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During the Terror of the French Revolution, the guillotine was set up in the Place de la Revolution, now known as the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France. Thousands of Frenchmen–including the late Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette–were decapitated there. But what’s little known is that Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the man who gave his name to the guillotine, didn’t actually invent this clinical contraption of death.

Today we think of the guillotine as a barbaric method of execution, but in those days it was considered a clean, efficient, and dignified way to die. When in 1789, as a member of the revolutionary Constituent Assembly, the humanitarian Dr. Guillotin suggested that decapitation by a beheading machine should become France’s single method of execution, he was fighting for a more humane and egalitarian death penalty. At the time, only the rich and powerful could afford to pay for a quick execution by sword or axe rather than face the more usual and bloody torture of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, pulled to death by four oxen, or burnt at the stake. As a result of Dr. Guillotin’s request, the guillotine we know today was drawn up and developed by Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the Surgical Academy.

During the Reign of Terror, the guillotine was variously called La Louisette or Le Louison (perhaps after Dr. Louis or indeed after Louis XVI himself), or nicknamed La Veuve (the widow) or “the national razor.” It only became known as La Guillotine–in dubious honor of Dr. Guillotin–after the Reign of Terror was over.

Even in the 18th century, the guillotine was not a new method of execution, however. The English Halifax gibbet, an early version set up in the market place in Halifax, was used from at least 1280 to 1650, and possibly before; in Scotland, the “Maiden” was used from the 16th century and there is evidence that Ireland, Nuremberg, and Milan all had guillotines. But the French guillotine became a chilling symbol of the relentless horrors of the Reign of Terror. Dr. Guillotin himself escaped the use of the decapitation device that bears his name. He died of natural causes in 1814.

Source: The Book Of Secrets