THE "AFTER-DEATH" BLUSH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 38, 14 February 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE "AFTER-DEATH" BLUSH.

HORRORS OF THE GUILLOTINE. /

GRUESOME EXECUTION OF FRENCH MURDERERS AND MURDERESSES "PAINLESSNESS" OF THE KNIFE QUESTIONED—DEATH OF MARTYRED HEROINE INVOKED IN RECENT CASES—HISTORICAL SLAYINGS RECALLED.

Out of,, the mists of the dim past, the "after-death" blush that stained the face of Charlotte Corday was recently conjured up in an effort to save fl y e wretched women from execution on the guillotine. Three of th 9 sentences were later commuted.

By strange irony, the death of the martyred heroine of the French Revolution was invoked as the means of saving what remained of the lives of these shattered women. Convicted of murders, two of them mad, they nevertheless had been the objects of pity throughout France, and every effort was made to keep the blade which accounted for 100,000 victims during the Revolution from falling upon their necks. physicians, lawyers, penal experts, sociologists and feminist leaders united in attempting to obtain commutation of the death sentences. But absence of mitigating circumstances in all of the cases forced their supporters to roll back the canvas of history and tell again the story of Charlotte Corday in an effort to prove that the guillotine, far from being the medium of quick and merciful death which its inventor claimed it to be, is in reality an instrument of torture* In support of this contention, was cited the unforgettable incident of brutality which followed the execution of Corday. This talented woman of noble birth, who stabbed the villainous Marat to death in the slipper bath, where he had to soak from dawn to midnight to obtam surcease from the skin disease which afflicted him, was subjected to one of the most signal post-mortem indignities in the history of civilisation. . . With head high and eyes flashing, Charlotte stepped to the guillotine and placed her head on the block at sunset on the 17th of July, 1793. She received assistance from no one, and wanted none. The perfect calm which followed her proud avowal of the deed was unbroken by hysterical outbursts. Her beautiful head with its golden tresses one minute lay on the executioner s block. Ihe next it tumbled into the basket beneath. But there the punishment of Charlotte Corday did not end. One of the executioners seized the head by its hair, and, holding it up for the thousands of spectators to see, dealt it a blow with his fist. At thpt moment, the pale face, which had been sealed in death, reddened with a blush that diffused itself over the velvetsmooth softness of the cheeks. _ All who saw the execution staunchly believed they witnessed the blood rudh in shame or in pain to the face of the severed head. Some historians held it was an illusion of post-mortem life caused by the rays of a. crimson stormy sun which was sinking below the housetops. But eye-witnesses of the time gave to posterity the story of the "after-death" blush-which has lived through the yedrs as the most crushing abnegation of the "mercy" of death by the guillotine. Thus this harrowing incident was dragged from the pages of history as grounds for commuting the five murderesses' sen- , fences to life. - . . All the agitation grew out of an unprecedented wave of brutal crime which shocked Europe within the space of a few weeks in 1928. The murders followed one another with startling celerity; hardly had Paris devoured the details of one terrible affair when another of the same sort followed close upon its heels. The first was the case of Josepha Kures, a Slavic woman, who lived in poverty in the slums of Paris. Her victim was her 13-year-old daughter, found strangled to death in the Bois de Boulogne, a stone's throw from some of the most beautiful residences in the capital. No convincing defence could be offered. The little girl had lived with her mother in their flat, and had digd the death of. strangulation when her mother attacked her in a rage. Josepha was given life imprisonment. Next came the case of Marie Anne David, whose crime. as outlined in the terse phraseology of a French police dossier has' few parallels in the history of cruelty. She smothered her three-year-old child because she was annoyed by its cries. Then, a few weeks later, Blanche Vabre earned herself the sobriquet of " The Tiger Woman," by stabbing to death her 14-year-old stepson after an altercation with his father. She was given a 22-year sentence. Not many weeks had passed when the suburb of Versailles was stunned by another crime. Juliette Brucy, asphyxiated her husband with illuminating gas as he lay asleep. The act was committed, ehe confessed, to obtain her husband's me insurance of 10,000 francs (about ,£80). She was given life. _ The famous old city of Orleans was the scene of the fifth and last of these trage- «. Agogue slew her aged fHw in a fit of anger—a wild, uncontrollable rage which even weeks of solitary confinement following her arrest could . not stifle. Convicted and sentenced to die on the guillotine, she threw the courtroom into an uproar by shouting imprecations at the mack-robed judges. As she was led screaming trom the courtroom, the chief justice ilea, she must suffer the crowning in- ' which tradition has heaped upon ine heads of murderers whose lives are to he guillotine. He decreed she must niarch to the instrument of death in bare in A ■ J Vay thousands of victims went Kution!°" "" Te "° r d ' y ' o£ tlui A'" 1 ", »' the the Revolution, the guillotine Tf the subject of bitter controversv. tLZI A° .' n Y? n tion of one Dr. Joseph , re6 Pectable medical Pal ' ls 1 - whom Carlyle dcto tlf* ° me<l hy a satiric , destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever D]? fo °, b ,f cii . re mortal from his restiogP'ace, the bosom of oblivion." imw- la f ica "y Guillotin described his indention to the .trench Parliament in December, 1789. "With niy machine," he "T1 ZT £ n lnd, ? cree fc choice of words, V lsk your head in a twinklin- and you have no pain " And at .this the staid Chamber burst into gales of laughter, for . e embarrassed and crimson-faced physician had forgotten that in French the word for pain and punishment is one and tne same! But when this macabre outburst had subsided, the doctor's proposal was accepted with enthusiasm, for was this method not quicker and simpler than the then prevalent system of hurling victims against massed bayonets and upturned spears, or drawing and quartering them the market place? • The first guillotine, called thereafter by such picturesque names as La Veuve (the widow), and the Maiden, was erected in the Place de Greve, and the next ten years saw 10,000 of them built in cities throughout Fiance, each claiming a sizable quota of the tenth of a million souls whose blood was spilled by the leaders of the_ revolution. Executions by the guillotine have increased of late, ten murderers' heads dropped into the basket last year. The growth of crimes of violence has inspired the French opponents of capital punishment to labour unceasingly for its abolition, holding it has outlived its usefulness as a deterrent to crime and that the

| "painlessness" which Dr. Guillotin _so ecstatically described is open to serious doubt. French people of course, are familiar ■with the actual aspect of this engine of terror. But it may not be amiss to append a description of its construction and mechanics. The guillotine consists of two upright ■posts surmounted 'by a crossbeam and so grooved as to guide an oblique-edged knife, the back of which is heavily weighted, and to make it fall swiftly and forcibly when the cord 'by which it is held aloft is released. Although the "credit" for its perfection must go to Dr. Guillotin, research workers ascribe its invention to the ancient Persians. England, Scotland and various sections of the Continent also made use of it before it came to 'be known by the name it bears to-day. The Scots referred to the device as "The Maiden," and there is still preserved in the Edinburgh Museum the lethal machine by which the regent, Morton, was decapitated in 1581. Germany used the guillotine during the Middle Ages. It was at various times kept in practise in Genoa and other Italian cities. It Prance, perhaps its most distinguished feminine victim was Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI., whose head dropped into the basked on October 16, 1793. Perhaps its most appropriate client was Antoinette Scierri. This creature came, a few years ago, to the little town of St. Giles, near Nimes, Prance. She was of ©leasing and soothing aspect, and goodlooking as well. She became popular with the villagers, which, as it turned out, was most unfortunate for them. Mile. Scierri's attractiveness soon won her many suitors. Of them all, she preferred a handsome and well-to-do young farmer, named Henri Rossignol. Henri fell desperately in love with Antoinette, and she reciprocated his love, it appeared. The following winter, Rossignol fell ill of influenza. True to her trust Mile. Scierri constituted herself his nurse. She prepared broths and sleeping draughts for him, and watched by his bedside while he tossed deliriously through the night. _ In spite of her tender care and devotion, her fiance failed to mend. In fact, he rapidly grew worse, and finally his family insisted that a professional nurse be engaged. A young woman named Rosalie Gire was sent for. But still Antoinette prepared ail medicines for the patient and waited on him day and night. One evening, ready to enter on her duties, Mile. Gire came into the sick room. ' She was appalled at what ihe saw. Rossignol was writhing on the bed in agony, while his sweetheart sat placidly in a chair consuming a tasty supper ol Champagne, truffles and caviare! Her callous indifference so horrified the other •nurse that she informed the authorities. Antoinette Scierri was arrested and charged with murdering the farmer. She manifested no emotion at the accusation. Meanwhile Rossignol died in torment. It was found at Antoinette's trial that she had had access to an arsenical insecticide, called "pyralion," which was kept on the premises of a M. and Mme. Gonaud, at whose home she had been a visitor. They, by the way, had also died rather distressingly. As the investigation pro : pressed, it ibec&me apparent that ocierri was a wholesale killer. It l>as been esti* •mated that in all, she slew one hundred persons, but a more reasonable estimate .places the number at. thirty. . Whatever the case, she was certainly a fit prey for the iron "widow" that has so often drunk the blood of French villain asses. , '