To Be "Private"
Photograph of Guillotine in Action Brings Reform Paris, July 24.
French and foreign newspapermen and the "elite" of Paris society can no longer enjoy the dubious privilege of waiting on the cobbles until dawn to see the official guillotine separate a condemned man's head from bir On June 24 the French Cabinet abolished public executions with a sudden decree law, altering Article 26 of the Penal Code which provides that condemned men be guillotined "in a public place."
For years groups of French lawyers have tried to get the gruesome spectacle abolished. They could not, but a photographer has.done it for them. On June 17, at 432 am. in broad daylight, when Eugen W. mann, German-born strangler of Jean de Hoven of Brooklyn, died on the Versailles guillotine, an anonymous picture taker, hidden behind chimney pots of a mei cate, got a clear shot of the still-living man on the machine.
The picture was published in "Match." That—end the carnival conduct of the crowd—brought revulsion, and the law.—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.