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85-581: The Halifax Gibbet / ˈ h æ l ɪ f æ k s ˈ dʒ ɪ b ɪ t / was an early guillotine used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire , England. Estimated to have been installed during the 16th century, it was used as an alternative to beheading by axe or sword. Halifax was once part of the Manor of Wakefield , where ancient custom and law gave the Lord of the Manor the authority to execute summarily by decapitation any thief caught with stolen goods to

170-478: A Proto-Germanic word galgô that refers to a "pole", "rod" or "tree branch". With the beginning of Christianization, Ulfilas used the term galga in his Gothic Testament to refer to the cross of Christ , until the use of the Latin term (crux = cross) prevailed. Gallows can take several forms: Gallows may be permanent, partly acting as a symbol of justice. The French word for gallows, potence , stems from

255-754: A Dutch communist blamed for the Reichstag fire and executed by guillotine in January 1934. The Nazi government also guillotined Sophie Scholl , who was convicted of high treason after distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans , and other members of the German student resistance group, the White Rose . The guillotine was last used in West Germany in 1949 in

340-437: A beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and harpsichord maker, to construct a prototype. Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype. France's official executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson , claimed in his memoirs that King Louis XVI, an amateur locksmith, recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to cut through all necks;

425-409: A convicted felon was usually detained in custody for three market days, on each of which he was publicly displayed in the stocks , accompanied by the stolen goods. After the sentence had been carried out a county coroner would visit Halifax and convene a jury of 12 men, sometimes the same individuals who had found the felon guilty, and ask them to give an account under oath of the circumstances of

510-478: A less painful alternative. While not the device's inventor, Guillotin's name ultimately became an eponym for it. Contrary to popular myth, Guillotin did not die by guillotine but rather by natural causes. French surgeon and physiologist Antoine Louis and German engineer Tobias Schmidt built a prototype for the guillotine. According to the memoir of the French executioner Charles-Henri Sanson , Louis XVI suggested

595-583: A new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class, consistent with the idea that the purpose of capital punishment was simply to end life rather than to inflict unnecessary pain. A committee formed under Antoine Louis , physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery. Guillotin was also on the committee. The group was influenced by beheading devices used elsewhere in Europe, such as

680-466: A pin that was fastened into the wall, and a cutting blade of steel droppeth down, of steel sharper than any razor, and closeth up the three openings. "Even thus will I cut off their heads when they shall set them into those three openings thinking to adore the hallows that are beyond." The Halifax Gibbet in England was a wooden structure consisting of two wooden uprights, capped by a horizontal beam, of

765-425: A platform of stone blocks, 9 feet (2.7 m) square and 4 feet (1.2 m) high, which was ascended by a flight of steps. A rope attached to the top of the wooden block holding the axe ran over a pulley at the top of the structure, allowing the block to be raised. The rope was then fastened by a pin to the structure's stone base. The gibbet could be operated by cutting the rope supporting the blade or by pulling out

850-404: A prison wing (with the beam resting in brackets on opposite walls), or in a purpose-built execution suite. Gallows can also be temporary. In some of the cases, they were even moved to the location of the crime. In England, pirates were typically executed using a temporary gallows, at low tide in the intertidal zone , then left for the sea to wash over them during the following high tides. John

935-413: A room at the bailiff's house. No oaths were administered and there was no judge or defence counsel present; each side presented their case, and the jury decided on guilt or innocence. The law was applied so strictly that anyone who apprehended a thief with his property was not allowed to recover it unless the miscreant and the stolen goods were presented to the bailiff. The goods were otherwise forfeited to

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1020-688: A single, clean pass; the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below. The guillotine is best known for its use in France , particularly during the French Revolution , where the revolution's supporters celebrated it as the people's avenger and the revolution's opponents vilified it as the pre-eminent symbol of the violence of the Reign of Terror . While the name "guillotine" dates from this period, similar devices had been in use elsewhere in Europe over several centuries. Use of an oblique blade and

1105-411: A sword. The device, which seems to have been unique in England, consisted of two 15-foot (4.6 m) tall parallel beams of wood joined at the top by a transverse beam. Running in grooves within the beams was a square wooden block 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m) in length, into the bottom of which was fitted an axe head weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces (3.5 kg). The whole structure sat on

1190-729: A total height of 4.5 metres (15 ft). The blade was an axe head weighing 3.5 kg (7.7 lb), attached to the bottom of a massive wooden block that slid up and down in grooves in the uprights. This device was mounted on a large square platform 1.25 metres (4 ft) high. It is not known when the Halifax Gibbet was first used; the first recorded execution in Halifax dates from 1280, but that execution may have been by sword, axe, or gibbet. The machine remained in use until Oliver Cromwell forbade capital punishment for petty theft. A Hans Weiditz (1495–1537) woodcut illustration from

1275-530: A variety of methods of execution, many of which were more gruesome and required a high level of precision and skill to carry out successfully. After its adoption, the device remained France's standard method of judicial execution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981. The last person to be executed by a government via guillotine was Hamida Djandoubi on 10 September 1977 in France. The use of beheading machines in Europe long predates such use during

1360-400: Is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading . The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the position of the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with

1445-518: Is uncertain whether Dr Guillotin was familiar with the Halifax Gibbet. A 16th century device constructed in Edinburgh is called the Maiden . It dates from 1564, and those it executed included James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton in 1584. The story, published sixty years later, was that he had been responsible for its introduction after seeing the Halifax Gibbet, but this story is unsupported. The Maiden

1530-578: The National Museum of Scotland . For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a louisette . However, it was later named after French physician and Freemason Joseph-Ignace Guillotin , who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a special device to carry out executions in France in a more humane manner. A death penalty opponent, he was displeased with the breaking wheel and other common, more grisly methods of execution and sought to persuade Louis XVI of France to implement

1615-475: The Place du Carrousel . The machine was judged successful because it was considered a humane form of execution in contrast with more cruel methods used in the pre-revolutionary Ancien Régime . In France, before the invention of the guillotine, members of the nobility were beheaded with a sword or an axe, which often took two or more blows to kill the condemned. The condemned or their families would sometimes pay

1700-543: The "wicked and ungovernable"; the cloth, left outside and unattended, presented easy pickings, and hence justified severe punishment to protect the local economy. James Holt on the other hand, writing in 1997, sees the Halifax Gibbet Law as a practical application of the Anglo-Saxon law of infangtheof . Royal assizes were held only twice a year in the area; to bring a prosecution was "vastly expensive", and

1785-527: The 1532 edition of Petrarch 's De remediis utriusque fortunae , or "Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune" shows a device similar to the Halifax Gibbet in the background being used for an execution. Holinshed's Chronicles of 1577 included a picture of "The execution of Murcod Ballagh near Merton in Ireland in 1307" showing a similar execution machine, suggesting its early use in Ireland. The Maiden

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1870-634: The Church of Rome". Moreover, it ran counter to the Puritan objection to imposing the death penalty for petty theft; thereafter accused criminals were sent to the Assizes in York for trial and sentencing. It is uncertain when the Halifax Gibbet was first introduced, but it may not have been until some time in the 16th century; before then decapitation would have been carried out by an executioner using an axe or

1955-541: The French Berger 1872 model, but they eventually evolved into sturdier and more effective machines. Built primarily of metal instead of wood, these new guillotines had heavier blades than their French predecessors and thus could use shorter uprights as well. Officials could also conduct multiple executions faster, thanks to a more effective blade recovery system and the eventual removal of the tilting board (bascule). Those deemed likely to struggle were backed slowly into

2040-617: The French Revolution in 1792. An early example of the principle is found in the Old French High History of the Holy Grail , dated to about 1210. Although the device is imaginary, its function is clear. The text says: Within these three openings are the hallows set for them. And behold what I would do to them if their three heads were therein ... She setteth her hand toward the openings and draweth forth

2125-667: The Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja, which had been used since Roman times ), the Scottish Maiden , and the Halifax Gibbet (3.5 kg). While many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, a number of them also used a crescent blade to behead and a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim's neck. Laquiante, an officer of the Strasbourg criminal court, designed

2210-410: The Latin word potentia , meaning "power". Many old prints of European cities show such a permanent gallows erected on a prominent hill outside the walls, or more commonly near the castle or other seat of justice. In the modern era the gallows were often installed inside a prison; freestanding on a scaffold in the yard, erected at ground level over a pit, enclosed in a small shed, built into the gallery of

2295-551: The Manor of Wakefield, of which the town of Halifax was a part, the power to try and execute any felon for the theft of goods to the value of 13 1 ⁄ 2 d or more (equivalent to £10 in 2023), or more: If a felon be taken within their liberty or precincts of the said forest [the Forest of Hardwick], either handhabend [caught with the stolen goods in his hand or in the act of stealing], backberand [caught carrying stolen goods on his back], or confessand [having confessed to

2380-634: The Painter was hanged in 1777 from the mizzenmast of HMS Arethusa for arson in royal dockyards , the highest temporary gallows erected in British history. The only surviving New Drop gallows in the UK is in Rutland County Museum . The gallows was portable and was set up on the gaol (jail) gatehouse roof when needed. This gallows was first used in 1813 to hang two burglars. The New Drop design

2465-485: The September 1832 edition of The Imperial Magazine describes the victim's final moments: The persons who had found the verdict, and the attending clergymen, placed themselves on the scaffold with the prisoner. The fourth psalm was then played round the scaffold on the bagpipes, after which the minister prayed with the prisoner till he received the final stroke. In Thomas Deloney 's novel Thomas of Reading (1600)

2550-404: The base of a heavy wooden block that ran in grooves between two 15-foot-tall (4.6 m) uprights, mounted on a stone base about 4 feet (1.2 m) high. A rope attached to the block ran over a pulley, allowing it to be raised, after which the rope was secured by attaching it to a pin in the base. The block carrying the axe was then released either by withdrawing the pin or by cutting the rope once

2635-420: The boundaries of their estates. Samuel Midgley in his Halifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light , published in 1761, states that the law dates from a time "not in the memory of man to the contrary". It may have been the consequence of rights granted by King Henry III to John de Warenne (1231–1304), Lord of the Manor of Wakefield. Such baronial jurisdiction was by no means unusual in medieval England and

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2720-427: The conviction and execution, for the official records. The punishment could only be meted out to those within the confines of the Forest of Hardwick, of which Halifax was a part. The gibbet was about 500 yards (460 m) from the boundary of the area, and if the condemned person succeeded in escaping from the forest then he could not legally be brought back to face his punishment. At least two men succeeded in cheating

2805-632: The countryside in order to intimidate the rural population; they used guillotines, which had belonged to the former French colonial power, in order to carry out death sentences on the spot. One such guillotine is still on show at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City . In the United States in 1996, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper unsuccessfully sponsored a bill to replace that state's electric chair with

2890-492: The crime] cloth or any other commodity to the value of 13½d, that they shall after three market days or meeting days within the town of Halifax after such his apprehension, and being condemned he shall be taken to the gibbet and there have his head cut off from his body. The Gibbet Law may have been a last vestige of the Anglo-Saxon custom of infangthief , which allowed landowners to enforce summary justice on thieves within

2975-432: The custody of the lord of the manor's bailiff , who would summon a jury of 16 local men "out of the most wealthy and best reputed", four each from four local townships. The jury had only two questions to decide on: were the stolen goods found in the possession of the accused, and were they worth at least 13 1 ⁄ 2 d. The jury, the accused, and those claiming that their property had been stolen, were brought together in

3060-468: The destruction of privilege under the Ancien Régime , which used separate forms of execution for nobility and commoners. The Parisian sans-culottes , then the popular public face of lower-class patriotic radicalism, thus considered the guillotine a positive force for revolutionary progress. After the French Revolution , executions resumed in the city centre. On 4 February 1832, the guillotine

3145-477: The device from behind a curtain to prevent them from seeing it prior to the execution. A metal screen covered the blade as well in order to conceal it from the sight of the condemned. Nazi Germany used the guillotine between 1933 and 1945 to execute 16,500 prisoners, 10,000 of them in 1944 and 1945 alone. Notable political victims executed by the guillotine under the Nazi government included Marinus van der Lubbe ,

3230-572: The execution of Richard Schuh and was last used in East Germany in September 1967 when the murderers Paul Beirau and Günter Herzfeld were executed. The Stasi used the guillotine in East Germany between 1950 and 1966 for secret executions. A number of countries, primarily in Europe, continued to employ this method of execution into the 19th and 20th centuries, but they ceased to use it before France did in 1977. In Antwerp , Belgium,

3315-505: The execution of the King and for Robespierre. For a time, executions by guillotine were a popular form of entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators, with vendors selling programs listing the names of the condemned. But more than being popular entertainment alone during the Terror, the guillotine symbolized revolutionary ideals: equality in death equivalent to equality before the law; open and demonstrable revolutionary justice; and

3400-461: The executioner in that way: a man named Dinnis and another called Lacy. Dinnis was never seen in Halifax again, but Lacy rather unwisely decided to return to the town seven years after his escape; he was apprehended and finally executed in 1623. The earliest known record of punishment by decapitation in Halifax is the beheading of John of Dalton in 1286, but official records were not maintained until

3485-526: The executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to achieve a quick and relatively painless death. Commoners were usually hanged, which could take many minutes. In the early phase of the French Revolution , prior to the guillotine's adoption, the slogan À la lanterne ( lit.   ' To the lamp post! ' ) symbolized popular justice in revolutionary France. The revolutionary radicals hanged officials and aristocrats from street lanterns and also employed more gruesome methods of execution, such as

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3570-457: The final executions "were by some persons in that age, judged to be too severe; thence came it to pass, that the gibbet, and the customary law, for the forest of Hardwick, got its suspension". Oliver Cromwell finally ended the exercise of Halifax Gibbet Law. To the Puritans it was "part of ancient ritual to be jettisoned along with all the old feasts and celebrations of the medieval world and

3655-582: The first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement – and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead. Gallows A gallows (or less precisely scaffold ) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term

3740-471: The gibbet was forbidden by Oliver Cromwell , Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England , and the structure was dismantled. The stone base was rediscovered and preserved in about 1840, and a non-working replica was erected on the site in 1974. The names of 52 people known to have been beheaded by the device are listed on a nearby plaque. What became known as the Halifax Gibbet Law gave the Lord of

3825-655: The guillotine is known as Fallbeil ("falling axe") or Köpfmaschine ("beheading machine") and was used in various German states from the 19th century onwards, becoming the preferred method of execution in Napoleonic times in many parts of the country. The guillotine, axe and the firing squad were the legal methods of execution during the era of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). The original German guillotines resembled

3910-417: The guillotine was invented specifically to be more humane, the issue of whether or not the condemned experiences pain has been thoroughly examined and remains a controversial topic. Certain eyewitness accounts of guillotine executions suggest anecdotally that awareness may persist momentarily after decapitation, although there is no scientific consensus on the matter. Gabriel Beaurieux, a physician who observed

3995-451: The guillotine. In recent years, a limited number of individuals have killed themselves using self-constructed guillotines. Ever since the guillotine's first use, there has been debate as to whether or not the guillotine provided as swift and painless a death as Guillotin had hoped. With previous methods of execution that were intended to be painful, few expressed concern about the level of suffering that they inflicted. However, because

4080-617: The guillotine. Most of the time, executions in Paris were carried out in the Place de la Revolution (former Place Louis XV and current Place de la Concorde ); the guillotine stood in the corner near the Hôtel Crillon where the City of Brest Statue can be found today. The machine was moved several times, to the Place de la Nation and the Place de la Bastille , but returned, particularly for

4165-413: The head of executed prisoner Henri Languille, wrote on 28 June 1905: Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of

4250-403: The invention of the Halifax Gibbet is attributed to a friar , who proposed the device as a solution to the difficulty of finding local residents willing to act as hangmen. Although the guillotine as a method of beheading is most closely associated in the popular imagination with late 18th-century Revolutionary France , several other decapitation devices had long been in use throughout Europe. It

4335-520: The last person to be beheaded was Francis Kol. Convicted of robbery and murder, he received his punishment on 8 May 1856. During the period from 19 March 1798 to 30 March 1856, there were 19 beheadings in Antwerp. In Utrecht , the Netherlands, the first person to be beheaded was Anthony van Benthem, a criminal confined in a mental institution. He killed a cellmate after being called a sodomite. He

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4420-550: The lord of the manor, and their previous rightful owner was liable to find himself charged with theftbote , or conniving in the felony. Halifax's reputation for strict law enforcement was noted by the antiquary William Camden and by the "Water Poet" John Taylor , who penned the Beggar's Litany Archived 18 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine : "From Hell, Hull, and Halifax, Good Lord, deliver us!" Before his execution

4505-548: The mandatory method of execution in 1866. The guillotine replaced manual beheading in 1903, and it was used only once, in the execution of murderer Alfred Ander in 1910 at Långholmen Prison , Stockholm. Ander was also the last person to be executed in Sweden before capital punishment was abolished there in 1921. In South Vietnam , after the Diệm regime enacted the 10/59 Decree in 1959, mobile special military courts were dispatched to

4590-496: The neck ... I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: "Languille!" I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions – I insist advisedly on this peculiarity – but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and

4675-404: The neck of the king, who himself died by guillotine years later, was offered up discreetly as an example. The first execution by guillotine was performed on a highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792 in front of what is now Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. All citizens condemned to die were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to

4760-467: The noose around the person's neck while he or she was on a ladder or in a horse-drawn cart underneath. Removing the ladder or driving the cart away left the person dangling by the neck to slowly strangle. A noted example of this type of execution in the USA was the hanging of British spy John André in 1780. Later, a "scaffold" with a trapdoor tended to be used, so victims dropped down and died quickly from

4845-450: The onlookers: In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin ... unto the middest of which pin also there is a long rope fastened that cometh down among the people, so that when the offender hath made his confession, and hath laid his neck over the nethermost block, every man there present doth either take hold of

4930-649: The original guillotines used during the Reign of Terror. The executioner had "pawned his guillotine, and got into woeful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property". On 6 August 1909, the guillotine was used at the junction of the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé, behind the La Santé Prison . The last public guillotining in France was of Eugen Weidmann , who was convicted of six murders. He

5015-412: The parish registers began in 1538. Between then and 1650, when the last executions took place, 56 men and women are recorded as having been decapitated. The total number of executions identified since 1286 is just short of 100. Local weavers specialised in the production of kersey , a hardwearing and inexpensive woollen fabric that was often used for military uniforms; by the 16th century Halifax and

5100-449: The pillory-like restraint device set this type of guillotine apart from others. Display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways European sovereigns exhibited their power to their subjects. The design of the guillotine was intended to make capital punishment more reliable and less painful in accordance with new Enlightenment ideas of human rights. Prior to use of the guillotine, France had inflicted manual beheading and

5185-413: The pin that held the rope. If the offender was to be executed for stealing an animal, a cord was fastened to the pin and tied to either the stolen animal or one of the same species, which was then driven off, withdrawing the pin and allowing the blade to drop. In an early contemporary account of 1586 Raphael Holinshed attests to the efficiency of the gibbet, and adds some detail about the participation of

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5270-573: The place", recorded as the Custom of Cheshire. A commission appointed by King Edward I in 1278 reported that there were at that time 94 privately owned gibbets and gallows in use in Yorkshire, including one owned by the Archbishop of York . What was unusual about Halifax was that the custom lingered on there for so long after it had been abandoned elsewhere. Suspected thieves were detained in

5355-399: The prisoner was in place. Almost 100 people were beheaded in Halifax between the first recorded execution in 1286 and the last in 1650, but as the date of the gibbet 's installation is uncertain, it cannot be determined with any accuracy how many individuals died via the Halifax Gibbet. By 1650, public opinion considered beheading to be an excessively severe punishment for petty theft; use of

5440-502: The pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. After several seconds, the eyelids closed again [...]. It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than

5525-690: The region was at Fort-de-France in 1965. In South America, the guillotine was only used in French Guiana , where about 150 people were beheaded between 1850 and 1945: most of them were convicts exiled from France and incarcerated within the "bagne", or penal colonies. Within the Southern Hemisphere, it worked in New Caledonia (which had a bagne too until the end of the 19th century) and at least twice in Tahiti . In Germany ,

5610-412: The rope (or putteth forth his arm so near to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true justice executed) and pulling out the pin in this manner, the head block wherein the axe is fastened doth fall down with such violence, that if the neck of the transgressor were so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke, and roll from the body by a huge distance. An article in

5695-650: The stolen goods were forfeited to the Crown, as they were considered to be the property of the accused. But the Halifax Gibbet Law allowed "the party injured, to have his goods restored to him again, with as little loss and damage, as can be contrived; to the great encouragement of the honest and industrious, and as great terror to the wicked and evil doers." The Halifax Gibbet's final victims were Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell. Wilkinson had been found guilty of stealing 16 yards (15 m) of russet-coloured kersey cloth, 9 yards (8.2 m) of which, found in his possession,

5780-473: The surrounding Calder Valley was the largest producer of the material in England. In the final part of the manufacturing process the cloth was hung outdoors on large structures known as tenterframes and left to dry, after having been conditioned by a fulling mill. Daniel Defoe wrote a detailed account of what he had been told of the gibbet's history during his visit to Halifax in Volume 3 of his A tour thro'

5865-563: The use of a straight, angled blade instead of a curved one. On 10 October 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the National Assembly that capital punishment should always take the form of decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism". Sensing the growing discontent, Louis XVI banned the use of the breaking wheel . In 1791, as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly researched

5950-454: The value of 13 1 ⁄ 2 d or more (equivalent to £10 in 2023), or who confessed to having stolen goods of at least that value. Decapitation was a fairly common method of execution in England, but Halifax was unusual in two respects: it employed a guillotine-like machine that appears to have been unique in the country, and it continued to decapitate petty criminals until the mid-17th century. The device consisted of an axe head fitted to

6035-479: The wheel or burning at the stake . Having only one method of civil execution for all regardless of class was also seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was then the only civil legal execution method in France until abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, or for the death sentences passed by military courts, which entailed execution by firing squad . Louis Collenot d'Angremont

6120-422: The whole island of Great Britain , published in 1727. He reports that "Modern accounts pretend to say, it [the gibbet] was for all sorts of felons; but I am well assured, it was first erected purely, or at least principally, for such thieves as were apprehended stealing cloth from the tenters; and it seems very reasonable to think it was so". Eighteenth-century historians argued that the area's prosperity attracted

6205-451: Was a royalist famed for having been the first guillotined for his political ideas, on 21 August 1792. During the Reign of Terror between June 1793 and July 1794 about 17,000 people were guillotined, including former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette who were executed at the guillotine in 1793. Towards the end of the Terror in 1794, revolutionary leaders such as Georges Danton , Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre were sent to

6290-405: Was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so it is no longer sitting on the seabed, riverbed or dock; "weighing [the] anchor" meant raising it using this apparatus while avoiding striking the ship's hull. In modern usage the term has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution by hanging . The term " gallows " was derived from

6375-499: Was beheaded on 17 June 1939 outside the prison Saint-Pierre, rue Andre Mignot 5 at Versailles , which is now the Tribunal Judiciaire de Versailles. The proceedings caused "disgusting" and "unruly" behaviour among spectators. The “hysterical behavior” by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions. Marie-Louise Giraud (17 November 1903 – 30 July 1943)

6460-524: Was constructed in 1564 for the Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh , Scotland and was in use from April 1565 to 1710. One of those executed was James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton , in 1581, and a 1644 publication began circulating the legend that Morton himself commissioned the Maiden after he had seen the Halifax Gibbet. The Maiden was readily dismantled for storage and transport, and it is now on display in

6545-479: Was described in the 11th-century legal text entitled De Baronibus, qui suas habent curias et consuetudines (Concerning the barons who have their courts of law and customs). Neither was the decapitation of convicted felons unique to Halifax; the earls of Chester amongst others also exercised the right to "behead any malefactor or thief, who was apprehended in the action, or against whom it was made apparent by sufficient witness, or confession, before four inhabitants of

6630-703: Was erected on the original stone base in August 1974; it includes a blade made from a casting of the original, which as of 2011 is displayed in the Bankfield Museum in Boothtown on the outskirts of Halifax. A commemorative plaque nearby lists the names of the 52 people known to have been executed by the device. Guillotine A guillotine ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ l ə t iː n / GHIL -ə-teen / ˌ ɡ ɪ l ə ˈ t iː n / GHIL -ə- TEEN / ˈ ɡ i j ə t i n / GHEE -yə-teen )

6715-565: Was executed at Paardenveld on 27 July 1811. Back then, the Netherlands was part of the French Empire, Utrecht being in the Zuyderzée department. In Switzerland, it was used for the last time by the canton of Obwalden in the execution of murderer Hans Vollenweider in 1940. In Greece, the guillotine (along with the firing squad ) was introduced as a method of execution in 1834; it was last used in 1913. In Sweden, beheading became

6800-584: Was moved behind the Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie , before being moved again, to the Grande Roquette prison , on 29 November 1851. In the late 1840s, the Tussaud brothers Joseph and Francis, gathering relics for Madame Tussauds wax museum, visited the aged Henry-Clément Sanson , grandson of the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson , from whom they obtained parts, the knife and lunette, of one of

6885-490: Was not very effective as the drop was too short to break the neck cleanly. If a crime took place inside, gallows were sometimes erected—and the criminal hanged—at the front door. In some cases of multiple offenders it was not uncommon to erect multiple temporary gallows, with one noose per condemned criminal. In one case a condemned strangled to death in agony for forty minutes until he finally died from asphyxiation . Hanging people from early gallows sometimes involved fitting

6970-897: Was one of the last women to be executed in France. Giraud was convicted in Vichy France and was guillotined for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area on 30 July 1943. Her story was dramatized in the 1988 film Story of Women directed by Claude Chabrol . The guillotine remained the official method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The final three guillotinings in France before its abolition were those of child-murderers Christian Ranucci (on 28 July 1976) in Marseille, Jérôme Carrein (on 23 June 1977) in Douai and torturer-murderer Hamida Djandoubi (on 10 September 1977) in Marseille. Djandoubi's death

7055-417: Was stored and is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland . It is rather shorter than the Halifax Gibbet, standing only 10 feet (3.0 m) tall, the same height as the French guillotine. The Halifax Gibbet was dismantled after the last executions in 1650, and the site was neglected until the platform on which the gibbet had been mounted was rediscovered in about 1840. A full-size non-working replica

7140-687: Was the last time that the guillotine was used for an execution by any government. In the Western Hemisphere, the guillotine saw only limited use. The only recorded guillotine execution in North America north of the Caribbean took place on the French island of St. Pierre in 1889, of Joseph Néel, with a guillotine brought in from Martinique . In the Caribbean, it was used rarely in Guadeloupe and Martinique ; its last use in

7225-520: Was valued at "9 shillings at the least", and Mitchell of stealing and selling two horses, one valued at 9 shillings and the other at 48 shillings. The pair were found guilty and executed on the same day, 30 April 1650. Writing in 1834 John William Parker , publisher of The Saturday Magazine , suggested that the gibbet might have remained in use for longer in Halifax had the bailiff not been warned that if he used it again he would be "called to public account for it". Midgley comments that

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