---
title: Times and Seasons
description: Issues of 1844 to 1845.
authors:
  - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
editors:
  - Ebenezer Robinson
  - Don Carlos Smith
  - Smith, Joseph, Jr.
  - Taylor, John
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - newspaper
  - times-and-seasons
  - nauvoo
  - nineteenth-century
periodical: Times and Seasons
volume: 5
number: 16
published: 1844-09-01
publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor
publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois
language: en
type: article
reference: "“Executions-The Guillotine,” *Times and Seasons* 5, no. 16 (September 1, 1844): 633."
printed_title: EXECUTIONS-THE GUILLOTINE.
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-01_5_16
  transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v5n16.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair)
  identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-01_5_16
start_page: 633
end_page: 633
curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1844 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States
  source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-01_5_16
  publication_year: 1844
---

# Executions-The Guillotine

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The London Quarterly Review contains an elaborate but interesting article upon the systemized [systematized] murders of the Guillotine, the origin of the barbarous instrument, and other matters connected with this most terrible feature in the history of the French Revolution. The Guillotine, it appears, was not originally designed with any view to what turned out be its most important characteristic-the great number of victims it could execute in a short space of time-but this bloody instrument was at first proposed on a combined principle of justice and mercy, the inventor contending, that hanging was a lingering and cruel punishment, while death by decapitation must be immediate.

After giving much information in relation to this sanguinary machine, the writer of the article, speaking of the position it occupies in France, says, that the Guillotine remained in June 8th 1794, when the inhabitants of the streets through which the sufferers had to pass, being weary of the heart-rending [heart-rendering] sight, resolved that the cruel instrument should be removed to the Place St. Antoine, in front of the ruins of the Bastile [Bastille]. It stood in this new position, however, but five days, the shop keepers not liking their new neighbor, and having in those brief five days, executed ninety-six persons, it was removed to the Barriere du Trone, where it stood from the ninth of June, to the fall of Robespierre, 27th of July, 1794.

In the forty-nine days, in which it is said to have stood at the Barriere du Trone, it despatched 1270 persons of both sexes, and of all ages and ranks, and it became necessary to build a kind of sanguiduct to carry off the stream of blood; and on the very day when Robespierre fell-even when the slightest interruption would have sufficed to have stopped the fatal procession-forty-nine persons passed to the place of execution! On the 27th of July, at about half past three in the afternoon, just as this last batch of victims were about to leave the Conciergerie, a considerable commotion in the town took place, caused by the revolt against Robespierre.

Here an event occurred which reflected great credit upon Sanson, the chief executioner. He was conducting the prisoners, but observing the disturbance, and seeing Fauquier, the Aecusateur Public, passing the court where prisoners were ascending the fatal carts, on his way to dinner, he ventured to stop Fauquier, and represented to him that there were rumors of a commotion, suggesting whether it would not be prudent to postpone the execution, at least until the morning; Fauquier roughly replied that the law must take its course. He went to dinner, and the forty-nine victims went to the scaffold-whither, in due time he followed them.

The next day the Guillotine was removed back to the scene of its longest triumphs-the Place de la Revolution-where on the 28th of July, it avenged humanity on Robespierre and twenty-one of his followers; the next day sixty-nine; and the day after, thirty more of his associates. The writer in the Quarterly justly adds that, though France is naturally anxious to forget the revolutionary horrors, it behooves the rest of Europe to remember and meditate upon them.