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Speaker 1: you is this episode about the guillotine, and so much
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Speaker 1: what we're recording as well, so we hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: our exploration of the guillotine. Hey, welcome to Invention. I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And you might know
Speaker 1: Robert and I from our other show Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind, our other show in the How Stuff Works Network.
Speaker 1: But today you apparently have somehow wandered into our brand
Speaker 1: new Curiosity Store of Inventions, where we explore human ingenuity
Speaker 1: for good, for ill, all of the stuff that comes
Speaker 1: out of our imaginations and becomes the technology we use
Speaker 1: every day or maybe just read about in history books. Yes,
Speaker 1: the how load halls of technological, systematic and cultural invention,
Speaker 1: the very human machines, customs and systems that altered the
Speaker 1: course of history and today we're talking about one of
Speaker 1: the most useful inventions of all time. It's got to
Speaker 1: be the and Robert. Before I say it, do you
Speaker 1: say it like a French guy's name, or like what
Speaker 1: a fish breathes with? I go with guillotine because it
Speaker 1: sounds a little more like an open face sandwich that way,
Speaker 1: and also it has the the gee has more of
Speaker 1: a sound to it. Yeah, I like how it sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like the minotar the guillotine. But but apparently
Speaker 1: guillotine in English is also somewhat acceptable pronunciation. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a firm ruling one way or another from
Speaker 1: the lords of English pronunciation. Now, one thing is for
Speaker 1: certain as we we ventured into this world of the guillotine.
Speaker 1: Beheadings themselves are just a time honored way for one
Speaker 1: human being to kill another. It's a wound that still
Speaker 1: can't be repaired, and it is, without questions, certain death. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I was thinking about to illustrate this is
Speaker 1: what would you even say is the quote cause of
Speaker 1: death in a beheading so well, blood loss, loss of
Speaker 1: oxygen to the brain. Basically, it just cuts off. It
Speaker 1: cuts off your all your plumbing systems from all of
Speaker 1: your your your your thinking systems. Yeah, it makes it
Speaker 1: makes you think about how often when you hear phrases
Speaker 1: like clinically dead, that can refer to something about circulation,
Speaker 1: like the cessation of the heartbeat. Um. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: when you separate the head from the body, I guess
Speaker 1: you've got to be really rigorous about what you mean
Speaker 1: by dead though I guess it also happens pretty quickly
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry about it too much.
Speaker 1: But yeah, all the blood comes out of the head,
Speaker 1: immediate loss of blood pressure, which means the brain can't
Speaker 1: get oxygen, which means the brain can't work. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Like here's a kind of strange fact. A lot of
Speaker 1: times when you find beheaded humans from ages past, there
Speaker 1: appears to be evidence that the people were beheaded posthumously.
Speaker 1: Why did that happen? There are a lot of ways
Speaker 1: you could explain it. I mean that you would take
Speaker 1: a dead person and cut off their head. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: some sort of ritual function going on here, might be
Speaker 1: a human sacrifice. Maybe there's some kind of symbolic form
Speaker 1: of justice being done, if it's the corps of a
Speaker 1: criminal or an enemy or something. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times it appears like it might be a form of
Speaker 1: apotropaic magic, the kind of magic you would use to
Speaker 1: ward off evil or bad spirits, in the same way
Speaker 1: that you might find a skeleton from hundreds of years
Speaker 1: ago with an iron rod driven through its hard or
Speaker 1: with a brick in its mouth, and say the tombs
Speaker 1: underneath Venice. Yeah, there's like a dismantling of the the
Speaker 1: individual that that seems evident in these acts um you know,
Speaker 1: and we see acts of ritual decapitation dating back thousands
Speaker 1: of years. For instance, there's evidence in Brazil that dates
Speaker 1: back to at least nine thousand BC, and it's uh.
Speaker 1: In it, we find a human skull draped and amputated,
Speaker 1: hands palm side down, covering the face as if as
Speaker 1: if in grief. That's from place called Lapa Dosanto in
Speaker 1: Uh in South America and Brazil, and a lot of
Speaker 1: bones have been discovered there. And it's not always easy
Speaker 1: to determine how to read the intention behind what you
Speaker 1: see in these people. But 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 home Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: our terms decapitation and capital punishment both come from the
Speaker 1: Latin from capit meaning head, so like capital punishment is
Speaker 1: punishment of the head, or that you you pay, you
Speaker 1: pay for a crime with your head by separating it
Speaker 1: from the other stuff. And there's some evidence that the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks and Romans viewed beheading as not a particularly
Speaker 1: harsh punishment, but more as a particularly noble and honorable
Speaker 1: form of execution, and you see strains of this thinking
Speaker 1: carried into much more recent times, like when beheading was
Speaker 1: deployed as an execution method throughout the history of England.
Speaker 1: Not always, but it was most often reserved for the aristocracy,
Speaker 1: while common criminals might more often be killed in what
Speaker 1: was considered a less dignified way like hanging. Yeah, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: beheadings in general have probably been occurring as long as
Speaker 1: we've had weapons fine enough to inflict the blow. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as we had you know, some
Speaker 1: thing that couldn't knock or cut a head off. And
Speaker 1: then when you start looking at these, uh, the use
Speaker 1: of the of of a sword or an axe and execution,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of it comes down to the
Speaker 1: craftsmanship of that weapon, but also the skill of the
Speaker 1: individual using it. Yeah, that's that's a real kicker, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I Mean, when you contract somebody to do a job
Speaker 1: for you, a lot of times if you don't have
Speaker 1: a previous relationship with them, you know, you don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of work they're gonna do you want to
Speaker 1: find those people you can trust, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: find a trustworthy the executioner that you know is going
Speaker 1: to cut your head off right right, Like you've really
Speaker 1: got to put yourself in the in the shoes of
Speaker 1: the condemned here right. Uh. You know, obviously you don't
Speaker 1: want to be stoned to death. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be thrown into that burlap sack with two
Speaker 1: wild animals and thrown into the river. You would probably
Speaker 1: prefer a nice, clean beheading, but nobody wants a less
Speaker 1: than perfect beheading. If the local warlord is doing it,
Speaker 1: 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 out of personal malice. If if it's
Speaker 1: a professional executioner that's doing the honors, well that's either
Speaker 1: really good or really bad, depending on how you look
Speaker 1: at it. Like the idea of a trained specialist doing
Speaker 1: the d that sounds good. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: at death via the sort of person who either seeks
Speaker 1: this line of work out or is not suited for
Speaker 1: any other form of labor, that's a little uh frightening.
Speaker 1: I would say, Plus, do you really want to be
Speaker 1: toward the bottom of an executioner's list for the day
Speaker 1: after they're tired from swinging that big old axe, like
Speaker 1: it's your turn on Friday afternoon? Yeah, like you kind
Speaker 1: of I want to be up there. I would want
Speaker 1: to be up there first, let him get that that
Speaker 1: first blow in on me. I must admit I don't
Speaker 1: think I'd ever much considered the horrors of a weak
Speaker 1: strike from the executioner until Game of Thrones came around,
Speaker 1: and then 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: It's swinging the execution or sword or the acts. History
Speaker 1: is replete with stories of botched beheadings, and they are
Speaker 1: horrific and unfortunately sometimes kind of funny. I want to
Speaker 1: tell you a couple. This one is not so funny.
Speaker 1: This concerns Mary, the Queen of Scots. So during the
Speaker 1: reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First of England in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, there was obviously a lot of anxiety
Speaker 1: about succession because Elizabeth had been born to King Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, after Henry's
Speaker 1: first marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been annulled, and
Speaker 1: 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 a rigedly involved
Speaker 1: in it, and she was sentenced to execution in seven.
Speaker 1: So you've got Mary Stewart, Mary Queen of Scott's, going
Speaker 1: to her execution, and the story goes that she's blindfolded
Speaker 1: 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. And then some report
Speaker 1: that she murmurs Sweet Jesus in shock before the executioner
Speaker 1: raises his ax a second time, and then strikes again
Speaker 1: and still fails to cut her head off completely, and
Speaker 1: finally 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 main event beheading here, so right,
Speaker 1: this is before a royal audience, right, so this would
Speaker 1: have to be either an act of just just just
Speaker 1: an utterly inneped executioner or one that is intentionally doing
Speaker 1: a bad job out of mouth. It's like there seems
Speaker 1: to be very little room in between. It's hard to
Speaker 1: under stand 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 in
Speaker 1: apt 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 headsman, after
Speaker 1: he got her head off, he took hold of the
Speaker 1: severed head and he held it up in front of
Speaker 1: the crowd so he could hold up the severed head
Speaker 1: and say God save Queen Elizabeth. But he grasped Mary's
Speaker 1: head by the hair, and it turned out the hair
Speaker 1: was 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 since three English executioner named jack Ketch
Speaker 1: catch spelled like ketchup, catch yeah, or like what's the
Speaker 1: kid in the Pokemon's. I have no idea. Our very
Speaker 1: knowledgeable producer Paul just tells me it is ash ketch Um.
Speaker 1: I guess he's got to catch him, all right. It's
Speaker 1: like jack ketch him right, the horror writerer. That's what
Speaker 1: comes to my mind. I don't well anyway, this is
Speaker 1: jack Ketch K E T C H so Jack Ketch
Speaker 1: birthday unknown died in sixty six, who was notorious for
Speaker 1: being a complete screw up at his job and bungling executions.
Speaker 1: A couple of examples. In six three, Ketch performed the
Speaker 1: beheading of William, Lord Russell, who was convicted for treason
Speaker 1: in his role of in his role in the Rye
Speaker 1: House plot, which was against King Charles the second of England,
Speaker 1: and Catches beheading of Russell was reportedly just this clumsy horror,
Speaker 1: with Ketch whacking Russell again and again with the axe,
Speaker 1: but repeatedly failing to get his head off. And apparently
Speaker 1: after this, Catch defended himself by complaining that Russell wouldn't
Speaker 1: hold still, and then you got the second one. Later, James,
Speaker 1: Duke of Monmouth, he went to the block for the
Speaker 1: Monmouth Rebellion of six five, and he tried to pay
Speaker 1: Catch not to screw up his execution. He's recorded as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: here 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 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 Catch 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 Catch 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 yelled at him
Speaker 1: and told him to go back and finish it, so
Speaker 1: finally he went back. After some more blows and the
Speaker 1: use of a knife, he finally managed to get the
Speaker 1: duke's head off. Well that's awful, Like this guy is
Speaker 1: a true hack. I wonder if that's where the word
Speaker 1: hat comes from. Perhaps, uh yeah, But so you had
Speaker 1: people whose job it was to administer what I guess
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the more humane form of execution
Speaker 1: at the time. I mean, this is different than being
Speaker 1: you know, uh, tortured and hanged and drawn and quartered
Speaker 1: and all that. But he this is obviously not going
Speaker 1: the way it's supposed to. And if we're going inspired
Speaker 1: by the Greek and Roman model, something is obviously wrong
Speaker 1: here at Like, not only is it unnecessarily painful, this
Speaker 1: does not really seem like an honorable death. This seems humiliating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing noble about this. You know. This is not
Speaker 1: a finely craft instrument wielded by a by and by
Speaker 1: an 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 back,
Speaker 1: we will discuss some precursors to the guillotine and the
Speaker 1: tea itself. Alright, we're back. So the guillotine of late
Speaker 1: eighteenth century France, which I'm sure you've heard about before,
Speaker 1: that was involved in the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror,
Speaker 1: the first French Republic. That guillotine was not the first
Speaker 1: human head removal machine, not by a long shot. And
Speaker 1: we're not saying it was. You know that it was
Speaker 1: predated by people swinging in axe or a sword with
Speaker 1: their hands. Of course it was. But there were organized
Speaker 1: machines for doing this job more efficiently and in a
Speaker 1: more consistent way before the guillotine was instituted in France, right,
Speaker 1: and and they worked along the same principles. They maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't quite as refined, but essentially the idea was
Speaker 1: there that we should say that it was only in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the French Revolution that people began referring
Speaker 1: to decapitation machines as guillotines. That's where the name comes from. Yes,
Speaker 1: they had equally less refined names. They had more grizzly names.
Speaker 1: One find. We'll meet a couple in a moment. So
Speaker 1: as for who invented the first general decapitation machine, this
Speaker 1: is totally unknown, lost to history, and in fact, we
Speaker 1: don't even know for sure how many societies used a
Speaker 1: device like this. There there are a lot of tales,
Speaker 1: but many of these tales might not even be true.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, right, And then how often
Speaker 1: is the individual uh celebrated for creating such a thing
Speaker 1: as we'll discover the naming of the guillotine, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really relate to the individual or individuals that created it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people who create execution devices
Speaker 1: don't want to be associated with and when you find
Speaker 1: the people who do want to be associated with them
Speaker 1: or don't mind, you've got to kind of wonder about
Speaker 1: those people. But um, So, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: known mechanical beheading devices from England that predated the French guillotine,
Speaker 1: and one is known as the Halifax Gibbet. So the
Speaker 1: how Halifax is a town in West Yorkshire in England,
Speaker 1: and it had this infamous beheading machine known as the
Speaker 1: Halifax Gibbet, which was allegedly used mostly to punish petty theft,
Speaker 1: so people would steal some small sum of money or
Speaker 1: something worth not very much, some cloth or something, and
Speaker 1: into the Halifax Gibbet they would go. It was described
Speaker 1: in an eighteen thirty seven history by an author named
Speaker 1: William White in the following way quote. The executions always
Speaker 1: took place on the Great Market 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 ft 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, bowl, consistent machine that's not going
Speaker 1: to mess up. Right. And of course it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like 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 with all 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 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, again emphasizing that, well, it's not as torturous
Speaker 1: 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 to greater rewards or suffering, depending on
Speaker 1: how one supernatural revenge fantasy is playing 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 a actually a good thing or not, we
Speaker 1: can discuss later. But it does seem to be there's
Speaker 1: at least there's at least a superficial kind of humaneness
Speaker 1: to write, even though it seems to be being lumped
Speaker 1: on people who committing extremely pent crimes and not and
Speaker 1: no matter what you think, really probably deserving of death.
Speaker 1: But there's some strange stories about how people reacted to
Speaker 1: what happened with at the Halifax Gibbet. The story in
Speaker 1: Thomas Wright tells a legend quote of a countrywoman who
Speaker 1: was writing by the Gibbet on her hampers to the
Speaker 1: market just at the execution of a criminal when the
Speaker 1: axe chopped his neck through with such force that the
Speaker 1: head jumped into one of her hampers, or as others say,
Speaker 1: seized her apron with the teeth and they're stuck for
Speaker 1: some time. I don't believe that's true, or at least
Speaker 1: the teeth. I don't believe. Again, we're coming back to
Speaker 1: the sort of inherent comedy. I mean, it's true gallows humor,
Speaker 1: uh that comes with beheading executions. But there's an interesting
Speaker 1: observation from the Halifax historian John Crabtree, who has a
Speaker 1: sort 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 jibbitt, known as the
Speaker 1: Scottish Maiden. So James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton,
Speaker 1: who is 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 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 one,
Speaker 1: decapitated 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 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 is a French surgeon and
Speaker 1: physiologist Antoine Louis who lives seventy three through sev Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is often credited as the inventor, though based on
Speaker 1: what I was reading, it appears to me was maybe
Speaker 1: designed by some sort of committee of which Louis was
Speaker 1: the leader. Right, And this is actually all the more fitting,
Speaker 1: uh when we really get to the heart of the
Speaker 1: guillotine here, because it is this, this thing that is
Speaker 1: it is this utilization of technology and this there's a
Speaker 1: there's an air of civility to it. Uh. This this
Speaker 1: taking something that is kind of that is rather barbaric
Speaker 1: and making it a little less so. Well, it's bureaucratic violence. Yes,
Speaker 1: it very much embodies the idea of retributed violence by
Speaker 1: the state, taken out of the emotional hands of the
Speaker 1: single executioner and placed into the hands of a disembodied
Speaker 1: machine that is created by a committee through drafts. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, we have another episode that we're recording this
Speaker 1: week on vending machines, and it's amazing this the similarities
Speaker 1: involved here, This this these sometimes these struggles over what
Speaker 1: exactly is happening when a machine does the bidding of
Speaker 1: a human. If a machine is vindan, say, blasphemous literature,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in this other episode, then who is
Speaker 1: it fault foresaid literature sale and uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: sense of that here too. It's like the bureaucracy has
Speaker 1: condemned you to death. The machine is actually doing the execution.
Speaker 1: We're just merely, you know, pushing the button, pulling the string,
Speaker 1: et cetera, to carry out this judgment. Right, But we
Speaker 1: do at least have Antoine Louis to associate with the
Speaker 1: creation of the machine, even if it wasn't just him alone,
Speaker 1: but because of his association with it, it was often
Speaker 1: early on it was called names, not the guillotine yet,
Speaker 1: but names like the Louisette or the louis Zone, which
Speaker 1: doesn't have as much of a ring to it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I kind of like it. I could see executions by
Speaker 1: the Louisette. Yeah, I guess it would have grown on us.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, later it definitely came to be
Speaker 1: named after Joseph Ignace Guillotan, who lived seventeen thirty eight
Speaker 1: through eighteen four team. He was a physician. Uh, he
Speaker 1: was a National Assembly member, and he played a major
Speaker 1: role in passing legislation that made death by machine the law.
Speaker 1: The loose idea here is that it would this kind
Speaker 1: of legislation would provide the best possible version of beheading
Speaker 1: to all classes of society. And we do have to
Speaker 1: point out that, despite some urban legends out there, uh,
Speaker 1: Guillotine himself was not killed by his own machine. And
Speaker 1: he wasn't actually a huge fan of execution either. It's
Speaker 1: 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, Guillotan 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 post and they'd have their limbs
Speaker 1: broken with an iron rod or with a club, just
Speaker 1: insane brutality. So he was very much opposed to that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, not only just the bar the barbaric
Speaker 1: nature of the execution, but the public nature of the
Speaker 1: idea that that women and children, uh, just innocent bystanders
Speaker 1: might just walk through town and witness such such horror.
Speaker 1: So he was thinking, maybe if less children end up
Speaker 1: watching this, the better, Yes, and make it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: more systematic, it's more you know, the act itself is
Speaker 1: less flashy, and then we're just gonna make it less
Speaker 1: for performance. So Gia Tom was not out there lobbying
Speaker 1: to get this machine named after his family. No, no,
Speaker 1: it just it ended up sticking. Now a cool lit
Speaker 1: fact here that sounds like something right out of an
Speaker 1: Allan Moore comic book. But along with Benjamin Franklin, H.
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,
Speaker 1: Robert like the idea that it would be the best
Speaker 1: method for all the classes. So another way of thinking
Speaker 1: about the motivation for the institution of the guillotine at
Speaker 1: this time in history was that it supposedly extended the
Speaker 1: democratic 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 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 by Gone Days, A
Speaker 1: History of playthings 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 Kan von Gta.
Speaker 1: So Gruber tells the story and that in December sevente
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: you know, barbarous age. But go to any toy store
Speaker 1: and look at the machine gun based toys that are
Speaker 1: on display. There. All the various guns, like true true
Speaker 1: murder weapons, um, not even methods of bureaucratic execution, but
Speaker 1: weapons of just wanton violence. Uh, these are all represented
Speaker 1: in toys even today. Uh. Likewise, I can't help but
Speaker 1: think back on how much I wanted the slime pit
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. This was a master's of
Speaker 1: the universe. Place set the device and basically you would
Speaker 1: lock he man or some other figure into the machine
Speaker 1: and it was like shaped like a skull, and then
Speaker 1: it would dump slime on top of the head of
Speaker 1: the poor hero. And it was I think that maybe
Speaker 1: the actual lore of it was like I would make
Speaker 1: them mutate or something. But it was very much Uh,
Speaker 1: it was very much like a guillotine, except instead of
Speaker 1: a blade, it was slime. It was like, clearly an
Speaker 1: instrument of execution, of of ritualized death for your toys.
Speaker 1: So you're arranging an execution for he man exactly. So
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of a toy guillotine. It makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. Uh, we can't. We can only distance ourselves
Speaker 1: from such an idea so much. Though. I also have
Speaker 1: to wonder I somehow detect between the lines. This could
Speaker 1: have been one of those situations where and Robert, I
Speaker 1: bet you're familiar with this, where a dad buys or
Speaker 1: requests a toy for his child because secretly he wants
Speaker 1: to play. Uh. In fact, Gerta wrote in faust quote
Speaker 1: ages no second childhood age makes plain children. We were
Speaker 1: true children. We remain again much like it is today. Now.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that Guillaton was responsible for introducing legislation that
Speaker 1: would eventually lead the French National Assembly to say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're only going to be killing people by beheading machine.
Speaker 1: Now that that's that's going to be the new method
Speaker 1: of execution. That's what's humane, that's what the state should
Speaker 1: be up to and so I think in just a
Speaker 1: minute we should turn to the sheen itself. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted quickly before we do that, to discuss where
Speaker 1: it is that this rumor came from. The guillotam was
Speaker 1: killed by the machine that he recommended putting in place
Speaker 1: for executions in France, and I think I know maybe
Speaker 1: a few threads of where the story came from. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we had that ironic story of the Earl of Morton earlier, right,
Speaker 1: so we can see how that might have influenced confused
Speaker 1: the telling, right. But then there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other examples. So Dr Antoine Louis, the secretary of the
Speaker 1: Academy of Medicine and physician to King Louis, the one
Speaker 1: who we talked about earlier, chairing that committee that designed
Speaker 1: the device. He was actually temporarily condemned to die in
Speaker 1: the machine that he designed or helped design, though he
Speaker 1: escaped this fate basically during a change of power, So
Speaker 1: he narrowly escaped going to the guillotine himself. And then
Speaker 1: King Louis the sixteenth, who was interested in mechanical engineering,
Speaker 1: is said to have made refinements to the design of
Speaker 1: the guillotine like recommending an angled blade while he was
Speaker 1: still in power, before the device was eventually turned on
Speaker 1: the king himself and on his wife Marie Antoinette. And
Speaker 1: so there's another kind of like creator and then killed
Speaker 1: by his creation. Irony there since he apparently or at
Speaker 1: least allegedly offered refinements to the design. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll discuss the machine itself in
Speaker 1: more detail, and we'll also discuss its legacy. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So now we're at the machine itself, the
Speaker 1: French guillotine of the seventeen eighties and onward. And the
Speaker 1: question is was it actually built? Well, of course it was.
Speaker 1: This one was definitely built. Some of the inventions were
Speaker 1: discussing on this show, you know, maybe didn't get out
Speaker 1: of the blueprint phase. This definitely saw action. So, after
Speaker 1: the legal standard of execution by machine was approved by
Speaker 1: the National Assembly in the construction of the machine was
Speaker 1: delegated to a politician named Pierre Louis red Areo, who
Speaker 1: I'm always going to struggle with that name, so I'll
Speaker 1: just call him Pierre here. Uh. He apparently had trouble
Speaker 1: finding a contractor who could build the machine since no
Speaker 1: one wanted their name associated with it, and eventually found
Speaker 1: a taker is a taker from Germany, and so the
Speaker 1: guillotine 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: And now you can you just gotta wonder about Tobias.
Speaker 1: I can just imagine the scenario. It's like, so, honey,
Speaker 1: what are you working on today? I get this new
Speaker 1: contracted it pays well, it's gonna really help us out
Speaker 1: next month. Oh who are you putting a hots harpsichord
Speaker 1: of chord for? Well, it's not quite a harpsichord. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining in his shop while he's working on
Speaker 1: the guillotine that harpsichord music is constantly playing Dan Dan
Speaker 1: Dean Dan Dan dy. Anyway, according to the memoirs of
Speaker 1: the French executioner Enrie Clement Sans Song in eighteen seven six,
Speaker 1: since On came from a line of a long line
Speaker 1: of executioners, and he so he has these memoirs about
Speaker 1: his family's exploits, cutting off heads and performing executions in France,
Speaker 1: and his memoirs are considered probably only partially reliable, but
Speaker 1: his up close description of the workings of the guillotine
Speaker 1: is fairly straightforward. So I see, I feel like he's
Speaker 1: probably on the right track here, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read part of this and I'm gonna I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: for an executioner's voice. Here do it. On a scaffold
Speaker 1: from seven to eight feet high, two parallel bars are
Speaker 1: made fast in one end. Their top part is united
Speaker 1: by a strong crossbar. To this crossbar is added a
Speaker 1: thick iron ring, and which is past a rope which
Speaker 1: fixes and retains a ram. This is perpendicularly armed with
Speaker 1: a sharp and broad blade, which gradually becomes broader on
Speaker 1: all its surface, so then instead of striking perpendicularly, it
Speaker 1: strikes sideways, so that there is not an inch of
Speaker 1: the blade that does not serve. The ram ways from pounds,
Speaker 1: and its weight is doubled. When it begins to slide down.
Speaker 1: It is enclosed in the groove of the bars. A
Speaker 1: spring makes it fast to the left bar. A band
Speaker 1: of iron descends along the outside of the same bar,
Speaker 1: and the handle is locked to a ring with a padlock.
Speaker 1: So that no accident is possible, and the weight only
Speaker 1: falls when the executioner interferes to a way plank. Strong
Speaker 1: straps are fastened by which the criminal is attached under
Speaker 1: the armpits and over the legs, so that the body
Speaker 1: cannot move as soon as the way plank goes down.
Speaker 1: The head being between the bars, is supported by a
Speaker 1: rounded crossbar. The executioner's assistants lower another rounded crossbar, the
Speaker 1: head being thus grooved in a perfect circle, which prevents
Speaker 1: it from moving in any way. This precaution is indispensable
Speaker 1: in regard to the terrible inconveniences of fear. The executioner
Speaker 1: then touches the spring. The whole affair is done so
Speaker 1: quickly that only the thump of the blade when it
Speaker 1: slide down and forms the spectators that the culprit is
Speaker 1: no longer of the living. The head falls into a
Speaker 1: basket full of brand and the body is pushed into
Speaker 1: another wicker basket line with very thick leather. That's a
Speaker 1: heck of a rating, Robert, Yeah, that was going to
Speaker 1: do a number on my throat. But I'm sorry. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should have taken part of it, but I was
Speaker 1: just enjoying listening to your Henri Clement. Well, there's a
Speaker 1: precision in his in his description of the act that
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to had to capture now obviously,
Speaker 1: so he's described how the device works now, but they
Speaker 1: had to test it out before they can make sure
Speaker 1: to try it on a human, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: you always wonder like, how do you test a guillotine?
Speaker 1: You put a watermelon in there, do you gallagher it? Well,
Speaker 1: I suppose you could, but it's kind of a waste
Speaker 1: of a good melon, and ultimately you want to test
Speaker 1: it on the real thing, right, So they use dead bodies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, also farm animals like sheep and calves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you just I mean, it makes sense you want
Speaker 1: to make sure you're cutting through actual vertebrate tissue there
Speaker 1: and most notably the neck. And then on a officials
Speaker 1: installed and used the guillotine for the first time. Right.
Speaker 1: So the first victim of the French guillotine was Nicholas
Speaker 1: Jacques Beltier who was a highwayman, and he was executed
Speaker 1: where the machine was erected at the Plas de grev
Speaker 1: And they're so a large crowd came out, obviously to
Speaker 1: witness the first execution by the new machine, but it
Speaker 1: was reported that the crowd was somewhat unimpressed, and they
Speaker 1: found the efficiency of the killing less entertaining than the
Speaker 1: forms of execution they were used to, even the more
Speaker 1: classic beheadings. Nevertheless, over time, the executions that the guillotine
Speaker 1: became a very popular spectator event during the reign of Terror,
Speaker 1: and you know, in generally afterwards when the guillotine was used,
Speaker 1: people would show up to watch. So we see a
Speaker 1: little success here. Like it was clearly less dramatic, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there was less theater in the act. And
Speaker 1: yet at the same time, a few things are more
Speaker 1: drum mattic in life than the ending of a life
Speaker 1: like this is the people. You can understand why people
Speaker 1: would still turn out even if you had made things
Speaker 1: a little more precise. Now, putting aside the question, I
Speaker 1: guess what we can talk talk about in a minute
Speaker 1: of or whether it's ever humane to just execute somebody,
Speaker 1: was it actually true that the guillotine was a more refined,
Speaker 1: more humane version of execution than what came before? Was it?
Speaker 1: Was it an improvement if you were somebody who was
Speaker 1: interested in reducing the suffering of humankind, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you could again, you could say the concept is inherently controversial,
Speaker 1: but still others took issue with just how humane it was.
Speaker 1: So op Prussian doctor Samuel Thomas summer Ing, who lives
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty five through eighteen thirty he studied the cadavers
Speaker 1: of guillotine victims, and he argued that severed heads were
Speaker 1: still capable feeling and since, and he wrote an essay
Speaker 1: on this in seventeen nine. So he he was something
Speaker 1: of a poly math. In addition to naming the twelve
Speaker 1: pairs of cranial nerves, he also invented a telegraphic system
Speaker 1: and made discoveries in paleontology, specifically with the pterodactyl fossils.
Speaker 1: They're not dinosaurs, folks, that's a different thing. So this
Speaker 1: was you know, this was not just this wasn't just
Speaker 1: some crazy guy coming up and sanah, the heads are
Speaker 1: still alive. You know, he was he was making a
Speaker 1: an expert argument that, like, I'm not sure that this
Speaker 1: is great what we're doing. Maybe it's a little it's
Speaker 1: almost a little too precise. Yeah. The core takeaway of
Speaker 1: his essay on the humanity of the guiatain was that
Speaker 1: we can't rule out that it's possible that a severed
Speaker 1: head could still be having experience, could experience being severed.
Speaker 1: Now we knew, And there were a lot of tales
Speaker 1: of this happening, right of people running to check out
Speaker 1: the heads of the decapitated, in various doctors checking in
Speaker 1: and seeing what was going on with the eyes. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of interest in this in determining what,
Speaker 1: you know, what happens to consciousness at death, like this
Speaker 1: was a perfect clinical exercise for for weighing in on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the classic tales about this thin get repeated the most
Speaker 1: often are like seeing someone's cheeks flush with anger when
Speaker 1: they behold someone, or who's someone who mocks them or
Speaker 1: something like that, or or who slaps them in the face,
Speaker 1: or thinking that that I severed head would be like
Speaker 1: looking at people as if it recognized them, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously there's a lot of indelishment 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 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 be Yeah. 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 it
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 Giatan 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 occur 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. It'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 exit usition, and you'll typically see an expression of
Speaker 1: of 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 climb 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. French philosopher
Speaker 1: Michelle Fuco he weighed in on this, and he pointed
Speaker 1: out that penal technology is of course an expression of power,
Speaker 1: but we also have to dwell in the fact that
Speaker 1: it does this through everyday technology, ubiquitous technology. So if
Speaker 1: it's something like electricity or even you know or even
Speaker 1: you know, pharmaceuticals, chemicals. Uh, it's it's taking aspects of
Speaker 1: everyday life and turning them into the the system, the
Speaker 1: tool of of justice. So like our everyday use of
Speaker 1: energy and the consumer economy, a constant reminder of the
Speaker 1: methods of death that the state can inflict upon people
Speaker 1: 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 terminology. So there are
Speaker 1: two primary means of amputation. Um in terms of like
Speaker 1: amputating a limb or what have you. You have flap
Speaker 1: amputations in which flaps of flesh are left so that
Speaker 1: you can fold them and close the stump of the wound.
Speaker 1: And then there are guillotine amputations, which which are more
Speaker 1: of a straight down affair with no immediate concerns for
Speaker 1: flap tissue. So in guillotine amputation, it's more about cutting
Speaker 1: out infected tissue and making sure drainage of proper drainage occurs,
Speaker 1: and then secondary surgery is performed to create the flap
Speaker 1: tissue to close everything off into a stump. But obviously
Speaker 1: that's like a secondary appellation, like you wouldn't you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have called that guillotine cutting in the surgical since before
Speaker 1: the guillotine, right, But it is certainly an example where
Speaker 1: if you're you, you encounter this terminology now in in
Speaker 1: medical science and uh, and it stems from the use
Speaker 1: of this execution device. That being said, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of medical terminology that stems from various weapons and so forth.
Speaker 1: Of course, so I want to come back to this
Speaker 1: question that we've been teasing throughout where you can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder if Josephine Guioton pushed us in exactly the
Speaker 1: wrong direction, if he was actually against the death penalty
Speaker 1: and trying to institute more humane treatment of criminals. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to notice that by sanitizing a horrible act,
Speaker 1: it often seems like you make the act easier to
Speaker 1: carry out. And I mean, just think about how this
Speaker 1: applies to modern methods of state sanctioned killing, everything from
Speaker 1: lethal injection to drone strikes. Does the sanitizing and distancing
Speaker 1: and depersonalization opportunity provided by lethal technology encourage us to
Speaker 1: make ourselves able to kill more while feeling less about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, is the the botched execution that we've
Speaker 1: discussed already, Are those not maybe a more honest depiction
Speaker 1: of what's going on? This this this fallible, um barbaric
Speaker 1: human effort, 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 Catch 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 positive 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
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 Torii 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 a topic 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.