The Eye

OK, I hear you say, isn’t the first time and the last time the same thing, when it comes to removing someone’s head? Well, yes, of course, but in this case I am referring to the last execution by guillotine in France.

It took place on September 10th, 1977, at 4.40am.

A Tunisian immigrant living in Marseilles, Hamida Djandoubi, was executed for the torture-slaying of his girlfriend. He had killed her in revenge, after she reported to authorities that he had tried to force her into prostitution.

The guillotine was not native to France, despite its associations with the French Revolution.
The guillotine was adopted by Louis XVI as a humane form of execution. Louis himself was soon to find out just how humane it really was. As did the Djandoubi nearly two hundred years later.

His appeal denied, Djandoubi mounted the scaffold at 4:40 a.m. on the 10th. Marcel Chevalier, France’s chief executioner, dropped the blade. The death penalty in France, was abolished in 1981.