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Salesman of Death
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Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 1928
In Paris many a child has been frightened to silence, many a joke of macabre humor has been evoked by the name "Monsieur de Paris," Government executioner. Everyone knows that this is not his real name, that whoever happens to be the official French executioner always skulks behind the name Monsieur de Paris. Last week Paris learned the real name of "the present 'M. de Paris.' " He is M. Anatole Deibler.

In all France there is only one current guillotine knife, although there are many scaffolds. Therefore M. de Paris has to travel, sometimes to Marseilles to decapitate a taker of virginities, sometimes to Rouen to speed a parting fratricide. He is a traveling salesman of Death. His salary until last week was a paltry $455.

M. de Paris long since wanted a raise.

Timidly but often he has essayed the subject to his superior, Minister of Justice Louis Barthou. But year followed year and M. de Paris was never raised. Recently Mme. de Paris, desperate and confident in the potency of a woman's nagging, approached the Minister of Justice, spoke volubly anent the high cost of Life, the low wage of Death. Last week, her confidence was vindicated. Her husband's salary was raised to a still paltry $720.

M. de Paris' name, however, became known. Bourgeois neighbors were scandalized to discover that quiet M. Anatole Deibler was also the phantasmagoric M. de Paris, that he made his living by odious matutinal decapitations.
From the Dec. 3, 1928 issue of TIME magazine
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"To the Russian Peasantry . . ."

The courteous French way of easing a man to the guillotine is to set excellent meals before him for several days previous, offer him brandy & cigarets at dawn and finally for the ornate Garde Républicaine to salute the condemned as he walks from the police van to death. All these amenities were offered last week to Paul Gorgulov. Russian slayer of the President of the Republic, Paul Doumer (TIME, May 16).

Nearly all France believed Assassin Gorgulov to be mad. There was comment and there were shrugs because the Widow Doumer did not ask clemency. But there was no criticism. If the late President's widow had set her heart against a madman surely it was her right to do so. As his death day dawned Dr. Gorgulov kissed the Orthodox priest who administered last rites and said with a wry smile, "I am not afraid. I am neither Royalist nor Communist. I hope that my son, who is yet unborn, will not become a Communist. Tell my wife I love her dearly and ask pardon for all I have done. I commend myself to the Russian peasantry! Ah Russia, Russia my fatherland. . . ."

Determined to scoop the execution,

United Press's Mary Knight dressed herself as a man, boasted afterward that she was the only woman to see Dr. Gorgulov lose his head. She told how Gorgulov, his hands and feet heavily manacled, hobbled forward; how the back of the prisoner's neck was shaved "to better expose his flesh to the sharp knife of 'the widow' [guillotine]." Then ''like a flash the neck piece clamped Gorgulov into position and, before he could gasp, the knife, well weighted, fell nine feet. . . . There was no autopsy."

Male correspondents noted that the head fell into a basket, that the body was dumped into a zinc-lined wicker coffin (in which the head was later placed) for delivery to pregnant Mme Gorgulov, that Executioner Anatole ("Monsieur de Paris") Deibler wore his usual derby hat and was assisted by his son-in-law André Perrier who is being groomed to succeed M. Deibler as the next "Monsieur de Paris."

When souvenir seekers tried to dash forward and dip their handkerchiefs into the wide, dark pool of blood, police forced them sternly back, hitched a hose to a neighboring hydrant, washed the street scrupulously clean.

Four days later in the Kuban village of Labinskaya, zealous Soviet police arrested Assassin Gorgulov's 82-year-old mother and also his aunt, charged them with "stealing grain from a collective farm," the penalty for which is Death. Moscow papers seemed displeased by the Kuban policemen's zeal, took the line that an 82-year-old grain thief should not be put to Death. They hinted that even if Dr. Gorgulov's mother & aunt are convicted their sentences will surely be commuted.
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From the Sep. 26, 1932 issue of TIME magazine