Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1872-05-14
" MONSIEUR DE PARIs.v

This shows how we float along.
/ a4H t.H
4" MONSIEUR DE PARIS"
Death of the Headman of France
The story of M. Heindrleh.
Correspondence of the London Daily News. /
NJ. de Paris is dead. | do not SPEAK
Of the Prince who takes his title from
the French capital, but of that sinister
person who, according to Joseph dc
Maistre, is, after the Priest, the main.
stay of social order, of political tran.
guilty, the eliminator of the rankest
weeds Of humanity; the terror of the
evil,doer, and yet an object of loathing
to-, the just man-the, executioner OF
Paris. NJ. de Paris made his exit from
life stage on the morning of Good Fri.
day. Death gave him but short no
tice. He was, when returning to his
house in the boulevard Beaumarchats
from hearing a stabat at ST. 'Eustache,
taken suddenly i'll, and died some mo-
ments after, jhst as he reached home A
few days previously he had expressed a
fear that he would prove the victim OF
his recently,extended sphere of official
duties; for in point of fact, since M. Du-
faure became Minister of Justice, M. de
Paris had 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 departmental executioners,
whose posts NJ Theirs abolished from
motives of economy. A dreadful
arrear of business fell upon his hands
in consequence of the closing of the
law courts in the invaded departments.
Lemettre the Tropmann Of the North,
was the last person NJ. de Paris sent out
of the world, Three. days before he
presided at the triple execution at
Chartres, and on his way to the Pas de
Calais, he assisted at the decapitation OF
woman who had aided, in 1871, in
numbering a peddler and then attempt
ing to lay her crime at the door of the
Prussians. From fear that if Lemet-
ire were sent by rail from the town
where he was convicted to the scene of
his crimes, where he was to be execu-
ted, the train conveying him might
cross that of the Prince of Wales, he
and M. de Paris, attended by four gend-
armes, were locked up in prison van,
and sent jolting for thirty miles. This
dismal journey greatly fatigued the
headsman, who, when he made it, was
past seventy, and had exercised his
ghastly calling fifty-four years.
The real name of NJ. de Paris was
Aimable Marie Jean Baptiste Heindrich.
He was an Alsatian, and the son of the
public executi6ner of Toulon, where he
made his debut on the guillotine at a
quadruple execution. That (according
to Joseph lie Maistre) instrument of pub
lie health was then infinitely more
clumsy than it now is. Fifty years ago
stolid impassibility and muscular power
were the qualities chiefly looked for in
an executioner. The future NJ. de Paris
possessed these qualities in arare de-
gree, together with faculty for mechan-
ical contriyanee and a strong ambition
to perfect DR.. Guillotine's invention.
Canning, in the "Anti-Ja Jacobin," spoke
of touching with fairy hand the frolic
pit" In his time it required great
amount of muscular force to get through
the execution of any one who made
struggle for life In the best of cases
nothing short of a strong tug at sort of
cable brought down the cold steel knife
upon the patients head. The new
decapitating machine of the Ro-
quette Prison, constructed to re-
place the one solemnly burned
by the Commune, has all Heind
rich's successive Improvements. He
christened it "Jacqueline, and took an
almost paternal pride in pointing out its
+ &c hsnl
duties became wide as the boundaries of
France, he bargained with the Parquet
that, whenever he should be sent to pre-
side at a provincial execution, be was to
take Jacqueline along with him. An
eminent member of the French Bar took
me some years ago with a party of
American Young ladies to see, as Paris
lions, Heindrich and the ancestresses of
Jaequeline, M. de Paris then lived in
the rural suburb Of Valois Champerret.
He inhabited a pretty and very retired
villa in Rue du Bois, just skirting the
Park of Nuilly. The garden was sur
rounded by ivy-oolored walls Some
fine old trees shaded a corner of the
house. Heindrich loved turf and fine
art, and was, when we invaded his
domain, watering a close-shaven lawn,
in the center of which stood a marble |
cupid. The mischieyous little god was
in the act Of letting an arrow fly at a
nymph some yards distant from him.
NJ. de Paris seemed bewilderod at the |
sight of the visitors. The writer Of this
letter was introduced as person want
ing some guillotine statistics for benev-
olent society, and the young ladies as
mere curious sight-seers-the daughters
Of an American Judge. Our cicerone
NJ Heindrich that being un-
able to see ths Chamber Of Horrors in
Blue Boards castle, they we're deter
mined TO have peep at the monster he
had rendered so adrOit. This cOmpli-
ment told. The headmau, who at first
looked very surly, became merely stolid.
He was very tall muscular fellow,
with blue, German eyes, thick, straight,
ash-eolored hair, heavy face, and slug
gish movements. he apologized in very
good French for being caught in his
and asked permission g
Ieave us for a moment TO dress, before
taking us to see four csst-of guillotines
hat we're standing in the coach.house.
Meanwhile he begged US to step into his
iraYing-room, where there was piano