Back in the Good Old Days....

The Penalties Were a Bit Tougher...
No need for a history lesson on the guillotine - you know what it is and what it was used for. Here in Paris, once in a while, the powers that be would set one up outside of a prison and "take care" of some prisoners. As with most technology, little adjustments were made over time to improve functionality. Turns out, the guillotine didn't work well if it weren't perfectly level. If one leg were higher or lower than the other, the blade would get stuck on the way down towards a neck. So, someone came up with the idea of planting five large flat, perfectly level stones into the ground. They'd then always set the guillotine onto those stones to guarantee a level "playing field."


What's completely amazing to me is that you can still see them in modern Paris. There is just such an example a few blocks from the job. Here, in the middle of the street, the stones are still there. You can see two of them in this photo, one taking up part of a cross-walk.

Here is a close-up of one of them in the middle of the street. You have to ask yourself - what does it say about a city that chooses to keep these on display? They could have simply paved over them but they take care not to. These are in front of what used to be the Grand-Roquette prison on rue de la Roquette. The Prison's nickname was Abbey of the Five Stones, for obvious reasons. One of the prisoners wrote a poem about them:

Oh, I know you well,

footholds for a scaffold;

Immaculate stones,

bearing no signs

of the executioners bloody deeds.

The prison is no longer there, it was demolished and replaced by a park. The outer walls are still there, however, another remnant of a tougher time.