Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (; 28 May 1738 – 26 March 1814) was a French physician, politician, and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out executions in France, as a less painful method of execution than existing methods. Although he did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for it. The actual inventor of the prototype was a man named Tobias Schmidt, working with the king's physician, Antoine Louis.
Early life and education
Guillotin was born on 28 May 1738 in Saintes, France, the second son of Joseph-Alexandre Guillotin and Catherine Agatha Martin. Legend has it that he was born prematurely because his mother was in distress after hearing the screams of a man being tortured to death on the breaking wheel.
Guillotin's early education was by the Jesuits in Bordeaux and he earned a Master of Arts degree at the College of Aquitaine of the University of Bordeaux in December 1761. The essay that he wrote to earn the degree impressed the Jesuits so much that they invited him to become a professor of literature at the Irish College in Bordeaux. However, he left after a few years and travelled to Paris to study medicine, becoming a pupil of Antoine Petit. He gained a diploma from the faculty at Reims in 1768 and his doctorate at the School of Medicine in Paris in 1770, which also gave him the title of Doctor-Regent. This allowed him to teach medicine in Paris.
Career
In Paris, Guillotin became a well-known physician. By 1775, he was concerned with issues of torture and death. That year, he wrote a memo proposing that criminals be used as subjects in medical experiments. Although he recognised that as cruel, he considered it preferable to being put to death. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism", which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it and Guillotin was appointed a member, along with Jean Sylvain Bailly, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Antoine Lavoisier, and Benjamin Franklin. The commission declared Mesmer to be a fraud, and this put Guillotin in the public eye.
Political career and guillotine
In December 1788, Guillotin drafted a pamphlet entitled Petition of the Citizens Living in Paris, concerning the proper constitution of the Estates-General. The French parliament attempted to suppress his pamphlet and summoned him to give an account of his opinions, but the crowd during his testimony was very much in support of him, and he was released, which served to increase his popularity. On 2 May 1789, he became one of 10 Paris deputies in the Estates-General of 1789 and was secretary to the body from June 1789 to October 1791. On 20 June 1789, the National Assembly, as the members were now calling themselves, found itself locked out of its chamber. Guillotin suggested they reconvene in a nearby jeu de paume court, where the members swore the Tennis Court Oath, vowing "not to separate and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established".
As a member of the assembly, Guillotin initially directed his attention towards medical reform. As a member of the Poverty Committee, he toured the Hôtel-Dieu and contributed to the report that exposed the unsanitary conditions there. He also became first chair of the Health Committee and submitted a bill for medical reform in 1791.
At the same time, he was also concerned with criminal law reform. His experiences as a doctor had led him to oppose capital punishment: at first, he attempted to abolish it, but was unsuccessful. At that time, beheading in France was typically by axe or sword, which did not always cause immediate death. Additionally, beheading was reserved for the nobility, while commoners were typically hanged, which could take a long time, as the techniques whereby the victim's neck was broken by the noose had not yet been invented. Other methods included burning at the stake, the breaking wheel, death by boiling, and dismemberment. Guillotin realised that, if he could not eliminate executions, he could at least make them more humane.