The guillotine was an instrument of execution developed during the French Revolution. It was first presented as a new, more efficient and humane replacement to the gallows, which were extremely unpredictable. Hanging a person always ensured their death, but if the rope was too long, the person’s head could be pulled from their body, and a rope too short would cause them to wriggle for up to 30 minutes during a slow suffocation process.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a French physician who developed and promoted the guillotine, hoping for a more civilized form of execution. Unfortunately, it was so easy that thousands were executed by it. The first person executed by the machine was Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on April 25, 1792.
He was a common criminal and highwayman, and after attacking a civilian and killing him was arrested and ordered to death. The National Assembly had recently ordered decapitation the only “enlightened” form of execution permissible in France, and Pelletier was forced to wait for three months while the first guillotine was being constructed!
When his day came, he was decapitated in front of a rather large crowd who were eager to see the new machine in use. However, almost all of them were disappointed and began to boo. They had come to see a show, not a simple decapitation.
They demanded the return of hanging as a form of capital punishment, yet even with their appeals, the guillotine caught on and made quite the mark in history.