June 14, 1931 - Fernand Meyssonnier
Meyssonnier carried out over 200 executions by guillotine during the final, volatile years of French colonial Algeria, having entered the role as a teenager when he took over from his father — himself part of a multigenerational line of executioners. His tenure coincided with one of the most contested and brutal periods of French imperial history, lending his work a particular political and historical weight beyond the mechanics of state punishment. The matter-of-fact arc of his life — from inherited executioner to Tahitian businessman to French retiree — has made him an unusual and unsettling lens through which to examine institutional violence and the individuals who administer it.
From Wikipedia
Fernand Meyssonnier (1931–2008) was an executioner in the last years of French Algeria. He acted as an executioner from 1947 to 1961 and killed more than 200 people. He is the author of a book "The Executioner's Tale" (Paroles de bourreau : Témoignage unique d'un éxécuteur des arrêts criminels) answering questions about his career as an executioner.
He inherited the job of executioner from his father Maurice Meyssonnier in 1947 when he ended compulsory education. His ancestors had been executioners from ages ago. When Algeria became independent from France in 1961, the guillotine was replaced by execution by firing squad.
In 1961, shortly before Algerian independence, Fernand Meyssonnier went to Tahiti where he met his future wife with whom he had a daughter, and founded several businesses. After his retirement, he went to metropolitan France.
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