EXECUTIONERS ALL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 13 November 1926, Page 11

EXECUTIONERS ALL

rpHE month of September marked one of the grimmest of bi-eentenaries, for it is just two hundred years since Charles Sanson, the second of the famous “Sanson dynasty” of executioners, died in Paris. This family held office without a break from 1684 to 1840. The Sansons, who wmre executioners not only for Paris, but the whole of France, prided themselves, like the official of “Saint Joan,” upon the “mystery” of the craft. In the eighteenth century the public executioner in France —“the executioner (le la haute justice,” or, as he was known during the Revolution, the “Vengeur du peuple”—was a person ot some dignity as well as of importance. Charles Henri Sanson was reputed to be a man of culture, one who, according to the most authentic records, was charged with a cruel duty, but, nevertheless, was without any feeling of cruelty himself.” The last of the line, Henri-Clement Sanson was a handsome man, of elegant and, noble form, of gentle and agreeable pres-

The first Sanson to be appointed public executioner (1(584) was an officer of j a good regiment, and Governor of i Dieppe. Another was well known as a musician, and had some literary reputation. Charles Henri himself, who officiated from 1758 to 1795, held salons in Paris for the benefit of “journalists and Englishmen seeking violent emotion.” During the regime of Charles Henri, public opinion began to become dissatisfied with the various horrors of punishment meted out for capital offences. The Penal Code of September 25, 1791, decreed that in the future .“the penalty of death shall take the form of a simple deprivation of life,

SANSONS' TERRIBLE CALLING

and there shall be no torture for the condemned criminals; every condemned man shall have his head cut off.” Thereupon began some intensive research into the best, simplest, and most humane way of cutting off a man’s head. Charles Henri Sanson read a paper on the subject before the Paris authorities. He analysed the principles by which the patient should be spared all pain, made an impassioned plea against the practice of executing a batch of men together, so that those who came late in the order of their going had to pass through the horror of seeing their predecessors go; made an elaborate case for resharpening the weapon after each execution, so as to minimise the danger of non-success at the first blow, and prescribed the rules of good conduct for condemned men, showing how necessary it was that they should not obstruct the executioner, nor be afraid (fear leading to unpleasantness), but should remain docile, firm, and quiet. His horrible realism on that occasion was largely responsible for the substitution of the guillotine for the sword in executions.

After Dr. Guillotin had invented his famous instrument in 1792, it was decided to give it a ceremonial test. Charles Henri Sanson, his two brothers, and his son were the judges. Three corpses were guillotined at the hospital of Bicetre. The Sansons were satisfied. for the new instrument “cut off the heads with the quickness of a look, and the bones were severed clean.” Charles Henri thereupon entered upon the ghastliest chapter in the family history by acting as executioner during the French Revolution. The heads of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin, Louis XVII., fell under the guillotine worked by him.