the last time someone was executed by guillotine was in 1977.
the last time someone was executed by guillotine was in 1977.
when was the last time someone was executed by guillotine?
1977
the guillotine remained france's standard method of judicial execution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981. the last person to be executed in france was hamida djandoubi, who was guillotined on 10 september 1977. this was also the last time that the government of a western nation ever executed an individual by beheading.









































section::::precursors.
guillotine
in october 1789 doctor joseph-ignace guillotin, in the interest of finding a more humane method, successfully had the means of execution changed to decapitation by a machine he perfected, the guillotine, built with the help of a paris manufacturer of pianos and harps named tobias schmidt and the surgeon antoine louis. the first person to be executed with the guillotine was the thief nicholas jacques pelletier, on 25 april 1792. after the uprising of the sans-culottes and the fall of the monarchy on august 10, 1792, the guillotine was turned against alleged counter-revolutionaries; the first to be executed by the guillotine was collenot d'angremont, accused of defending the tuileries palace against the attack of the sans-culottes; he was executed on 21 august 1792 on the place du carousel, next to the tuileries palace. the king was executed on the place de la concorde, renamed the place de la revolution, on 21 january 1793. from that date until 7 june 1794, 1,221 persons, or about three a day, were guillotined on the place de la revolution, including queen marie-antoinette on 16 october 1793. in 1794, for reasons of hygiene, the convention had the guillotine moved to the place saint-antoine, now the rue de la bastille, near the site of the old fortress; seventy-three heads were cut off in just three days. in june 1793, again for reasons of avoiding epidemics, it was moved to the place du tron-renversé (the place of the overturned throne, now place de la nation). there, at the height of the reign of terror, between 11 june and 27 july, 1,376 persons were beheaded, or about thirty a day. after the execution of robespierre himself, the reign of terror came to an end. the guillotine was moved to the place de grève, and was used only for the execution of common criminals.
paris in the 18th century