Sale Of Guillotine Divides France

A 150-year-old guillotine with "a few dents on the blade" will go under the hammer in Paris on Wednesday.

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Jul, 2018 ) :A 150-year-old guillotine with "a few dents on the blade" will go under the hammer in Paris on Wednesday.

The 10-foot (three-metre) tall instrument of execution which was used to dispatch criminals in France until 1977 is in working order.

But the Drouot auction house insisted that the model was built as a replica and has never been used to behead anyone.

The sale of guillotines has been highly controversial in France where the death penalty was only abolished in 1981, with the French auction watchdog already objecting to the auction.

"They should not be selling this guillotine," a spokesman told the Parisien newspaper. "Objects like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and instruments of torture are sensitive.

" That did not, however, stop another going for 220,000 Euros ($234,000) in the same saleroom in 2011 when US pop star Lady Gaga was reportedly among the bidders.

Nor does the watchdog have the power to stop the proceedings because the guillotine is part of a bankruptcy sale.

With a reserve price of between 5,000 and 8,000 euros, auctioneers expect plenty of interest. However, a similar apparatus valued at 40,000 euros failed to sell in the western city of Nantes four years ago.

And in 2012 the French culture ministry stepped in to stop the sale of 812 objects belonging to the last French executioner in Algiers.

Fernand Meyssonnier had executed 200 people there when it was part of France, most of them fighters for Algerian independence.