The day I really put my neck on the line

The guillotine was last used to execute criminals in 1977. however, I nearly became one of its victims many years later. It happened in 1989 when I was visiting Paris with my elderly mother. Mum was a very keen historian. Seeing a notice announcing an exhibition in honour of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, she insisted that we went. The show was held in a large hall in the environs of the Conciergerie, the prison where all the unfortunate ‘Aristos’ had been held prior to execution. Surprisingly, nobody else was present apart from a gendarme sitting with his feet up on a table by the door, and engaged in a furious row with his female ‘other’ on the phone. At the far end of the hall was a guillotine with a note on it saying that this was the machine that had executed Louis XVI. The executioner Charles-henri Sanson, after completing his job, had taken the blade home and hidden it in his attic where it had been found when the building was wrecked generations later. There was a note on it, saying that as it had done its ‘sacred’ job, he didn’t want it sullied by aristocrats any more! For a hoot, I decided to try the thing out for size. Raising the ‘lunette’ neck trap, I lay on the bench and stuck my head through the hole while my mum took a picture. Very funny — until I realised that I couldn’t get my head out again. Just as you can open a drawer but have difficulty in closing it again, so the wooden trap wouldn’t budge. Twisting my head around, I could see the menacing blade five feet above my head and panicked. My mum ran over to the lovelorn gendarme and begged for assistance. This worthy came over and blasted me with a pile of Gallic invective before rushing off to ring for the pompiers.

When the firefighters arrived, they fell about laughing, and then, after sussing out what was happening, conveyed to me by signs that the hanging blade looked very comme si,

comme sa, suggesting that it looked very dodgy. Getting two firemen to hold a crowbar over my neck, they wrestled with what must have been warped wood until I was released — and handed a very hefty bill!

Nearly 30 years on I still have nightmares about it!

neil Murphy, rotherham, South Yorks.