The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-04-06 00:00:00

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1872,

DEATH OF THE SARIS HEADSMAN.
News from Paris lit! rise as that on Good FridayT 31. de
Paris departed this bict th,. age of seventy years, after a
rather sanguinary carom, which he commenced at Toulon
when he was resteees years old The name of the public exe-
cutioner was lieindrich, and his death appears to have Peen
sudden and unexpected, as he had only Just returned Irons a
proviheial tour with his travelling guillotine' improved and
rendered more humane than it used to be lsy himself. Be-
fore the fall of the Empire there used to be several execu-
tioners in France, but through a love of centralisation or
economy the Republic sameentrated the office, and Nl. do
Paris was named headsman for all France. As soon as the
civil war was over he built a new guillotine on improved
principles, the old one having been burnt 4tu the Boulevards
by the Communists, who were opposed to capital punish-
ment. Baying to do duty in ,the Prolfinces, Ileindrich had
et vats built, in which he carried about La l&re Guillotine,
and he cents slept in the carriage with the dreadful instru-
ment. The Paris Corr:spends nt of the Daily Sew, gives the
following tuteresUng sketch of lleindriels and his lune-
Was

M. de Paris made his exit from life's stage on the
morning of Good Friday. Bath gave him but a short
notice. Ho was, when returning to his house in the
Boulei aril Beatunardiais from hearing a Slated at St.
Eustache, taken suddenly ill, and died some moments
after, just as he reached home. A few days previously
he expressed a fear that he would prove the victim of
his recently extended sphere of official duties; for,
in wild of feet, since M. Outman became Minister
of Justice, M. de Paris had a right to the style and
title of "M. de France.' Within the last ten months,
he had to do the work of the eighty. four departinental
executioners, whose pests M. Thiers abolished
from notices of economy. A dreadful arrear of busi-
ness fell upon hit hand in consequence of the closing
of the law courts in the invaded departments.
Lernettre, the Tropmasin of the North, was the last
person M. de Parisi seht out of the world. Three
days before, he presided at the triple execution of
Chartree ; and on his way to the PB.B de Calais
he assisted at the decapitation of a woman who had
aided, in 1871, in murdering a pedlar, and then
attempted to lay her crime at the door of the
Prussians. FINAn a fear that if Lemettre were
sent by rail from the town where he was convicted to
the scene of his crimes, where lie was to be executed,
the train conveying him might crime that of the Prince
of Wales, he and A.E. de Paris, attended by four gen-
darmes, were locked up in a lit-icon van, and tent jol-
ting for thirty miles distance over a roughly-paved
road. This dismal journey greatly fatigued the heads-
man, who, when he made it, was past seventy,
anti had exercised his ghastly calling fifty-four years.
The real name of M. de Paris was Aimahle Marie
Jean Baptiste Heindrich. lie was an Alsatian, and
the son of the labile executioner of Toulon, where
be made his darut on the guillotine at a quadruple
execution. That lemon-ling to Joseph he Maistre)
instrument of public health was then infinitely more
clumsy than it now is. Fifty years ago stolid
impassibility and muscular power were the quali-
ties chiefly looked for in an executioner. The
future AL de Paris possessed these qualities in a
rare degree, together with a faculty for mechanical
contrivance and a strong ambition to perfect
Dr. Guillotin's invention. . . . The new decapitat-
ing machine of the Roquette Prison, constructed to
replace the one solemnly burned by the Commune, has
all Reindrich's mcce sire improvement% lie christened
it Jacqueline, and took an almest paternal pride in
pointing out its perfections. When the sphere of his
duties became wide as the boundaries of France, he bar-
gained with the Parquct that, whenever he should be
sent to preside at a provincial execution, he was to
take Jacqueline along with him. Au eminent member
of the French liar took me some years ago with a
party of American young ladies to see, as Paris lions,
Heindrich and the ancestresses of Jacqueline. M.
de Paris then lived in the rural suburb of Valois
Chaniperret He inhabited a pretty and very retired
villa in the Rue du Bois, just skirting the park of
Neuilly. The garden was surrounded by ivy covered
walls. Some fine old trees shaded a corner of the house.
Heindrich loved turf, and tine art, and was, when
we invaded his domain, watering a close-shaven lawn,
in the centre of whish stood a marble Cupid. The
mischievous little god was In the act of letting an
arrow fly at a nymph some yards distant from
him. M. de Paris seemed bewildered at the sight
of the visitors. The writer of this letter was
intneluced as a person wanting some guillotine
statisties. for a benevolent society, and the young ladies
as Mere curious sightseers—the daughters of an
l'inerioran judge. Our eberone informed M. Ileindrich,
that, being unable to see the Chamber of Horrors in
Blue Beard's Castle, they were deter mined to have a
1-reep at the monster which he had rendered so adroit.
Phis compliment told. The headsman, who at first
looked very surly, became merely stolid. He was a
very tall, muscular fellow, with blue German eyes,
thick, straight, ash-coloured hair, heavy face, and
sluggish movements. He apologised in very good
French, for being caught in his shirt sleeves, and
asked permission to leave us for a moment to dress,
before taking us to see four cast-off guillotines
that were standing in the coachhouse. Meanwhilg, he
begged us to step into his drawing-room, where there
was a piano and an easel with paints and paint-
brushes lying near it. An old servant who stole out of
an adjacent kitchen during her master's absence to
chat with the strangers' informed us that they were
bought for the young lady, then under a disguised
name at the most fashionable convent school in
Paris. The "young lady" was Heindrich's adopted
daughter. She knew nothing of her putative father's
profession. There wasalso a `' young gentleman" at the
Prince Imperial's Lycee, near Vanves. Before the master
of the house returned, the garrulous crone managed to
enlighten us BA to his domestic arrangements, and the
inatinerin which he was summoned from his household
gods to discharge his public functions. A lancer
brought him the surnmone from the Parquet, invariably
at nine in the evening. Horrible detail—when the
fatal missive was received the headsman, after order-

fog a solid repast for three in the morning, in order
to strengthen his nerves, went into the coach-
house with an assistant, who served him for a
gardener, to operate on a calf, which he kept for
the purpose of rehearsing. The headsman returned,
wearing his official suit of black, and a white cravat
He did the honours of the coachhouse with quiet ease,
offered to send for a calf, which he said would cost
him nothing, whereupon to test some recent improve-
ments he had effected in his instrument. One of the
questions put to him by me, in my assumed character
of a member of a benevolent society, was, whether he
thought the separated head continued to live after it
rolled into the basket. He pondered a few minutes, as
if to collect Ida memory, and then related instances
which went to support an affirmative answer. His
experience was very extensive, and he thought he had
better data to go upon than no matter what member
of the Academy of Sciences. How many persons had
passed through his bands? 139 ! For a moment the
idea crossed my mind that Heindrich might be haunted
by the heads f those he had the most trouble in exe-
cuting. But he appeared 80 unimaginative, not t say ,
coldly stolid, that I half credit what he related to
us of a woman's head making a faint effort to at
at bun, and the iielent contortions of Orsini's facial
oluseles. Heindrich took a pride in his thorough
knowledge of his business. In point of throughness—
to compare small things with great—he was in his way
a Moltke On the eve of Tropmann's execu-
tion M. de Paris passed three hours in the parlour of
the Governor of the Roquette prison, chatting on pro-
fessional matters with a group of French journalists.
The conversation happening to turn on the tortures
inflicted on Chinese and Persian criminals, M. de Paris
said :" I haveread of what they call in Chinathe torture
of the ten thousr.nd bits of flesh, which consists of cut-
ting a living man into mince meat. But the brutes
engaged to do the work are or grossly ignorant, that
not one of th, m knows exactly where to find the joint."
Heindrich obtained the past of public executioner
of Paris against 552 competitors. He had a fixed
salary of 9,000 f. a year, a " gratification " of 150 f. for
every execution, an allowance for cabs and calves, and
for coffee and brandy on the mornings on which he
exercised his odious calling.