Emmanuel Taïeb
La guillotine au secret: les exécutions publiques en France, 1870-1939.
Paris: Editions Belin, 2011. Collection Socio-histoires. First edition. 9782701156965 317 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.75", shows very light shelfwear. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright.
"The abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981 long overshadowed an equally significant event: the abolition of the public nature of executions in 1939. Since the Revolution, killing was a ritual of violence that could attract tens of thousands of curious people. And there was no shortage of opportunities, because under the Third Republic, there were hundreds of public executions in dozens of cities, including, of course, Paris. What did this bloody theater of the guillotine look like? And how did it end up being relegated to the inside of prisons? Based on judicial and police archives, the notebooks of the executioner Deibler and sources from an era haunted by crime and news items, this book analyzes the progressive contestation of the spectacle of execution. This solitary confinement took place under the impetus of several concomitant movements: the clash sensitivities of the elites, and in particular, journalists who identified with the tortured, competition from imprisonment, or the reluctance of the authorities to organize a guillotine. At the crossroads of political science, anthropology and the history of mentalities, this book reveals the mechanisms by which the Republic civilized capital punishment."