THE GUILLOTINE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 240, 7 December 1877, Page 15

THE GUILLOTINE.

"We lately encountered the following curious paragraph in a file of papers for the year 1838 :—": — " A memoir has recently been presented to the Academy of Sciences, on the subject of death by decollation which will cause an investigation to take place, under the authority of Messrs. Majendi and Floreas. Guillotin, the inventor of the guillotine, as well as other distinguished physiologists, was of opinion that no physical suffering attends the act of decapitation. Summering and £astel entertain different views." (Here follows a series of experiments upon animals, whose sufferings after the loss of their heads seemed to be extreme.) " Mojou, professor of physiology at Genoa, having produced at Paris a system of investigation of the results of the guillotine, states that, having exposed two heads, a quarter of an hour after decollation, to a strong light, the eyelids closed suddenly. The tongue, which protruded from the lips, being pricked with a needle, was drawn back into the mouth, and the countenance expressed sudden pain. The head of a criminal named Tillier being submitted to examination after the guillotine, the head turned in every direction from whence he was called by name A report hitherto treated as fabulous, may therefore be believed ; that when the executioner gave a blow on the face to Charlotte Corday's head, the countenance expressed violent indignation. Fontelle asserts that he has frequently seen the heads of guillotined persons move their lips ; and his memoirs contain many other apparently incredible, but equally well authenticated facts. Siveling declaies, that by touching the spinal marrow, the most horrible demonstrations of agony succeed. It appears on the present showing, that the guillotine is the most cruel mode of destruction ever yet devised, since no limit can be placed to the agonies of death after its operation. The following circumstance is perfectly authentic : — A few years since a great criminal was to be guillotined at Abbeville and a very worthy man, a glazier (one of the brothers of charity, who sees to the burial of malefactors and others, who have nobody besides to give them decent interment without remuneration), sought and obtained from he proper authorities the favour of undertaking at his own expense

the burial of the condemned. The kind brother stood on the scaffold with a coffin ready to receive the body as the head was taken off (every one knows that decapitation by the guillotine is instantaneous), which, when done, it was immediately unstrapped from the board, thrown intothe'ehest, whose lid was put down, but not fastened, and our brother of charity, bearing his burden on his shoulders, set off with it through the market place, where the execution took place, and which was a tolerably spacious one, to the place where he prepared it for interment. The worthy brother declared that the trunk of the guillotined criminal kicked so violently whilst he was carrying it through the square that he thought the lid of the coffin would be kicked off or the bottom out.