Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. I'm Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And you might know Robert and I from our other
Speaker 1: show Stuff to Blow your Mind, our other show in
Speaker 1: the house, Stuff Works Network. But today you apparently have
Speaker 1: somehow wandered into our brand new Curiosity Store of Inventions,
Speaker 1: where we explore human ingenuity for good, for ill all
Speaker 1: of the stuff that comes out of our imaginations and
Speaker 1: becomes the technology we use every day or maybe just
Speaker 1: read about in history books. Yes, the hallowed halls of technological, systematic,
Speaker 1: and cultural invention, the very human machines, customs, and systems
Speaker 1: that altered the course of history. And today we're talking
Speaker 1: about one of the most useful inventions of all time.
Speaker 1: It's got to be the And Robert, before I say it,
Speaker 1: do you say it like a French guy's name, or
Speaker 1: like what a fish breathes with? I go with guillotine
Speaker 1: because it sounds a little more like an open face
Speaker 1: sandwich that way, and also it has the the G
Speaker 1: has more of a sound to it. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: how it sounds kind of like the minotar the guillotine.
Speaker 1: But but apparently guillotine in English is also somewhat acceptable pronunciation.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a firm ruling one way or
Speaker 1: another from the lords of English pronunciation. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: is for certain as we we venture into this world
Speaker 1: of the guillotine. Beheadings themselves are just a time honored
Speaker 1: way for one human being to kill another. It's a
Speaker 1: wound that still can't be repaired, and it is without
Speaker 1: question certain death. Now, one thing I was thinking about
Speaker 1: to illustrate this is what would you even say is
Speaker 1: 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 this sation 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 oxygen, which means the brain can't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's something that's just cemented in our mythology as well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to kill a vampire, you wanna
Speaker 1: kill a medusa, you want to kill a highlander, what
Speaker 1: do you do? You cut their head off? There is
Speaker 1: 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 human sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some kind of symbolic form of justice being done,
Speaker 1: if it's the corps of a criminal or an enemy
Speaker 1: or something. But a lot of times it appears like
Speaker 1: it might be a form of apotropaic magic, the kind
Speaker 1: of magic you would use to ward off evil or
Speaker 1: bad spirits in the same way that you might find
Speaker 1: a skeleton from hundreds of years ago with an iron
Speaker 1: rod driven through its hard or with a brick in
Speaker 1: its mouth, and say the tombs underneath Venice. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like a dismantling of the the individual that that seems
Speaker 1: evident in these acts um you know, and we see
Speaker 1: acts of ritual decapitation dating back thousands of years. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's evidence in Brazil that dates back to at least
Speaker 1: nine thousand BC, and it's uh. In it we find
Speaker 1: a human skull draped and amputated, hands palm side down,
Speaker 1: covering the face as if as if in grief. That's
Speaker 1: from place called Lapa Dosanto in uh in South America
Speaker 1: and Brazil, and a lot of bones have been discovered there.
Speaker 1: And it's not always easy to determine how to read
Speaker 1: the intention behind what you see in these people, but that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of forms of of apparently posthumous
Speaker 1: mutilation going on in the way these bones are arranged.
Speaker 1: For example, sometimes you'll find skulls they're full of finger
Speaker 1: bones inside the skulls. What was going on? What made
Speaker 1: the people want to do that? It seems like it
Speaker 1: may well have formed some kind of magical intention, but
Speaker 1: what was it? Indeed, we can only guess now. Another
Speaker 1: kind of significance that beheading has often had in the
Speaker 1: ancient world was that it was one of the many
Speaker 1: forms of execution practiced, of course in ancient Greece and Rome. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, our terms decapitation and capital punishment both
Speaker 1: come from the Latin from capit meaning head, so like
Speaker 1: capital punishment is punishment of the head, or that you
Speaker 1: you pay, you pay for a crime with your head
Speaker 1: by separating it from the other stuff. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed beheading
Speaker 1: is not a particularly harsh punishment, but more as a
Speaker 1: particularly noble and honorable form of execution. And you see
Speaker 1: strains of this thinking carried into much more recent times,
Speaker 1: like when beheading was deployed as an execution method throughout
Speaker 1: the history of England. Not always, but it was most
Speaker 1: often reserved for the aristocracy, while common criminals might more
Speaker 1: often be killed in what was considered a less dignified
Speaker 1: way like hanging. Yeah, I mean, obviously, beheadings in general
Speaker 1: have probably been occurring as long as we've had weapons
Speaker 1: fine enough to inflict the blow. Uh, you know, as
Speaker 1: long as we had, you know, something that could knock
Speaker 1: or cut a head off. And then when you start
Speaker 1: looking at these, uh, the the use of the of
Speaker 1: of a sword or an axe and execution, A lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to the craftsmanship of that weapon,
Speaker 1: but also the skill of the individual using it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a real kicker, isn't it. I Mean, when
Speaker 1: you contract somebody to do a job for you, a
Speaker 1: lot of times if you don't have a previous relationship
Speaker 1: with them, you know, you don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: work they're gonna do. You want to find those people
Speaker 1: you can trust, but it's hard to find a trustworthy
Speaker 1: executioner that you know is going to cut your head
Speaker 1: off right right, Like i' you really gotta put yourself
Speaker 1: in the in the shoes of the condemned here right. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously you don't want to be stoned to death.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to be thrown into that
Speaker 1: burlap sack with two wild animals and thrown into the river.
Speaker 1: You would probably prefer a nice clean beheading, but nobody
Speaker 1: wants a less than perfect beheading. If the local warlord
Speaker 1: is 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 deed, 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 me 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,
Speaker 1: like oh yes, this could go very wrong. But George rr.
Speaker 1: Martin did not make up this concept obviously, of of
Speaker 1: being weak at swinging the executioner sword or the axe.
Speaker 1: History is replete with stories of botch to be headings,
Speaker 1: and they are horrific and unfortunately sometimes kind of funny.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you a couple. Uh, this one's
Speaker 1: not so funny. And this concerns Mary, the Queen of Scots.
Speaker 1: So during the reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First
Speaker 1: of England in the sixteenth century, there was obviously a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety about succession because Elizabeth had been born
Speaker 1: to King Henry the Eighth and his second wife Anne
Speaker 1: Boleyn after Henry's first marriage to Catherine e Verragon had
Speaker 1: been annulled, and obviously lots of people at the time,
Speaker 1: especially some Catholics, had opinions about that right. And Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: cousin Mary Stewart was born to James the Fifth of Scotland,
Speaker 1: who was descended from a legitimate royal line, and so
Speaker 1: many Catholic supporters thought, well, maybe Mary actually has a
Speaker 1: more legitimate claim to the throne than Elizabeth does, and
Speaker 1: so Mary was eventually implicated in an assassination plot against
Speaker 1: Elizabeth in fifteen eighty six, at least she was allegedly
Speaker 1: involved in it, and she was sentenced to execution in
Speaker 1: fifty seven. So you've got Mary Stewart, Mary Queen of Scott's,
Speaker 1: going to her execution and the story goes that she's
Speaker 1: blindfolded and she gets helped to the block and the executioner,
Speaker 1: wearing all black, raises up his axe to kill her,
Speaker 1: but instead of cutting through her neck, he misses and
Speaker 1: he hits her on the head head and then some
Speaker 1: report that she murmurs Sweet Jesus in shock before the
Speaker 1: executioner raises his acts a second time and then strikes
Speaker 1: again and still fails to cut her head off completely.
Speaker 1: And finally he quote just sawed through what remained of
Speaker 1: her neck. That's that's that's rough for Mary. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is presumed main event beheading here.
Speaker 1: So right, this is before a royal audience, right, so
Speaker 1: this would have to be either an act of just
Speaker 1: just just an utterly inept executioner or one that is
Speaker 1: intentionally doing a bad job out of mouth. It's like
Speaker 1: there seems to be very little room in between. It's
Speaker 1: hard to understand what happened here, because you know, we
Speaker 1: only have accounts from the time, which may not even
Speaker 1: be fully reliable. We're relying on what people told us
Speaker 1: they saw there, right, and there could be some objective
Speaker 1: in crafting a version of the tale that sounds more
Speaker 1: inapt than it actually was. But it actually gets worse
Speaker 1: because apparently so. It's described sometimes that the executioner appeared
Speaker 1: horrified at what was going on, but the head's my
Speaker 1: After he got her head off, he took hold of
Speaker 1: the severed head and he held it up in front
Speaker 1: of the crowd so he could hold up the severed
Speaker 1: head and say, God save Queen Elizabeth. But he grasped
Speaker 1: Mary's head by the hair, and it turned out the
Speaker 1: hair was a wig, so the head fell down and
Speaker 1: rolled away, leaving him holding only a hacked up, bloody
Speaker 1: wig while proclaiming his true queen. And then another part
Speaker 1: of the story, maybe maybe not to be believed, is
Speaker 1: that after Mary's head rolled away, her lips kept moving
Speaker 1: as if she was talking or praying. Okay, some of
Speaker 1: that sounds like it might have been embellished, but it
Speaker 1: also sounds like this guy was a real hack no
Speaker 1: pun intended. Well, I got an even worse hack for you,
Speaker 1: because there was a seventeenth century English executioner named Jack
Speaker 1: Catch Catch spelled like catch up, catch yeah, or like
Speaker 1: what's the kid in the Pokemon's. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Our very knowledgeable producer Paul just tells me it is
Speaker 1: Ash catch him, Okay, I guess he's got to catch him,
Speaker 1: all right. It's like Jack Ketch him right, the hard writer.
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 sixteen eighty six, who
Speaker 1: was notorious for being a complete screw up at his
Speaker 1: job and bungling executions. A couple of examples. In sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, Ketch performed the beheading of William Lord Russell,
Speaker 1: who was convicted for treason in his role of in
Speaker 1: his role in the Rye House plot, which was against
Speaker 1: King Charles the Second of England, and Catches beheading of
Speaker 1: Russell was reportedly just this clumsy horror, with Catch whacking
Speaker 1: Russell again and again with the axe, but repeatedly failing
Speaker 1: to get his head off, and apparently after this Catch
Speaker 1: defended himself by complaining that Russell wouldn't hold still, And
Speaker 1: then you got the second one. Later, James, Duke of Monmouth,
Speaker 1: he went to the block for the Monmouth Rebellion of
Speaker 1: sixteen eighty five, and he tried to pay Catch not
Speaker 1: to screw up his execution. He's recorded as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: here are six guinea 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 Ketch did the beheading correctly, and then Catch
Speaker 1: said I hope I shall. Then Monmouth asked to feel
Speaker 1: the axe blade, and he did, and he complained that
Speaker 1: this is too dull, and Ketch said, no, it's sharp enough,
Speaker 1: it'll be heavy enough. So Monmouth got down in place
Speaker 1: to accept his fate, and Catch brought the axe down
Speaker 1: on Monmouth. And at this point it is reported that
Speaker 1: after he got hit, Monmouth lifted his head up and
Speaker 1: turned around and glared at Ketch angrily. Then he got
Speaker 1: back down so Ketch could hit him again, and Catch
Speaker 1: hit him several more times, failing each time to be
Speaker 1: head him. Then Catch got frustrated and tried to walk
Speaker 1: away and quit in the middle of the execution while
Speaker 1: Monmouth was still alive. But the crowd out 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 uh
Speaker 1: and the use of a knife, he finally managed to
Speaker 1: get the duke's head off. Well that's awful, Like, this
Speaker 1: guy is a true hack. I wonder if that's where
Speaker 1: the word hack comes from. Perhaps, Uh yeah, but so
Speaker 1: you had people whose job it was to administer what
Speaker 1: I guess was supposed to be the more humane form
Speaker 1: of execution at the time. I mean, this is different
Speaker 1: than being you know, uh, tortured and hanged and drawn
Speaker 1: and quartered and all that. But he this is obviously
Speaker 1: not going the way it's supposed to. And if we're
Speaker 1: going inspired by the Greek and Roman model, something is
Speaker 1: obviously wrong here. Like not only is it unnecessarily painful,
Speaker 1: this does not really seem like an honorable death. This
Speaker 1: seems humiliating. Yeah, there's nothing noble about this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this is not a finely craft instrument wielded by
Speaker 1: a by and by an expert practitioner. This is just
Speaker 1: a clumsy exercise and horror. But what if mechanical controls
Speaker 1: could be said at in place the same level of perfection,
Speaker 1: regardless of whoever you know happens to be wearing the hood,
Speaker 1: how tired they are, what sort of weapon they're using,
Speaker 1: or what sort of six stuff they're into. A machine
Speaker 1: that cannot get tired, It can't hesitate or engage in
Speaker 1: unfair punishment. It's not gonna judge you based on your
Speaker 1: your royal or commoner status. A good blade, some gravity,
Speaker 1: and a simple frame with a necklock, well that would
Speaker 1: be the guillotine. All right, We're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will discuss some precursors
Speaker 1: to the guillotine and the guillotine itself. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So the guillotine of late eighteenth century France, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've heard about before, that was involved in the
Speaker 1: French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the first French Republic.
Speaker 1: That guillotine was not the first human head removal machine,
Speaker 1: not by a long shot. And we're not saying it was.
Speaker 1: You know that it was predated by people swinging in
Speaker 1: axe or a sword with their hands, of course it was.
Speaker 1: But there were organized machines for doing this job more
Speaker 1: efficiently and in a more consistent way before the guillotine
Speaker 1: was instituted in France, right, and and they worked along
Speaker 1: the same principles. They maybe they weren't quite as refined,
Speaker 1: but essentially the idea was there that we should say that.
Speaker 1: It was only in the aftermath of the French Revolution
Speaker 1: that people began referring to decapitation machines as guillotines. That's
Speaker 1: where the name comes from. Yes, they had equally less
Speaker 1: refined names. They had more grizzly names. One fines. We'll
Speaker 1: meet a couple in a moment. So as for who
Speaker 1: invented the first general decapitation machine, this is totally unknown,
Speaker 1: lost to history, and in fact, we don't even know
Speaker 1: for sure how many societies used a device like this.
Speaker 1: There There are a lot of tales, but many of
Speaker 1: these tales might not even be true. We don't know
Speaker 1: for sure. Right and then how often is the individual
Speaker 1: uh celebrated for creating such a thing? As we'll discover
Speaker 1: the naming of the guillotine, It doesn't really relate to
Speaker 1: the individual or individuals that created it, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who create execution devices don't want
Speaker 1: to be associated with And when you find the people
Speaker 1: who do want to be associated with them or don't mind,
Speaker 1: you've got to kind of wonder about those people. But
Speaker 1: um So, there are a couple of known mechanical beheading
Speaker 1: devices from England that predated the French guillotine, and one
Speaker 1: is known as the Halifax Gibbet. So the how Halifax
Speaker 1: is a town in West Yorkshire in England, and it
Speaker 1: had this infamous beheading machine known as the Halifax Gibbet,
Speaker 1: which was allegedly used mostly to punish petty theft. So
Speaker 1: people would steal some small sum of money or something
Speaker 1: worth not very much, some cloth or something, and into
Speaker 1: the Halifax Gibbet they would go. It was described in
Speaker 1: an eighteen thirty seven history by an author named William
Speaker 1: White in the following way quote. The executions always took
Speaker 1: place on the Great Mark at day in order to
Speaker 1: strike the more terror into the neighborhood. When the criminal
Speaker 1: was brought to the gibbet, which stood a little way
Speaker 1: out of the town where part of the stone platform
Speaker 1: may still be seen on Gibbet Hill. The execution was
Speaker 1: performed by means of an engine, which was raised upon
Speaker 1: a platform four ft high and thirteen feet square, faced
Speaker 1: on every side with stone, and ascended by a flight
Speaker 1: of steps. In the middle of this platform was placed
Speaker 1: two upright pieces of timber fifteen feet high, joined at
Speaker 1: the top by a transverse beam. Within these was a
Speaker 1: square block of wood four feet and a half long,
Speaker 1: which moved up and down by means of grooves made
Speaker 1: for that purpose. To the lower part of the sliding
Speaker 1: block was fastened in iron axe of the weight of
Speaker 1: seven pounds and twelve ounces. The axe, thus fixed, was
Speaker 1: drawn up to the top by a cord and pulley.
Speaker 1: At the end of the cord was a pin, which,
Speaker 1: being fixed to the block, kept it suspended till the
Speaker 1: moment of execution. When the culprit, having placed his head
Speaker 1: on the block, the pin was withdrawn and his head
Speaker 1: was instantly severed from his body. If the offender was
Speaker 1: condemned for stealing an ox, a sheep, or a horse,
Speaker 1: the end of the rope was fastened to the beast, which,
Speaker 1: being driven, pulled out the pin and thus became 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: are referenced it alongside the notoriously tough police of Kingston
Speaker 1: upon Hull in a poem uh that that I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good. He writes, there is a proverb and
Speaker 1: a prayer withal that we may not to Three strange
Speaker 1: places fall from Hull, from Halifax, from Hell. 'tis thus
Speaker 1: from all these three, good Lord deliver us at Halifax.
Speaker 1: The law so sharp doth deal that whoso more than
Speaker 1: one threepence doth steal. They have a lynn that wondrous,
Speaker 1: quick 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 good. 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 again in a sizing that, well, it's not
Speaker 1: as torturous as many of the other methods that are
Speaker 1: being used. Yeah, he's almost describing it like it's a
Speaker 1: like it's a plane ticket to to greater rewards or suffering,
Speaker 1: depending on how one supernatural revenge fantasy is playing out here.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I like that it is
Speaker 1: to a certain extent farm animals. Uh, you know. Notwithstanding,
Speaker 1: it is to a certain extent saving the horrors of
Speaker 1: an afterlife for those imagined afterlife and not trying to
Speaker 1: um 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 pent 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 gibbet. 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 force 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 stupefy,
Speaker 1: rather than awaken, the sensibilities of man's nature. And I
Speaker 1: 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 Gibbitt 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 Gibbet. 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 can 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
Speaker 1: sixth and Morton opposed the Catholic faction of Mary, Queen
Speaker 1: of Scott's who we discussed earlier, Mary Stewart, and he
Speaker 1: was 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. Uh. And legends of that kind
Speaker 1: will appear again and again in this episode actually, well
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 it's 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 shark ape
Speaker 1: would 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 seventy three through seventeen
Speaker 1: nine two. Yeah, he is often credited as the inventor,
Speaker 1: though based on what I was reading, it appears to
Speaker 1: me was maybe designed by some sort of committee of
Speaker 1: which Louis was the leader. Right, And this is actually
Speaker 1: all the more fitting when We really get to the
Speaker 1: heart of the guillotine here, because it is this, this
Speaker 1: thing that is it is this utilization of technology and
Speaker 1: this 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 retributive violence by the state, taken out of the
Speaker 1: emotional hands of the single executioner and placed into the
Speaker 1: hands of a disembodied machine that is created by a
Speaker 1: committee through drafts. Yes. You know, we have another episode
Speaker 1: that we're recording this week on vending machines, and it's
Speaker 1: amazing this the similarities involved here, this this these sometimes
Speaker 1: these struggles over what exactly is happening when a machine
Speaker 1: does the bidding of a human. If a machine is vending, say,
Speaker 1: blasphemous literature, as we discussed in this other episode, then
Speaker 1: who is it fault foresaid literature sale? And uh and
Speaker 1: there's a sense of that here too. It's like the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy has condemned you to death, the machine is actually
Speaker 1: doing the execution. Uh, we're just merely you know, pushing
Speaker 1: the button, pulling the string, etcetera. To carry out this judgment, right,
Speaker 1: But we do at least have Antoine Louis to associate
Speaker 1: with the creation of the machine, even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: just him alone. But because of his association with it,
Speaker 1: it was often early on it was called names. Not
Speaker 1: the Guillotine yet, but names like the Louisette or the
Speaker 1: louis Zone, which doesn't have as much of a ring
Speaker 1: to it. Oh, I kind of like it. I could
Speaker 1: see executions by the Louisette. Yeah, I guess it would
Speaker 1: have grown on us. But at any rate, later it
Speaker 1: definitely came to be named after Joseph Ignace Guillotan, who
Speaker 1: lived seventy through eighteen fourteen. He was a physician, uh,
Speaker 1: he was a National Assembly member, and he played a
Speaker 1: major role in passing the legislation that made death by
Speaker 1: machine the law. The loose idea here is that it
Speaker 1: would this kind of legislation would provide the best possible
Speaker 1: version of beheading to all classes of society. And we
Speaker 1: do have to point out that bite some urban legends
Speaker 1: out there, Guillotine himself was not killed by his own machine,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't actually a huge fan of execution either.
Speaker 1: It's not like he was a huge execution enthusiasts. Well, no,
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite. Guilloton opposed the death penalty. He wanted
Speaker 1: the abolition of the death penalty, but he didn't think
Speaker 1: that he could accomplish that directly. Right, this seemed the
Speaker 1: best reasonable next step, Right, It's like, if I can't
Speaker 1: we can't eradicate it, we're going to have it. We
Speaker 1: might as well make it clean and uh and fair
Speaker 1: to all involved. According to a popular legend, Guilloton was
Speaker 1: born when his pregnant mother was out walking one day
Speaker 1: and she overheard the screams of a condemned criminal being
Speaker 1: broken on the wheel. And breaking on the wheel was
Speaker 1: you know, a classic death by torture type method, where
Speaker 1: a person would be stretched out on a wheel in
Speaker 1: a kind of starfish poson. They'd have their limbs broken
Speaker 1: with an iron rod or with a club. Just insane brutality.
Speaker 1: So he is very much opposed to that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: not only just the bar the barbaric nature of the execution,
Speaker 1: but the public nature of it, the idea that that
Speaker 1: women and children, uh, just innocent bystanders might just walk
Speaker 1: through town and witness such uh, such horror. So he
Speaker 1: was thinking, maybe if less children end up watching this,
Speaker 1: the better, Yes, and make it. Yeah, it's more systematic,
Speaker 1: it's more you know that the act itself is less flashy.
Speaker 1: And then we're just gonna make it less for performance.
Speaker 1: So Guillot Tom was not out there lobbying to get
Speaker 1: this machine named after his family. No, No, it just
Speaker 1: it ended up sticking. Now, a cool little fact here
Speaker 1: that sounds like something right out of an Alan Moore
Speaker 1: comic book. But along with Benjamin Franklin, uh, Guillotine investigated
Speaker 1: the work of friends mesmer of mesmerism, you know, the
Speaker 1: the form of hypnotism that we had back in the
Speaker 1: day u and they investigated him on behalf of King
Speaker 1: Louis the League of Extraordinary Gentleman exactly. So another way
Speaker 1: 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. Essentially,
Speaker 1: extending them the courtesy of the honorable beheading that was
Speaker 1: more often reserved for nobles and aristocrats, instead of more
Speaker 1: shameful and common and painful deaths like hanging, burning, or
Speaker 1: breaking on the wheel, which you were more likely to
Speaker 1: get if you were just some lower class petty criminal. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the idea Guillotin 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 play things of all people's from prehistoric times to
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century by Carl Grober, published in nineteen and
Speaker 1: the author writes, quote, the worst monstrosity of the kind
Speaker 1: was the outcome of the French Revolution, which indeed was
Speaker 1: over rich in aberrations of taste. The toy shops put
Speaker 1: on the market little guillotines with which little patriots could
Speaker 1: be head figures of aristocrats. They're still survives some specimens
Speaker 1: of this pretty and diverting machine, one of which bears
Speaker 1: the date seventeen ninety 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 Kang von Gota.
Speaker 1: So Gruber tells the story that in December seventeen nine,
Speaker 1: Girta wrote a letter to his mother and Frankfort, asking
Speaker 1: if you 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. What
Speaker 1: is that? This was a master's of the universe. Place
Speaker 1: set the device and basically you would lock he man
Speaker 1: or some other figure into the machine and it was
Speaker 1: like shaped like a skull, and then it would dump
Speaker 1: slime on top of the head of the poor hero.
Speaker 1: And it was I think that maybe the actual lore
Speaker 1: of 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, so we can
Speaker 1: 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, like recommending
Speaker 1: an angled blade while he was still in power, before
Speaker 1: the device was eventually turned on the King himself and
Speaker 1: on his wife Marie Antoinette. And so there's another kind
Speaker 1: of like creator and then killed by his creation irony there,
Speaker 1: since he apparently or at least allegedly offered refinements to
Speaker 1: the design. All right, well, and that note, We're gonna
Speaker 1: take one more break, and when we come back we'll
Speaker 1: discuss the machine itself. In more detail, and we'll also
Speaker 1: discuss its legacy. All right, we're back. So now we're
Speaker 1: at the machine itself, the French guillotine of the seventeen
Speaker 1: eighties and onward. And the question is was it actually built? Well,
Speaker 1: of course it was. This one was definitely built. Some
Speaker 1: of the inventions were discussing on this show, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe didn't get out of the blueprint phase. This definitely
Speaker 1: saw action. So after the legal standard of execution by
Speaker 1: machine was approved by the National Assembly in sev the
Speaker 1: construction of the machine was delegated to a politician named
Speaker 1: Pierre Louis red Areo, who I'm always going to struggle
Speaker 1: with that name, so I'll just call him Pierre here. Uh.
Speaker 1: He apparently had trouble finding a contractor who could build
Speaker 1: the machine since no one wanted their name associated with it,
Speaker 1: and eventually found a taker was a taker from Germany,
Speaker 1: and so the guillotine was constructed by a German harpsichord maker,
Speaker 1: aimed Tobias Schmidt. Apparently he also supplied a leather sack
Speaker 1: that would catch heads. And now you can you just
Speaker 1: gotta wonder about Tobias. I can just imagine the scenario
Speaker 1: it's like, so, honey, what are you working on today?
Speaker 1: I get this new contracted. You know it pays well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna really help us out next month. Oh who
Speaker 1: are you putting a hots harpsichorde of chord for? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not quite a harpsichord. Well, I'm just imagining you
Speaker 1: in his shop while he's working on the guillotine. That
Speaker 1: harpsichord music is constantly playing Dan Dan Dan Dan Dan dy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: according to the memoirs of the French executioner Enrie Clement
Speaker 1: Sans Song in eighteen seventy six, saints On came from
Speaker 1: a line of a long line of executioners, and he
Speaker 1: so he has these memoirs about his family's exploits, cutting
Speaker 1: off heads and performing executions in France, and his memoirs
Speaker 1: are considered probably only partially reliable, but his up close
Speaker 1: description of the workings of the guillotine is fairly straightforward.
Speaker 1: So I see, I feel like he's probably on the
Speaker 1: track here. All right, I'm gonna read part of this
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I'm gonna go for an executioner's voice
Speaker 1: here do it on a scaffold from seven to eight
Speaker 1: feet high. Two parallel bars are made fast in one end.
Speaker 1: Their top part is united by a strong crossbar. To
Speaker 1: this crossbar is added a thick iron ring, and which
Speaker 1: is past a rope which fixes and retains a ram.
Speaker 1: This is perpendicularly armed with a sharp and broad blade,
Speaker 1: which gradually becomes broader on all its surface, so then
Speaker 1: instead of striking perpendicularly, it strikes sideways, so that there
Speaker 1: is not an inch of the blade that does not serve.
Speaker 1: The ram ways from pounds, and its weight is doubled
Speaker 1: when it begins to slide down. It is enclosed in
Speaker 1: the groove of the bars. A spring makes it fast
Speaker 1: to the left bar. A band of iron descends along
Speaker 1: the outside of the same bar, and the handle is
Speaker 1: locked to a ring with a padlock, so that no
Speaker 1: accident is possible and the weight only falls from the
Speaker 1: executioner interferes to a way plank. Strong straps are fastened
Speaker 1: by which the criminal is attached under the armpits and
Speaker 1: over the legs, so that the body cannot move as
Speaker 1: soon as the way plank goes down. The head being
Speaker 1: between the bars is supported by a rounded crossbar. The
Speaker 1: executioner's assistance lower another rounded crossbar. The head being thus
Speaker 1: grooved in a perfect circle, which prevents it from moving
Speaker 1: in any way. This precaution is indispensable in regard to
Speaker 1: the terrible inconveniences of fear. The executioner then touches the spring.
Speaker 1: The whole affair is done so quickly that only the
Speaker 1: thump of the blade when it slides down and forms
Speaker 1: the 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 lined with
Speaker 1: very thick leather. That's a heck of a rating, Robert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is 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 is a precision in his in his description of
Speaker 1: the 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 could
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 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 what we can talk talk about
Speaker 1: in a minute over whether it's ever humane to just
Speaker 1: execute somebody? Was it actually true that the guillotine was
Speaker 1: a more refined, more humane version of execution than what
Speaker 1: came before? Was it? Was it an improvement if you
Speaker 1: were somebody who was interested in reducing the suffering of humankind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could Again, you could say the concept
Speaker 1: is inherently controversial. But still others took issue with just
Speaker 1: how humane it was. So Prussian doctor Samuel Thomas summer Ing,
Speaker 1: who lives seventeen fifty five through eighteen thirty, he studied
Speaker 1: the cadavers of guillotine victims, and he argued that severed
Speaker 1: heads were still capable feeling and since, and he wrote
Speaker 1: an essay on this in seventeen nine. So he he
Speaker 1: was something of a poly math. In addition to naming
Speaker 1: the twelve pairs of cranial nerves, he also invented a
Speaker 1: telegraphic system and made discoveries in paleontology, specifically with the
Speaker 1: pterodactyl fossils. They're not dinosaurs, folks, that's a different thing.
Speaker 1: So this was you know, this was not just it
Speaker 1: wasn't just some crazy guy coming up in Santa The
Speaker 1: heads are still alive, you know, he was he was
Speaker 1: making an 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 inhumanity of the guy
Speaker 1: tain was that we can't rule out that it's possible
Speaker 1: that a severed head could still be having experience, could
Speaker 1: experience being severed. Now we know, 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 to add death like this was a perfect clinical
Speaker 1: exercise for for weighing in on it. Yeah, the classic
Speaker 1: tales about this, they get repeated the most often are
Speaker 1: like 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 a severed head would be like looking at
Speaker 1: people as if it recognize is to them, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously there's a lot of inbellishment 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: seen 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 gonna occur within two
Speaker 1: to three seconds of decapitation due to interruption of blood
Speaker 1: flow to the brain. So just the massive sudden drop
Speaker 1: in blood pressure, Yeah, that's gonna do it. So any
Speaker 1: tales of like, you know, confronting the head having any
Speaker 1: kind of like moment of human uh contact, even if
Speaker 1: it's just in the eyes, Uh, it's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: that is all just embellishment of stories or just wishful
Speaker 1: thinking on the part of the observer. So what is
Speaker 1: the legacy of this machine, this this machine of bureaucratic violence.
Speaker 1: And if we try to look at it from with
Speaker 1: our perspective, from today, with our hindsight, and you know,
Speaker 1: with with the kind of value judgments we would make,
Speaker 1: was the guillotine a step forward or a step backward?
Speaker 1: Was it as uh guillotan envisioned a more humane way
Speaker 1: of doing business when the state was just you know,
Speaker 1: couldn't be convinced not to kill people. Or did it
Speaker 1: perhaps enable a worse state of affairs where more people
Speaker 1: could be sent to their deaths with impunity than would
Speaker 1: have been the case otherwise. Yeah, I think you could
Speaker 1: probably go either way on it. I mean, one thing
Speaker 1: is for certain. It it changed the way executions were
Speaker 1: performed in France for nearly two hundred years. It was
Speaker 1: actually used in France up until nineteen seventy seven, that's
Speaker 1: when the last execution occurred via guillotine, before the outlying
Speaker 1: of capital punishment in one It also took on symbolic way.
Speaker 1: It's just this this symbol of the reign of terror
Speaker 1: and perhaps to a larger extent a symbol of systematically
Speaker 1: violent rebellion. Yeah, I read one author point out, certainly
Speaker 1: not in defending the guillotine or the use of the guillotine,
Speaker 1: but it just pointing out a kind of strange irony
Speaker 1: that the guillotine now to us symbolizes this this horror,
Speaker 1: this horror period of bureaucratic violence, which it certainly was.
Speaker 1: But we look at that and we think of that
Speaker 1: period as a reign of terror. But don't think the
Speaker 1: same way say about the Napoleonic Wars, which killed far
Speaker 1: more people than the guillotine ever did. Not that that
Speaker 1: makes the killings of the guillotine any less horrific. That's true. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, one the one thing about the weirdness of
Speaker 1: this whole situation that stands out. I mean, aside from
Speaker 1: just the inherently weird nature of of a beheading machine
Speaker 1: machine that cuts off heads, there is still something highly
Speaker 1: symbolic going on here. I think to the means of
Speaker 1: an execution, and you'll typically see an expression of of
Speaker 1: power involved, say it's a physical strength, or you know,
Speaker 1: vengeful spirit or increasingly a culture's greatest technological achievements. Isn't
Speaker 1: it weird? To think about how these methods climbed the
Speaker 1: tree of developing technology. So starting with varying levels of
Speaker 1: tool proficiency, you know, axes and swords, weapons, weapon crafting,
Speaker 1: then we go into gunpowder, uh, you know, firing squads, electricity,
Speaker 1: and the electric chair. It is weird to trace through
Speaker 1: history execution methods just sort of like tracking with whatever
Speaker 1: is the most interesting new technology we have available. Yeah, chemicals, pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 1: I mean, why an electric chair. That is just such
Speaker 1: a strange idea to even come up with. H French
Speaker 1: philosopher Michelle Fuco he weighed in on this, and he
Speaker 1: pointed out that penal technology is of course an expression
Speaker 1: of power, but we also have to dwell on the
Speaker 1: 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: a one small area of the legacy of the guillotine
Speaker 1: comes down to its use in medical terminology. 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: and in the medical science, and uh, and it stems
Speaker 1: from the use of this execution device. That being said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of medical terminology that stems from various
Speaker 1: weapons and so forth. Of course, so I want to
Speaker 1: come back to this question that we've been teasing throughout
Speaker 1: where you can't help but wonder if Joseph Eskaton pushed
Speaker 1: us in exactly the wrong direction, if he was actually
Speaker 1: against the death penalty and trying to institute more humane
Speaker 1: treatment of criminals. You know, it's hard not to notice
Speaker 1: that by sanitizing a horrible act, it often seems like
Speaker 1: you make the act easier to carry out. And I
Speaker 1: mean just think about how this applies to modern methods
Speaker 1: of 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 in encourage us to make ourselves able to
Speaker 1: kill 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. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's it for this week's episode of Invention. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about the show and check
Speaker 1: out other episodes, head on over to our website invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com. Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for research
Speaker 1: assistance with this episode, thanks to our audio producer Tari Harrison.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: directly with feedback on this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: suggest the top for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: let us know how you found out about the show
Speaker 1: where you listen from all that kind of stuff, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.