Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.The Guillotine Falls
The cold steel blade, sandwiched between two upright wooden shafts, is quietly carted into the prison's exercise yard before dawn. The convict is aroused at 5:30 and offered a cigarette and a glass of rum. Then, bound and blindfolded, he is strapped, face down, neck bared, to the shoulder-high plank. A switch trips and the heavy, razor-sharp blade falls.
Ever since 1789 when Joseph-Ignace Guillotin advocated swift and painless decapitation as a way to put people to death, the guillotine, designed by others, has served as a uniquely French form of capital punishment....
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