Crimescribe

Executioners are, by nature, a divisive group of people. Some people admire what they do and see a useful social purpose in their doing it. Others look down on people prepared to kill in cold blood, seeing them as Society’s assassins or the ultimate expression of tyranny, the State presuming the right to kill its own citizens. In their own way they are perhaps as divisive as the penalty they inflict. Even those who pride themselves on doing the job as quickly and cleanly as possible, Albert Pierrepoint for instance, still find themselves hated by some.

Of all executioners, the most reviled are the convict variety. Within the underworld and justice system few characters are more loathed than informers prepared to break Society’s rules when it suits, then betray their fellow criminals to save themselves. Snitches, stoolies, grasses and rats are despised by law-breakers and law-enforcers alike, but not as much as those who kill their fellow-criminals to better their own situation.

In French Guyana’s Penal Administration nobody was more hated. Guards loathed them for being criminals in the first place and selling out the underworld as well. As much as they loathed them, they also had to protect them. Being prepared to kill their own kind for better food, nicer clothes and a small house outside the prison walls made convict-executioners permanent targets for all prisoners.

The Penal Administration despised them as much as everybody else, but knew it needed them. Somebody had to do the work and there were always convicts prepared to suffer the scorn and risks for better conditions earned by the head. Isidore Hespel, known universally as ‘Le Chacal’ (‘The Jackal’) was one of them.

From its inception in 1852 the Penal Administration had employed convict-executioners. They were cheaper than the regular kind and, being convicts, were always on available whenever needed. Just as executioners in metropolitan France were known by where they resided, France’s chief executioner being ‘Monsieur de Paris’ at the time, the office of ‘Monsieur de Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni’ was held by a succession of men no less undesirable then their many victims. Isidore Hespel was particularly disturbing even by their standards.

Hespel had arrived in Guyana in 1899 aboard the prison ship ‘Caledonie’ as Convict 28040 serving twenty years hard labour. Any convict serving five years or less remained in France. Any convict serving between five and eight years could be sent to ‘Le Bagne’ as the Penal Administration was known. They also fell foul of ‘doublage’ or ‘Doubling,’ meaning they would serve their full term in prison and the same again as a worker or colonist, a ‘libere.’. Any ‘Bagnard’ serving eight years or more was banished forever. Except by a reduction or commutation of their sentence they could never return to France.

A similar penalty applied to ‘relegues.’ Being ‘relegated’ was the standard French cure for repeat petty criminals. Shoplifting, petty theft, pick-pocketing, vandalism and sundry other minor crimes earned a life sentence with the fourth conviction. It was an effective way to avoid clogging up jails in metropolitan France with an endless stream of small-timers.

They were looked down on by Guyana’s more serious criminals known variously as ‘Fort-a-bras’ (strong-arms), ‘Inco’s’ (incorrrigibles) and ‘Forcats’ (Convicts). They regarded relegues as low-class second-raters lacking the nerve for ‘proper’ crimes like murder and armed robbery or the skill for safe-cracking, forgery and so on. Relegues often became easy prey for tougher, more violent convicts. Sneered at though they were, relegues were still despised less than convict-executioners like Hespel. While hardened convicts mocked bicycle thieves or shop-lifters, they positively hated the likes of ‘Le Chacal.’

With twenty years to serve and having been imprisoned since 1895, ‘Le Chacal’ arrived in Guyana knowing he would almost certainly never leave. Disease, malnutrition and murder were standard fare in the penal system and death, natural or otherwise, became a convict’s constant companion. Even if Hespel survived his full sentence he still needed official permission to return to France. Even if he gained permission, as unlikely as that was with his record, Hespel would still have to pay his own fare.

With that in mind, his thoughts soon turned to serving his time as easily as possible and the most obvious solution was Guyana’s most notorious symbol, the guillotine. ‘Le Bagne’ was also known as ‘La Guillotine Seche,’ the ‘Dry Guillotine,’ because it killed more slowly but just as effectively as its namesake.

Universally hated though convict-executioners were, it was less dangerous than being sent to labour camps like Charvein or Godebert where mortality rates could reach 70% or more in a year. Being punished with solitary confinement in St. Joseph Island’s dreaded ‘Reclusion’ block was no better. Mortality was just as bad and the conditions were the worst in the entire Penal Administration. Like any self-respecting jackal, Hespel wanted to be predator, not prey.

Whether or not Hespel began his new career enjoying his work we do not know, but he soon showed signs of liking it a little too much. Arriving during the busiest period for Guyana’s guillotine, Hespel conducted around fifty beheadings, disdain from guards and hatred from other convicts rising with each and every head he took.

That meant nothing to Hespel personally. As long as he had regular work, a few jobs per year was fine, he was largely free to amuse himself the rest of the time. He had freedoms regular convicts envied and a standard of living positively plush by bagnard standards. All told, Hespel was about as comfortable as any transportee could expect to be.

At least until he committed a murder. That murder netted Hespel a date with his own contraption, the guillotine he showered with tender loving care and maintenance. In Hespel’s care it was painted, polished and cleaned like an expensive sportscar and he always insisted on setting it up personally. In Hespel’s mind he was the Penal Adminstration’s chief headsman. His assistants, though equally reviled by everyone else, were still only assistants.

Just as men like the Diebler’s and Desfourneaux’s of metropolitan France were known as ‘Monsieur de Paris,’ Hespel liked to call himself ‘Monsieur de Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.’ He liked others to call him that, also signing his correspondence with ‘Isidore Hespel, Executor of the High Works of the Islands of Salvation.’

In Isidore Hespel’s dark, twisted mind working the guillotine put him a cut above the average Devil’s Island convict. Almost head and shoulders, but not quite.

Only Hespel himself was worthy of rigging ‘his’ guillotine whenever another convict was condemned to die. They were condemned frequently, usually for murdering or attacking prison staff or colonists. Death sentences for murdering other convicts were rare and rarer still were ones needing a bite from the Jackal. The Penal Administration was usually far harsher when the victim was a free citizen or guard. They usually regarded convicts murdering each other as being par for the course.

Taken before the ‘Tribune Maritime Speciale’ (TMS), they could expect anything from six months on St. Joseph to the death penalty. Granted, many more death sentences were handed down than carried out, but an average of three or four executions a year during Hespel’s tenure was standard. Far more convicts died from disease, malnutrition, mistreatment by guards or were murdered by each other than fell under the Jackal’s blade.

The TMS might not have wanted too many men decapitated, their heads sent to France in jars to verify they had actually been executed, but when the Penal Administration wanted a particular convict’s head they usually got it. Once a death sentence was confirmed by an official document on the next boat from France, things moved very quickly. A prisoner might send weeks or even months waiting for clemency or confirmation depending on when the next twice-yearly boat was due in. Once confirmation arrived they would likely die within the next couple of days.

When they did, Hespel and his guillotine took centre-stage. Convicts still serving time either at Saint-Laurent or on the Iles du Salut (Royale, St. Joseph and the legendary Devil’s Island) would be guillotined within prison walls. On the mainland the guillotine was stored in Cayenne. Another was permanently and prominently installed on Royale, its ominous presence leaving no doubt about who controlled the penal system. ‘Liberes’ were executed at Saint-Laurent right outside the penitentiary building where local citizens could watch if they had the stomach for it. No longer convicts, liberes were tried by the local assize court rather than the TMS and public executions were standard in France and its overseas territories until June of 1939.

Citizens and liberes could watch Hespel at work if they wished. Any nearby convicts had to. Having been paraded, they were made to doff their hats and watch on their knees as Hespel claimed another head. At Saint-Laurent and on Royale Island special cells were set aside for the condemned, sited as near to the guillotine as was convenient. The condemned were offered wine or rum and a last cigarette or two. Once their arms and legs had been secured with thin ropes they would hobble out before the spectators and be permitted a few parting words before the Jackal bit once again.

Their final words, if any, were limited. Hespel and his assistants would quickly strap them to the bascule, the wooden board known as ‘Charlot’s see-saw.’ The bascule was slid forward and the lunette, the wooden block with a circular space to secure their head, was dropped into place. The blade fell immediately this was done. With a loud hiss, thud and crunch another head dropped into the tub and blood spurted for as long as the heart still pumped. Like Rasseguier before him, Hespel would have the final word. Grasping the head by the hair or ears, he would raise it over his own head for everyone to see. With blood still running down his arms, Hespel would loudly make the executioner’s traditional declaration:

“In the name of the people of France, Justice has been served!”

As Guyana’s resident Master of Ceremonies between 1899 and 1921, Hespel knew the drill all too well. Perhaps needed more to work the guillotine than to be used as another example, he only drew five years in solitary for murdering a guard. Despised and isolated, Hespel spent a lot of his free time fishing and selling his catch to guards. When one of them refused to pay him, Hespel killed him. Five years for murdering a non-convict, and a guard at that, was very unusual indeed.

He had escaped his own guillotine and knew that if he could survive five years in the Reclusion, he would likely be released. Eventually, freedom of a kind eventually came his way. He had managed to survive his twenty-year sentence and five years in solitary. Though barred from returning to France, Hespel was free to live in the colony for the rest of his life. That would prove to be a short one.

When he committed yet another murder, the last of several during his lifetime, the Jackal was not so lucky. This time the boat brought not clemency, but confirmation. Hespel believed another convict had informed on him for murdering the guard and wanted revenge for his additional years behind bars. No stranger to killing and loathing informers as much as any other criminal, Hespel quickly added the suspected snitch to his tally. This time Hespel was tried as a common criminal. With his previous record and not a single convict or guard prepared to speak for him, the death sentence was a virtual formality.

This time there was to be no escape. The TMS might have had a more relaxed attitude to convicts murdering each other, but the local assizes did not. To the judge Hespel was guilty and murder remained murder, regardless. The next boat from France duly provided the necessary confirmation. Informed that he would die the next day, Hespel requested one last opportunity to set up the guillotine he had come to love so much.

His request was declined. On December 23, 1923 he would ride the ‘Charlot See-saw’ for the first and last time. To his disgust the guillotine would be prepared by his senior assistant Louis Ladurelle. Hailing from the Moselle region of France and sent to Guyana for murdering his wife, Ladurelle had none of Hespel’s experience although Hespel’s successor George Bonfils had trained him. He had only arrived in 1923 as Convict 45224. To Hespel, as blood-soaked a man as Guyana ever had, Ladurelle was a rank amateur. It was bad enough that his last request had been denied. It was almost insulting to die at the hands of a comparative beginner.

On seeing how Ladurelle had set up his beloved guillotine, Hespel complained bitterly, calling Ladurelle a pig. His last remark on Earth was to admonish Ladurelle not to put his head between his legs when putting him into the wicker basket used to remove corpses. Then the blade fell. ‘Le Chacal’ would feed off his fellow prisoners no longer.

Ladurelle would do rather better, succeeding where Hespel had failed. He had few executions during his tenure which was considerably briefer than anyone expected. Although sentenced to twenty years as Hespel had been, Ladurelle benefited from unusual legal generosity. First Ladurelle’s sentence was reduced. In 1937 he was allowed to return to the Moselle region to live and work. Perhaps wisely choosing to live in obscurity, Ladurelle seldom discussed Guyana, especially his time as ‘Monsieur du Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.’ He died in 1966.

Ladurelle was not Guyana’s last executioner. That grim distinction falls to a man even more grotesque that Isidore Hespel, a certain Henri Cluziot. If Hespel had a disturbing love for ‘his’ guillotine, Cluziot harboured an equally horrific attitude to those who died on it. Cluziot, nicknamed ‘Fly to Beef’ by other prisoners as the they thought him no better than a bluebottle, was a brute with no sense of decency whatever.

When Cluziot walked a prisoner to the guillotine he would berate, insult and degrade them on the way. They walked too slowly for his convenience, this despite their ankles being hobbled by a short piece of rope that Cluziot could have tied a little longer. On the brief walk from the cells to the guillotine he swore at them, insulted them and even struck them when he felt like it. If Hespel had been hated, Cluziot had been marked for death long before it finally came.

There are conflicting reports about Cluziot’s death. One says he was found hanged at the little house reserved for Guyana’s convict-executioner. Either Cluziot had hanged himself or somebody had done it for him. Either way, there was little done to really investigate his death. As hated by the guards as by the other convicts, they probably didn’t mind or care that so vile an individual might have met a bad end.

The other tale, equally likely and far more horrific, would turn the strongest stomach. The other version of Cluziot’s death saw him abducted by a group of liberes. Taken well away from the main penitentiary area, it was said that Cluziot’s captors beat him severely, then stripped him naked, smothered him liberally with the local honey and then staked him out over an ant hill.

If true, Cluziot’s unexpected meeting with the Ant Hill Mob would have been as foul as the man himself. Guyana’s carnivorous ants are unfussy eaters, granted. To eat anything as revolting as Cluziot they would have to be. They would still have taken several days to kill him and probably a week or so to strip him to the bone. Whether even Cluziot, certainly one of the most wretched convicts in the Penal Administration’s history, truly deserved so terrible a death is another matter.