Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/518

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. IT. DEC. 24, '98.

Manning and Bray's ' Surrey ' (vol. iii. p. 485) it is stated that in 1017 a lease was granted by Prince Charles to Sir Noel Caron, Knt., of the site and demesnes of his highness's manor at Kennington, containing 122 acres, for twenty-one years. A foot-note adds :

"Sir Noel Caron possessed a freehold estate in this parish, on which he built a noble house of H shape, with park for deer extending to Vauxhall and Kennington Lane," &c.

Can any expert in South London topography kindly tell me whether the former comprised the latter, as seems to be implied in ' Old and New London ' ? Again, where did Sir Noel Caron live at the time when Queen Elizabeth "often visited him," gave him gold chains, &cJ Apparently at Lambeth, according to Thos. Allen's ' History.'

ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

EVELYN'S 'DIARY.'

(9 th S. ii. 428.)

IT was impossible for Evelyn to make men- tion of the guillotine, for the simple reason that the name was non-existent until eighty- four years after his death. The machine which acquired such evil celebrity during the Reign of Terror was named after the physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), a mem- ber of the Assemblee Constitu&nte, who E leaded before this body on 10 October, 1789, )r the enactment of one kind of punishment for all classes of criminals under capital sentence, namely decapitation a punish- ment hitherto reserved for the nobility and suggested for this purpose the use of a machine like the Italian mannaia (the Nea- politan " frame " referred to by Evelyn), which would do the work expeditiously and with the least suffering. His views were accepted after much discussion ; equality of punishment was decreed on 1 December in virtue of which the Marquis de Favras was hanc/ed for treason on 19 February, 1790 and decapitation was adopted into the penal code in the following year. The employment of a machine was decided on later, but it was not until 20 March, 1792, says Larousse, that the kind of machine to be used was settled in accordance with the report of Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the Academic de Chirurgie, to whom the Assem- blee Legislative had officially submitted the question ; and the first execution by the guillotine took place on the 25th of the fol- lowing month, in the person of a highway- man, Nicolas Jaques Pelletier.

It is generally stated that the guillotine was constructed by a mechanist (Maigne in his 'Diet, des Origines' says a pianoforte maker) named Schmidt, under the direction of Dr. Louis, in consequence of which it received, during the experimental stage, the name Louisette or Petite Louison. But the name it actually bears was devised for it at the beginning of 1790, almost as soon as Dr. Guillotin's proposal became public ; for in the Actes des Apotres, a Royalist journal which appeared weekly from November, 1789, to October, 1791, a piece of satirical verse celebrates

La machine

Qui simplement* nous tuera Et que Ton nommera

Guillotine, f

Concurrently with the substantive thus added to the language, the verb guillotiner was invented in a later sheet of the same periodical. In the sheet which contains the above verse the claim of Mirabeau to com- memoration, by christening the machine Mirabelle (a word already long in use as the name of a plum), was facetiously mooted ; and among the early myths connected with the guillotine the most curious, perhaps, is one that appears in an 'Abrege Historique de la Revolution Franchise,' published in 1802 or 1803, namely, that

" the gallows was replaced on 31 May, 1791, by a new machine called the Guillotine, from the name of Guillotin, who invented it, carrying off the prize from Mirabeau, but for which it would have oeen called Mirabelle."

With regard to the equally groundless story that Guillotin was one of the earliest victims of the machine he had suggested, it may be mentioned that his vehement protests against the excesses of the Terror led to his imprison- ment, which would in all probability have been terminated by his decapitation but for the counter revolution of 9 Thermidor (27 July, 1794).

More about this subject would be crambe repetita to your readers, for the guillotine has been a stock question in ' N. & Q.' from the 1 st Series (vol. xii. p. 319) onwards. I have, however, steered clear of ground already travelled over.

I observe that the ' Encyclopaedia Britan- nica' misspells the doctor's name "Guillo- tine." F. ADAMS.

106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.


 * That is, without suffering.

t Version Premiere, No. X., pp. 11 sqq. In the succeeding sheet it is designated the " chef d'ceuvre de menuiserie de M. Guillotin."