Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

He was also a pacifist and, motivated by humanitarian concerns, in December 1789 he introduced into the Assembly six propositions aimed at creating a new and more humane penal code, one which treated all men the same and did not distinguish, in the penalties imposed, between different ranks. The second article of this new code recommended that capital punishment should henceforth consist of decapitation by means of a new and simple mechanism. The Assembly spent time examining Dr Guillotin’s recommendations, before adopting them, and during the debates a journalist asked–sarcastically and rhetorically, for the new mechanism had not yet been designed, let alone built–‘Should this device bear the name of Guillotin or Mirabeau?’ Guillotin did not either design or build the instrument that did, indeed, come to bear his name. The designer was another doctor, Antoine Louis (at one stage the plan was to call the new device a ‘Louisette’), while the man who actually constructed the execution machine was a Monsieur Guedon or Guidon, the carpenter who normally provided the state with scaffolds.