the last guillotine in France was built in this town in Eure

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1957. Algeria has been engaged for three years in a guerre for its independence. While the Algerian National Liberation Front multiplies terrorist actsthe French army uses all means to restore order and this involves in particular summary executions.

To do this, she ritualizes these killings by using the guillotine. A way of making them visible to the general public in order to extinguish any desire to rebellion. It is also a way of establishing a framework around these executions because “it is dangerous to give murderous habits to young people who, having returned to civilian life, risk having lost their sense of reality and respect for human life,” writes Roger Delaporte in his book The major criminal cases of Eure.

End of the guillotine in 1977

As a reminder, the guillotine was born with the French Revolution. Over time, it was used less and less. In France, the last beheading took place on September 10, 1977. However, during the Algerian War, its use increased “to punish Algerian independence fighters”.

200 convicts executed

In order to carry out this disastrous task, Fernand Meyssonnier, official executioner, is sent to Algeria. Himself the son of an executioner, he became his father's assistant in Algiers at the age of 16. In four years, Fernand Meyssonnier executed 200 condemned in Algiers. The killings keep coming.

To keep up the pace, it is necessary to make a new guillotine which will be nicknamed, in a bad omen, The Last Widow.

The General Equipment Reserve Establishment, based in Vernon (Eure), is commissioned to build this tool. We base ourselves on the plans of the guillotine of the prison of health, in Paris, built by Alphonse Berger in 1872. Thus, what would prove to be the last French guillotine was built in Vernon in the Fieschi barracks.

However, the tests did not prove conclusive and today, we do not know what became of the guillotine manufactured in Vernon.

“In the basement of the National Prison Museum in Fontainebleau (Seine-et-Marne), there are still two guillotines returned from Reunion and Guadeloupe but we have lost track of the last widow, due to military secrecy. »

One of the last French executioners

As for Fernand Meyssonnier, he was one of the last French executioners. In 2007, he testified in front of the France 2 cameras, talking about his past as an “executioner”, a term he loathes.

“If the State accepted us, it was because we were fair and without hatred towards the condemned. It is up to the prosecutor, the judge, the jurors, the President of the Republic, to possibly feel guilty. I was the last rung. And I'm proud of it, even today! »

A mission which, however, leaves its mark since he still remembers his first execution: “I saw the condemned man come out, the few steps. The blade fell. I felt so oppressed. »

In 1961Fernand Meyssonnier leaves Algeria to live in the tropics, in French Polynesia, far from these memories. A sign that this role had an impact on him: until his death in 2008, he kept all these objects that accompanied him in his daily life as an executioner: slides, registers, expense reports, etc.

Sources The major criminal cases of Eure by Roger Delaporte and the INA article, The memories of one of the last French executioners.

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