This original report, made by a reporter who witnessed the guillotine execution of Danvers, is the first mention I have found on the bloodiness and spurting that results after a person’s head is lopped off. It is the reason why the head executioner and his assistants wore black pants and long, black coats. It was to hide the blood that spurted onto them.
Guillotine in Public
Carnival at the Prison Gate
Everything betokened a fete and public holiday, from the peasants in their Sunday best to the string and brass bands playing in all directions, while hundreds of men and women danced and sang, and in a word gave themselves up to a general rejoicing in the streets when I arrived (said a Daily News representative on January 26) in this usually pleasant southern town of Carpentras, some 60 miles from Marseilles, yesterday at noon. It was the execution of the farm hand Danvers, the miscreant who brutally murdered his master and mistress nearly a year ago.
It was the execution more than the carnival that had induced several thousand visitors from Marseilles and from neighboring towns and villages to travel thither in the special trains run by the obliging and enterprising railway company.
In normal times the population of Carpentras is 12,000. Yesterday and until today – it has been fully 20,000. “Yes,” said the principal inhabitant to me, “Carpentras has never been so full. And I regret it, because, as Mayor of the town, I am an abolitionist.”
Bethune, where I went the other day to see Abel Pollet and his fellow scoundrels meet their down at the hands of M. Deibler, was dark and gloomy. Carpentras, throughout my brief visit, has been all merriment and gaiety, yet the latter spectacle was the more depressing of the two.
In front of the executioner’s hotel, people in costumes and innumerable other carnival personages clamored for “M. de Paris” to appear. “Vive Deibler!” was the general cry, followed every time by “Death to Danvers!” Then, “To the prison!” shouted a dozen harlequins.
Card Games and Hot Wine
And to the prison they went, and almost immediately beneath the window of the cell where the condemned man sat, unconscious as yet of his impending doom, these fearful merrymakers chanted slowly and sepulchrally the “De Profundis.”
At that moment, Danvers was playing cards with his gaolers. He started up in terror and cried, “What is that? Tell me immediately if I am to die. That noise terrifies me.”
When he had finished his game of cards he was given a punch of hot wine, and then, on retiring to his bed, he was, ironically enough, about the only person who slept in Carpentras last night, while Deibler and his four assistants were busily engaged in putting up the guillotine on the Place d’Ingulmbert, a small square facing the gloomy black prison.
The sinister apparatus was placed only a few yards away, to the left of the great forbidding portals of the gaol, and the space reserved for the execution was kept clear by a large body of gendarmes and regular troops.
The Execution Site
Only the officials whose presence is required by law, and a certain number of journalists – of whom I was one – were permitted to enter the reserved area.
Behind the soldiers, who were massed across the entrances to the surrounding streets, stood on tiptoe on the ground or on improvised stands of various kinds, and all of them elbow to elbow, sometimes packed together almost like sardines in their tin boxes, were some fifteen thousand people – peasants and bourgeois in their ordinary attire, and numbers of the aforesaid people in costumes.
They could see nothing of the execution, however, so firmly did the troops keep them back. Nor were there any spectators overlooking the square, for the entire site opposite the prison was occupied by the warehouse of MM. Valabregue, relatives of Commandant Dreyfus, and strong advocates of the abolition of capital punishment, who put up their shutters at ten o’clock yesterday morning, and did not take them down till today, when the excitement attendant upon the execution was over.
Danvers Before the Guillotine
So, fortunately, there was but little scope for ordinary sightseers when at seven o’clock this morning, Danvers appeared at the prison door, trembling and in a state of collapse, supported on either side by the executioner’s assistants. When he was placed on the board of the guillotine, Danvers struggled violently, and had to be held down by main force.
A few moments passed, and M. Deibler pulled his head into position by taking hold of his ears. And then the deadly knife fell.
Blood Splashed
A hideous and abominable spectacle! As at Bethune, the executioner and his assistants were splashed with blood when the head fell into the basket half filled with sawdust.
“Horrible!” cried my friend the Mayor of Carpentras who, although a strong supporter of the abolition of the death penalty, was by reason of his official position, obliged to be present at the execution.
And still the rejoicings went on round about the prison long after the grim tragedy had been officially consummated.
Tonight, as I telegraph, the carnival continues more wild and scandalous than ever. A quadrille called “The Dance of Death” is being executed by roistering dancers on the public square.
In the cafes, the executioner’s health is being drunk by half-tipsy customers.
Such is the state of degradation to which the usually pleasant town of Carpentras has been reduced by a public execution.
Source: The Wyalong Advocate and Mining, Agricultural and Pastoral Gazette. Saturday, April 10, 1909.
