fallible um barbaric human effort,
Speaker 1: not this uh precision of the holy blameless machine. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we're not going to sit here and
Speaker 1: advocate brutal, botched executions with jack ketch hacking at us
Speaker 1: with a sword or an axe. But yeah, at least
Speaker 1: with that, I'm not saying that's preferable, But I do
Speaker 1: see what you're saying that it's at least there, you're
Speaker 1: acknowledging that something brutal and weird is going on, and
Speaker 1: you can't just you know, clean it up in your
Speaker 1: mind and ignore it because you're hearing the screams and
Speaker 1: it's splattering on you, and it's so brutal that it's
Speaker 1: almost funny. You know, it's interesting. You know, in this
Speaker 1: show we talk about innovation and inventions and how how
Speaker 1: they change the world, and and so often you see
Speaker 1: that that people have to look back and try to
Speaker 1: figure out what changed and how it changed us. Uh,
Speaker 1: And here we are, hundreds of years later, looking back
Speaker 1: and saying, well, what did the guillotine mean? What did
Speaker 1: it do? And what are the ultimate ramifications of this advancement. Well,
Speaker 1: I posit that maybe one takeaway from it is that
Speaker 1: the truth is it has showed us that there is
Speaker 1: no good or clean or sanitary way to kill a person,
Speaker 1: and any belief that there is, in fact turns out
Speaker 1: to be a kind of brutalizing and dehumanizing illusion. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna close out the episode here.
Speaker 1: But hey, we want to remind everybody that we are
Speaker 1: open to your suggestions and your ideas and your feedback
Speaker 1: and thoughts on the inventions and innovations that we discuss
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Since our real website probably won't be
Speaker 1: up yet, you should check out stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, where you can see our other podcasts
Speaker 1: that has all kinds of great content. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in in depth discussions like this, but more focused on
Speaker 1: intersections of science and philosophy, religion, mythology, history, uh and
Speaker 1: and less specifically focused on technological innovation, check out Stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. That's our great mother crab from beyond.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with this directly,
Speaker 1: just email us at our email address, which might not
Speaker 1: be active at the time we launch. Who Knows Invention
Speaker 1: is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.