The guillotine was a particularly French method of execution, made popular by the French Revolution and continuing until well into the 20th century. The guillotine offered the doomed convict a mercifully swift death relative to other execution methods, yet it was a gruesome spectacle. The crowds that gathered around a beheading were like those that attended a public hanging elsewhere in Europe and in the US, looking for something novel to see in the days when entertainment was hard to come by. But that wasn't quite the reason. Mass media arose with movies and radio around the turn of the 20th century, yet people still clamored to see an execution for reasons ranging from the morbidly curious to the downright bloodthirsty.
On June 17, 1939, around 600 hundred people gathered at 4 AM to watch the execution by guillotine of convicted serial killer Eugen Weidmann in Versailles. The crowd left satisfied after Weidmann's head was separated from his body. But there was a novel factor in this execution- a film crew had surreptitiously recorded it for posterity. Stills from the execution made the papers and caused an uproar in France.
Read the story of Eugen Weidmann's date with the guillotine and its fallout at Amusing Planet.
brutal, yet in a way, compassionate
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The guillotine brought down by cutting edge technology. Ironic.
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I wonder how many people would willingly attend a public execution in 2021 or beyond? I would think, if it were televised on tv, that it's ratings would break viewing records in many countries. I hope this will never happen, ever.
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Depending which country you live in, public executions happen in the streets all the time, whether you agree to attend or not. I know this for a fact, because my manager at work is a retired Marine, and he saw it. And for reasons that would probably shock you. Very minor offenses, at least according to our western standards. "b-but marines hurt people too" I know, but that doesn't change the insane reality of what everyone else is doing.
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Doesn’t look like 600 folks though. And they look like a calm, polite bunch at that.
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I think it is somekind of strange that today executions are not made public e.g. by federal livestream. Everybody should be able to check what the state is doing and how he does it.On the other hand i ask myself when the sarco-pod will be ab-used for the first time as new execution method.
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If you go to Paris, don't miss this https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJdnqLRj8ncq8uiP6">place. This is where the guillotine was.
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