A ban on appointing the executioner as enforcer of justice

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142

Decision of the State Council of the King, January 12^th 1797 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142) This edict renews an older ban, which shows the centuries-long poor reputation of the executioner. With a job despised by many, the executioner was a true pariah of society and popular prejudice against him existed well into the middle of the 19^th century. For more information: See the bibliography on Criminocorpus, and Jacques Delarue, Le Métier de bourreau du Moyen Age à aujourd’hui, Paris, Fayard, 439 p.

Executioners threatened by the Revolution?

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513

Letter from the Ministry of Justice, Adrien Duport, March 3^rd 1792 (Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513) After the Revolution, the number of professionnal executioners decreased considerably. Adrien Duport, the Minister of Justice, shows here how the new penal legislation that eliminated many capital offences (going from 115 before the Penal Code of 1791 to 32) and sentences of torture (like the horse-collar) would lead to less on-duty executioners, who numbered around 160 at the end of the Ancien Régime. This letter also illustrates the “sad” reputation of the job. Later on in the letter, Duport mentions the problems created by the new method of execution, beheading.

Executioners threatened by the Revolution? (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513

Dearth of executioners and prisoner employment in Isère, year II

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/3/206

Letter from the public prosecutor of the Criminal court of the department of Isère addressed to the civil, police and judicial administrations, Prairial 4 year II (Republican calendar) [May 23^rd 1794](Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/3/206) When the south of France was under the Ancien Régime, the rejection and ostracism that the executioner faced often pushed the authorities to call on prisoners to perform execution duties themselves. It’s not surprising that this same method of calling upon prisoners to execute their own was also used in the beginning of the Revolution. Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/2/206.

Dearth of executioners and prisoner employment in Isère, year II (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/3/206

An executioner ready and in position

Source : Collection of the museum of living history (Musée d’histoire vivante), Montreuil, France.

Le Petit Journal. Supplément illustré, August 8^th 1891, Collection of the Museum of Living History (Musée d’histoire vivant – Montreuil) The executioner is the one standing by the guillotine. In the newspapers’ representations (obituaries, narratives, and images of executions), the executioner is always closely tied to the instrument and to the scene of execution.

A petition against executioners’ maximum wage (1793)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513

Executioners’ petition to the National Convention, July 1793 (Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513) This petition shows the numerous expenses accrued during the work of carrying out capital punishments (assistants’ pay, horses, carriages, carriage-drivers) and puts the executioners' wages, that were limited with a pay ceiling, into perspective. According to these executioners, in the capital of Paris, executioner’s remuneration had decreased from 36,000 pounds to 10,000…

A Petition against executioners’ maximum wage (1793) (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513.

A Petition against executioners’ maximum wage (1793) (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513.

A Petition against executioners’ maximum wage (1793) (end)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513.

A Petition against executioners’ maximum wage (1793) (end)

Source: Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, AA55, file 1513.

Reduction of personnel in 1832

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536.

Circular from the Minister of Justice on November 22^nd 1832 (Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536) The royal ordinance of October 7^th 1832 regarding executioners and their assistants aimed to cut the number of executioners in half by convincing those who were unqualified or ill to abandon the profession and by stopping the replacement of those who were retiring. With this goal in mind, the circular gives us a general idea of the personnel occupying the position of executioner in 1832. This measure was part of a general trend of less repressive penal politics which included giving juries the right to determine mitigating factors (law of April 28^th 1832), a measure that rapidly decreased the number of capital punishments meted out by the Courts of Assizes.

Reduction of personnel in 1849

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536.

Letter from Laurent Desmorest, an executioner in Cahors, to the Minister of Justice, March 27^th 1849 (Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536) The decree of March 9^th 1849 regarding executioners (confirmed by the decree of June 26^th 1850), reduced the number of head executioners to one for each Appeals court. The assistants and the laid-off executioners received a remuneration that was often judged insufficient, as this letter shows. This was aggravated by the fact that their status as social pariahs increased their cost of living. The letter above also shows us how executioners were often recruited from the same families. The decree of November 25^th 1870 regarding executioners reduced their number yet again, maintaining only one head executioner for the whole country, with five deputies and two guillotines. This decision of the Minister of Justice, Adolphe Crémieux, was made possible by the reduction of capital offences and death sentences, as well as the facility of transport (the Widower took the train).

Reduction of personnel in 1849 (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536.

An engineer (Zo d’Axa, La Feuille, July 6th 1898)

Source : The collection of the National Museum of Prisons (France)

A drawing by Couturier in La Feuille of Zo d’Axa, July 6^th 1898 (National Museum of Prisons) In this drawing, Couturier emphasizes the aged figure of the executioner, Louis Deibler, whose task has been reduced to the mere pushing of two buttons: one which lifts the upper plank of the lunette, and the other which activates the falling blade. Deibler, at this point nearing retirement, had become an engineer who could easily be replaced with a simple electric current… The physical contact of another human with the condemned – which was the status quo during the Ancien Regime – was eliminated by Guillotin’s “simple mechanism”, effectively bringing capital punishment into the industrial era. The executioner became an engineer, a “watchmaker” (Michel Foucault), dropping the blade with a single movement. This new method of execution contributed, in the long run, to making the executioner seem less inhuman and reducing the negative reputation of this profession.

An honored civil servant (Le Pilori, July 31st 1892, by Uzès)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142

Engravings from the newspaper Le Pilori, July 31^st 1892, The Father still cuts, by Uzès (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142) The fact that executions became rarer and rarer and that only one executioner was employed in the country starting in 1870 contributed to a changing image of the executioner. Due to his job, he was called upon to have close connections with magistrates, prison directors and the police, and he became little by little an honorable civil servant in the eyes of the elites, even if popular prejudices remained.

.

A team: Deibler and his assistants (L’Assiette au Beurre, March 1907)

Source : Collection of the museum of living history (Musée d’histoire vivante), Montreuil, France.

Drawing by Alex, L’Assiette au Beurre, n°310, March 9^th 1907, “The Death Sentence”, Collection of the Museum of Living History (Musée d’histoire vivant – Montreuil) Since 1870, only one head executioner and five deputies or assistants were employed in all of France at a time. Aside from those assigned to the maintenance of the equipment and the set-up of the guillotine, there were generally two assistants present during an execution, one near the basket to hold the body and make sure the head fell into it, and the other standing before the lunette to make sure that the head of the condemned person was in position before the head executioner let the blade drop. The position of this assistant, nick-named the “photographer”, was unenviable, as he needed both to hold the head (which sometimes resisted) and to carefully watch the falling blade so that it did not fall on his hand. Maxime Du Camp artfully described how the mechanism was not completely automatic and how the executioner needed to make a few movements, and the writings of executioners support this observation: Maxime Du Camp, Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie jusqu’en 1870, reed. Monaco, G. Rondeau, 1993, p.326-327. “You shouldn’t believe that the instrument doesn’t need to be directed or that it does this bloody duty all alone. The man entrusted with carrying to carry out the death penalty must employ great dexterity and uncommon force. With a single hand, he must restrain the condemned, and it is not always easy. Lescure, executed in 1854, fought back and seized the right hand of the executioner in his teeth, biting him so intensely that the scar still remains. Avinain, the horrible butcher who would cut his victims into pieces and throw them into the Seine, turned around so violently that the executioner was forced to seize him by the shoulders with both hands to keep him still. Troppmann who, with extreme agility combined with extraordinary vigor, made a “flip of the carp”, almost throwing himself through the lunette before the upper half had fallen, also bit the executioner. Not all of those sentenced to death resist, but, whether they are resigned or struggling, that vital instinct remains and defends itself. Once they’re swung into the horizontal position, in an instant so fast that the eye can scarcely process it, they all make an involuntary and unconscious movement that we could call a fatal one. Instead of bringing their head forward, they throw it to the right, as far as possible from the executioner who is standing to their left; instead of placing their head in the lunette, thus, they hit it against the post (of the guillotine). They therefore need to be put back in the position that they are supposed to be in, to be adjusted, according to the horrible expression of the job, and this effort – multiplied by one hundred by a vivacity that is faster than thought itself – requires considerable force. “After each execution, I have sore saignées [cubital fossa], the executioner told me.” The roles of this gloomy tragedy are distributed between the actors in advance; one of the assistants holds the head, the other lifts the bascule from the bottom and holds the legs of the patient, while the executioner hastens the conclusion. These movements together, a different one for each, accomplished by three people, are all for the same goal and must be done perfectly simultaneously because, if not, serious harm can be done” (trans. P. Bass). For an earlier period, Félix Pyat describes the executioner’s assistant in a text he wrote for the Encyclopédie morale du XIXème siècle: Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, published by Léon Curmer, in 1840-1842 (republished by Omnibus, la Découverte, 2004, p.208-209): “The executioner’s valet is to his master what a hunting dog is to a hunter. He watches and stops, he doesn’t kill or eat. He must prepare, but never accomplish. He's the one who prepares the machine, who offers his arm to the patient to get him up the steps, who lies him on the board, who ties the belts around his back, who puts his neck in the lunette; but that is where his task is done, it stops at the act of constraining the patient. The executioner is the only one with the right to untie him. Thus, most of this duty is the valet’s; he's the homme de peine [worker who carries out the most difficult tasks] of the guillotine. Thus, normally he’s more athletic, more concrete and more machine-like, so to say, than the master. The executioner’s valet is above all insolent, if we believe the proverbs. By his allure and his mores, he thinks he can go freely to the Waux-hall [type of dance-hall made popular in England], the walls of Paris, anywhere where he can meet members of the opposite sex, and present himself as a butcher’s assistant. It’s more decent that way: this status covers the guillotine. Finally, when he’s forced to admit what his true job is the valet still has his honest and legal name. So the valet is called an “assistant”, just as like the hangman is called the “executioner”” (Trans. P. Bass).

The executioner, beloved by the press: Heidenreich

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142.

Extract from the newspaper Le Siècle, April 3^rd 1872, and from the Rappel, April 2^nd 1872 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142) The majority of newspapers reported on the death of head executioners and their funerals in obituaries that emphasized their originality via particularly cathartic anecdotes. Jean-François Heindenreich (1811-1872) was the son of an executioner who worked in Chalon-sur-Saône and in Draguignan. After the death of his father, at the tender age of 16, he was selected to be the executioner of the Var (department in the South-East of France) before becoming, in 1848, Parisian executioner Charles-André Férey’s assistant. He became the first executioner to work at the Roquette, which was near his home on boulevard de Beaumarchais. As they did for all head executioners, the press described anecdotes related to his “inhuman” job: a fan of romance novels that made him cry, Heidenreich was sick for days after each execution and he often prayed for the souls of those he executed. Le Monde, an established newspaper, claimed that it was happy to print information from Heidenreich’s colleague that was more likely to please the public – the paper then gave an official-seeming biography where each stage of his career was dated and described. This Monsieur de Paris hadearned a substantial fortune, and after his death, many candidates applied for his position (in vain) at the Chancellerie. The applications of these pustulants, as the Rappel called them, was the opportunity for the newspaper to give a critical account of the funeral, using humor to express their abolitionist position. Heidenreich’s successor, Nicolas Roch (1813-1879) was also born to a family of executioners and had also been the assistant to his own father at the age of 11. In 1838, he was named executioner of the Vaucluse (department near Montpellier) and then in the department of the Jura, in eastern France near Switzerland, in 1843. When Roch died in 1879, the press published numerous articles. Here is an extract from a rather tongue-in-cheek obituary printed by Le Frondeur on May 4^th 1879: “Study of the bourreaucraty [“bourreau” is a term for executioner in French] of Mr. Roch (Biographical article for the purpose of a History of our current time) Mr. Nicolas Roch died as most people do. Each story must end with an execution. He had a fatal date in his life: he was born in 1813. This number must have brought bad luck…to those who know it too well. His vocation was revealed by the way he came into the world. We owe our knowledge of this to a midwife in Mende. Young Nicolas came into the world head-first, with a horrible grimace on his face. The midwife said: It’s a sign. This will be a man of many heads. We’ll rapidly skip over the beginning of his career, which was spent learning this art and making it instinctual with much training. We can never know the number of flies that had to be beheaded between two cherry stems…Capital punishment is all about the hygiene of the condemned. A well put-together criminal is already half executed. No more worries about resistance, you can be sure that he won’t fail. Once his hair is trimmed, he can go on his merry way with peace in his heart. Roch, who knew this milieu so well, never forgot this important detail. He even imagined a (hair)cut that would always do the job. After trimming the hair, this “cut” consisted of passing the blade of the scissors on the neck of the condemned. The cold blade made them smile, and it always made everyone watching laugh. This winning formula made Roch very popular in jails. It worked in his favor. Convicts would play around amongst themselves to guess who would have Roch; he was considered good luck. This popularity, which never diminished, pleased the bourgeoisie. As long as we have Roch, the guillotine will always have “guests”! When we told him that the iname remark by Alphonse Karr had said ‘let the gentlemen who do the murders take the first step!’ he replied, ‘they’re holding back”, with a smile of supreme pity for the author of Guêpes. ‘They won’t have my cut of the scissors to lighten up their ideas. It’s a treat, and it makes them laugh’” (trans. P. Bass). Upon his death, Nicolas Roch was replaced by his assistant, Louis Deibler. For more information: See the biographical article on Heidenreich on Wikipedia and the article on Roch.

An executioner on the front page of Paris-Soir: Deibler

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142.

Extract from Paris-Soir, April 18^th 1935 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142) Sometimes the popular press showed an interest in the executioner other than on the occasion of his death or the execution of a famous criminal. Paris-Soir, for example, published a report on the daily life of Anatole Deibler, as always, playing upon a contrast with his fearful and often disdained occupation. Anatole Deibler (1863-1939) replaced his father on January 2^nd 1899. He was immediately popular because journalists appreciated his dexterity and his rapidity compared to his father, who had the reputation of being slow. A modern man, one of the first, in fact, to have an automobile, and a fan of horseracing, he lived in a villa in Auteuil where he also had a townhouse (divided into separate apartments for rental) constructed. Even if his occupation prevented him from being a “man of the world”, he wasn’t far from the “good” bourgeoisie. He was meticulous and carried a little notebook of his executions from the first that he helped with in 1885 until his death in 1939. This notebook included the civil status of each criminal and a detailed summary of the crime committed. By the end of his life, there were over 400 executions detailed in his notebook. As an example, here is the short entry dedicated to the execution of Vaillant on February 5^th 1894 (number 57 in the notebook): “Executed in Paris on February 5^th 1894, numb. 57, VAILLANT Louis-Auguste, 32 years old, anarchist, born in Mézières (Ardennes), living in Choisy-le-Roi (near Paris), sentenced to death by the Assizes court of the Seine on January 10^th 1894 for having thrown a bomb into the Chamber of Deputies, injuring 50 people among which were deputies and spectators. Vaillant himself was injured on his right thigh. Vaillant had already been sentenced for vagrancy and theft. Anarchist attack committed in Paris on December 9^th 1893” (trans. P. Bass) (cited by Gérard A. Jaeger. Carnets d’exécutions 1885-1939. Anatole Deibler, Paris, l’Archipel, 2004, p. 72-73). For more information: See the biographical article on Louis Deibler on Wikipedia and that of Anatole Deibler. Bibliography available on the site of Criminocorpus. Jacques Delarue, Le métier de bourreau du Moyen âge à aujourdhui, Paris, Fayard, 1989, p. 322-350. Gérard A. Jaeger, Carnets d’exécutions 1885-1939. Anatole Deibler, Paris, l’Archipel, 2004, 298 p.

The executioner on the front page of Détective: Ladurelle

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142.

Extract from Détective, April 29^th 1937 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142) This periodical, which specialized in crime, published several articles on the death row at the Santé Prison, on Monsieur de Paris (the executioner of Paris) and on methods of execution, particularly in other countries. Above is a cover of an issue where Marius Larique provides the biography of an executioner, Louis Ladurelle, who worked in a penal colony in Guyana before returning to France. It was a tradition to choose a penal colony inmate to be the executioner, and this individual (here, Louis Ladurelle), lived separately from the other inmates, in a little house outside the penal colony, because he was technically a part of the penal administration. “In these times, in 1931, Ladurelle was no longer dressed as an inmate. He wore a khaki shirt and blue canvas overalls. He wore shoes on his feet and a mustache above his lip, neither of which was orthodox in the colony. ‘The shoes, the mustache, the long hair, the overalls, were my perks. My punishment was that I was isolated: nobody ever spoke to me. The guards disdained me; the other inmates hated me. Yet, an executioner is necessary’” (trans. P. Bass). Louis Ladurelle, a factory worker in the Vosges, had been sentenced to 20 years of forced labor for having killed his mistress. He replaced his predecessor, Isidore Hespel, called “The Jackal”, who was dismissed for having committed several murders.

The collection of the National Museum of Prisons (France)

Source : Jules Supervielle: To Deibler (1914)

Poem by Jules Supervielle (National Museum of Prisons) Jules Supervielle (1884-1960), a poet and writer, was born in Uruguay to a family of immigrants from the Pyrenées. He settled down in Paris in 1912 and probably wrote this text in response to the executions (both in Versailles and in Paris) of several members of the “Bonnot gang”. “To Mister Deibler, with a basket of flowers. The grim duties you are entrusted with. You execute them like a wise and modest man who erases. And it’s stupid to think that you only appreciate man if cut short. You have a good word for all, a word of grace and empathy. You tell old men, ‘Today will make you younger, the best days are those that are not finished’. To the young, ‘Youth must end’. But when the night brings its sadness, the horrible memory of bloody basket, is upon you and draws an apostle’s tear from your eye. I’m sympathetic and I want to offer you roses, Easter lilies, carnations, morning glories, so that my basket of flowers consoles you for the other one” (trans. P. Bass). For more information: see the biographical article on Jules Supervielle on Wikipedia.