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executed by the guillotine

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memesgoofy | 17:33 Wed 09th Aug 2006 | History
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who was the last person to be executed by the guillotine in England
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Do you know that the guillotine was used in England? I don't think it was. Hanging was the execution method in England for several centuries until it was abolished a few years ago. The guillotine was used in France.

hanging (and earlier beheading with axes) were the English methods, I don't think guillotines were
err, yeah, like Grunty just said
From Wiki

The guillotine outside of France

Just as there were guillotine-like devices in countries other than France before 1792, likewise some countries, especially in Europe, have continued to use this method of execution into modern times.

A notable example is Germany, where the guillotine is known in German as Fallbeil ("falling axe"). It has been used in various German states since the 17th century, becoming the usual method of execution in Napoleonic times in many parts of Germany. Guillotine and firing squad were the legal methods of execution in German Empire (1871-1918) and Weimar Republic (1919-1933). The Nazis employed it extensively: twenty guillotines were in use in Germany which, from 1938, included Austria. In Nazi Germany beheading by guillotine was the usual method of executing convicted criminals as opposed to political enemies, who were usually either gassed, hanged or shot. An exception would be the six members of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance organization, who were beheaded on February 22, 1943. The Nazis have been estimated to have guillotined some 40,000 people in Germany and Austria; possibly more than were beheaded during the French Revolution. The last execution in German Federal Republic occurred on 11 May 1949, when 24 year old Berthold Wehmeyer was beheaded for murder and robbery in Moabit prison in West Berlin. West Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949, East Germany in 1987 and Austria in 1968. In Sweden, where beheading was the mandatory method of execution, the guillotine was used for its last execution in 1910 in L�ngholmen prison, Stockholm.

Although the guillotine has never been used in the United States as a legal method of execution (it had been considered in the 19th century before the electric chair), in 1996 Georgia state legislator Doug Teper proposed the guillotine as a replacement for the electric chair as the state's method of execution to enable
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Oh, well
Was visiting my parents this weekend and he told a story that envolved a ancestor that was the last to be beheaded in England. I was just try to find any information on it.
As has been stated, the guillotine wasn't used in this country. That doesn't mean that people weren't beheaded. An axe was the usual implement used but in some cases, such as for Anne Boleyn, a sword was used.

It sounds as if you might be related to Simon Lord Lovatt. (If you Google that name, you should note that the name is sometimes spelt 'Lovat').
See here:
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/BEC_BER/BEHEADIN G.html
and here:
http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/be head.html

Chris
The Last Guillotine Execution was on September 10, 1977 in Marseilles, France, when the murderer Hamida Djandoubi was beheaded.

The Halifax Gibbet is the English equivalent. The Halifax Gibbet was a guillotine used for public execution from the 13th to the 17th century. The Halifax Gibbet is in Yorkshire, England.

Almost 60 people, both men and woman, were executed by the Halifax Gibbet. The town finally stopped using it in 1650. The Gibbet originally stood at Cow Green but it was later moved to a marked site on Gibbet Street. The actual site of the Gibbet was lost after the 17th century until it was rediscovered in 1839 when workmen discovered the skeletons and skulls of two bodies. Possibly the last two men executed although records of who and when are long lost. The original blade (the head of an axe) was returned to Halifax in 1970. It can be seen at the Calderdale Industrial Museum.
We've never had/used the guillotine in the sense I think you mean in the UK but we did used to have a very similar tool, before it became named after M Guillotine.

See Wikipedia.
... and the Halifax Gibbett is at http://tinyurl.com/f6dz9 ...
very interesting, I never knew about Halifax; disregard my previous answer
Question Author
Thank ya'll for all the help. I think I found what I was looking for. The final Tower Hill beheading took place in 1747, when the 80-year-old Lord Fraser of Lovat was executed for his part in Bonnie Prince Charlie's rising. Lovat was so overweight and unfit that he needed two men to help him climb the steps of the scaffold. Turning to the crowd, he said, "God save us, why should there be such a bustle about taking off an old gray head that cannot get up three steps without three bodies to support it?"

George Selwyn, an eyewitness, wrote that Lovat "died extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery or timidity... He lay down quietly, gave the sign soon, and was dispatched at a blow."

Thanks again
... I am arranging for you to take the place of Lady Jane Grey at http://tinyurl.com/nbeyc, memesgoofy. Lord Lovat was executed by axe, not guillotine, and you have had us chasing around Halifax for nothing ....
If you are related to him, I assume that you are also a relative of Lord Lovat who relieved the Pegasus Bridge in Arnhem in WWII, or ha sthe family line change.
Question Author
I don't know if or how he is related. My father told me he was, but doesn't know for sure. The earliest relative I know of is Mordecai Fraser abt. 1780 from South Carolina.

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