This is ridiculously amazing. I’ve never lied to you before so don’t let the long text fool you. It’s well worth the read.

NAPOLEONIC BONE MODEL GUILLOTINE

Richly carved and coloured, this model was carved by prisoners of war in the late 18th/early 19th century. It was originally designed to work - the victim loses his head when the sharp bone blade falls.

The guillotine was invented by Dr Joseph Guillotine to make execution more humane. It quickly became a symbol of the French Revolution and around 40,000 French royalists were executed. Victims were placed on a bench face down. The beheading was very quick, taking less than half a second from blade drop to the victim’s head rolling into the waiting basket.

During the Napoleonic Wars many thousands of prisoners of war (POW) of many nationalities, but particularly French and American, were held in and around Plymouth. They were held mostly on prison hulks moored on the Tamar, at Millbay Prison (now the site of Millbay Park) and, after 1809, incarcerated in the newly built Dartmoor Prison.

In addition to this model guillotine, our collections include a number of examples of POW work dating from the late 18th and early 19th century – including several ship models, gun carriages, figurines, straw work and bone boxes and other model guillotines.

Guillotine models are not unusual, but few are as elaborate as this example, which can be seen alongside a selection of our POW craftwork artefacts in our ‘Plymouth, Port and Place’ gallery.