Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1886 — A Grim Collection. [ARTICLE]

A Grim Collection.

Tbe city of Paris lias become lately the possessor of a remarkable collection of documents, which will have great interest in years to come for historical investigators. This was the series of death warrants, extending from the of April, 1808, to the Bth of December, 1832, belonging to Sanson, the notorious headsman of the revolution. The collection was bound up in nineteen volumes, and Sanson has prefixed to each volume a summary of the contents. It appears that during twenty-five years he executed 7,143 capital sentences, being an average of 217 executions in each year—rather a busy life. During the twenty-five years he only twice ascended the scaffifid without a fatal result—once in 1815, when Gen. Count Lavalette was to have been executed tor complicity in the return of Napoleon, but- escaped the night before his intended execution through the heroism of his wife. The second time was in 1817, when Phi-lippe-Jean Antoine, a noted coiner, was respited at the last moment by Louis X\ 111.