Torture sale called off
A sale of antique torture and execution implements once owned by one of France’s last executioners has been suspended
A COLLECTION of 350 antique torture and execution implements, once owned by one of France’s last executioners, has been called off.
Paris auction house Cornette de Saint Cyr had advertised a “prestige sale” on the theme of “punishments of the past” to be held today.
The plan caused upset, largely because of their previous owner. Fernand Meyssonnier, who died in 2008, was in charge of guillotining criminals in French Algeria through the period of the War of Independence.
Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand had called for the sale to be halted, along with several human rights organisations. It was thought especially inappropriate it should take place now, just as France is marking 50 years since the Evian Accords, which brought the war to an end.
“Everything in the news at the moment came together to make this project highly sensitive,” said auctioneer Bertrand Cornette de Saint Cyr. For example, various documentaries and televised debates have condemned use of torture in Algeria.
Even so, he said, the exhibits were “of major historic interest – retracing the criminal history of France under the ancien régime and the revolutionary massacres”.
The collection includes “pears of anguish” – an instrument designed to be inserted into body parts then spread apart – “hand-crushers”, a guillotine, “constraining masks”, an iron maiden and a hanging rope. There are also historic documents related to periods like the storming of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror. Meyssonnier spent his retirement travelling around Europe collecting them.
They had formerly been on display in a museum of crime and punishment created by Meyssonnier in the Vaucluse. “There are around 30 such museums in Europe,” Mr Cornette de Saint Cyr told Le Figaro, adding several historians had told him they regretted the sale had been called off.
“We decided to be prudent. We didn’t want to hold it at all costs. It was a matter of security. There was a very vindictive atmosphere. It makes people think about society’s relationship with its criminal past.”
