The guillotine is a device used to carry out executions by decapitation, as opposed to beheading. It consists of a tall upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to quickly fall and forcefully decapitate the victim with a single pass so that the head falls into a basket below.
The earliest reference for this dates back to 12th century China during the Song dynasty. Its use spread throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries for common criminals, but also for political crimes such as treason. The device was eventually applied to those who had committed petty crimes such as pickpockets and thieves; France used it for this purpose in its penal colony of New Caledonia. Use of a guillotine was considered an improvement on previous methods of execution because it was believed to be more humane and because it could be more precisely practiced than previous executions.