Rock Island Daily Argus

THE TOILET OF DEATH,

Preparing French Criminals for the Fall of the Guillotine's Knife.

Toward 4 or 5 o'clock, when everything is ready outside, the warden of the prison, accompanied by several officials, goes to the condemned man's cell, and, shaking him by the shoulder, announces that his demand for a pardon has been rejected, says a Paris letter. As soon as the prisoner has dressed himself he is, if he so desires, left alone with the chaplain for a few moments: afterward he is led to the toilet room. First, his shirt collar is cut away sufficiently to allow the guillotine knife to fall upon his bare neck: then he is fastened with a cord starting from the shoulders and connecting with another cord that binds the two wrists; a third cord goes from the wrist to the knees, where it is joined to another cord already passed around the legs. Thus strapped the culprit is obliged to march as straight as an I, with his head thrown back. When the preparations are ended the procession starts for the guillotine, the prisoner being supported by two of the headsman's aids and accompanied by the executioner, the chaplain and the other officials. The huge prison doors are thrown open and the first object the condemned man sees is the black trapeziform knife, which, contrary to the general impression, is not concealed from his gaze. The distance from the door to the guillotine is scarcely twenty steps, and as soon as the criminal reaches the swinging board the chaplain quits him, the executioner seizes him and pushes him on to the bascule. Pan! Pan! a click and a thud; the fall of the knife, the heavy sound of the body falling into the basket. The movements are almost simultaneous. The knife falls. The criminal disappears.

"As soon as the ceremony is over the body is placed in a wagon and conveyed to Ivry cemetery, where it is buried in the trench field. When the parents reclaim the body and it is interred in another part of the cemetery no name is ever put upon the headstone, in order not to excite public curiosity. When the body is not reclaimed the prefect or police authorizes the faculty of medicine to take it. Strictly speaking, the corpse ought not to be delivered to the faculty until after twenty-four hours, this delay being accorded to the family to make its demand; but the custom is to give up the body immediately after a simulated burial when the authorities are certain that it will not be reclaimed. During the whole of this lugubrious ceremony the chief executioner never touches the victim. The toilet and all the operations that require contact with his person are performed by the aids, —Paris Letter."