What It Feels Like... To Chop a Man's Head Off

By Fernand Meyssonnier, 75, former executioner

As told to Sarah Richards
August 2006, Volume 146, Issue 2

Meyssonnier worked on a guillotine team led by his father in French Algeria. From 1947 to 1961, he participated in two hundred executions.


Some people told me it took courage to guillotine people. But it’s not courage; it’s the ability to remain composed. You need absolute confidence.


When the condemned were brought out to the prison courtyard, they’d see the guillotine right away. Some were brave, but others collapsed or pissed themselves. I’d have to reach my whole body into the guillotine to pull the guy’s head forward. Had my father accidentally activated the blade, it would have cut me in half. Once I’d positioned the head on the bascule, my father would lower the demilunette. That’s the wooden bar that holds the head in place. Then I’d pull as hard as I could with my hands hooked behind the guy’s ears and say, “Vasy mon père!” There wasn’t even enough time to say it twice. If things went on too long, they had time to react, to turn their head and bite me. Or the guy could retract his head. You had to be careful because the blade came so close to your fingers. Some of the prisoners would cry, “Allah akbar!” until the blade cut off their breath. The first time, I remember thinking, It’s so fast! Then it became routine.


When the head comes off, there are two arteries in the body that spray blood ten feet. It’s like pitching two glasses of water. I think the more the guy was scared, the farther the blood projected. But the head itself doesn’t bleed much. The eyes move around some, but that’s about it. The trembling lasts only a few seconds.


I put my hand on a decapitated guy’s chest once. It was beating like the spark plugs in a car. You pull a plug, the car starts to run poorly: clack, clack, clack. It beats in tremors, and in the space of maybe ten, twenty seconds, that was it. The heart was no longer beating.
One time, we had a guy who fought us, and we were trying to tie him up, but he was incredibly strong. The guards punched him, and his head was all mashed up. When it was time to grab his head, my hands kept slipping because of the blood. We managed to drop the blade, but by the time I was holding his head in my hands, there was blood all over my face. I could feel the heat from it. Three or four guards fainted when they saw me there, this head in my hands, my face covered in blood.