Jules-Henri Desfourneaux

Who was Jules-Henri Desfourneaux?

Jules-Henri Desfourneaux was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years. Like all French executioners since 1792 his method of application of the death penalty was beheading by guillotine.

Desfourneaux was recruited by his predecessor Anatole Deibler and attended his first execution as second assistant in 1909. Following the death of Deibler in 1939 - the latter having died of a heart attack in a Metro station while en route to his 401st execution - he was elected to chief and was in charge of the last public execution in France on June 17, 1939, when he guillotined the five-time murderer Eugène Weidmann.

This execution was also notable as it is one of the few ever filmed, having been shot from a private apartment near the prison. For reasons unknown, Desfourneaux insisted that Greenwich rather than summertime dawn should be the official hour. This meant that contrary to custom, Weidmann was executed in broad daylight.