A toy guillotine could be
morbidly funny
in modern times, but this toy dates back to 1794, during the Reign of
Terror phase of the French Revolution. 50 Watts quotes Karl Grober's
book
Children's Toys of Bygone Days: A History of Playthings of All Peoples from Prehistoric Times to the XIXth Century:
The
worst monstrosity of the kind was the outcome of the French Revolution,
which indeed was over-rich in aberrations of taste. The toy shops put
on the market little guillotines with which little patriots could behead
figures of aristocrats. There still survive some specimens of this
pretty and diverting machine, of which one bears the date 1794 [above].
These were not models but pure toys; and in proof of this we have king's
evidence from one whom we should never suspect of wishing to give so
bloodthirsty a toy to his little son. This was no other than Goethe. In
December, 1793, he asks his mother in Frankfurt to get him such a toy
guillotine for his son August; and in her reply he certainly got some
home-truths. In her decisive manner she wrote to him by return post:
'Dear Son, Anything I can do to please you is gladly done and gives me
joy;--but to buy such an infamous implement of murder--that I will not
do at any price. If I had authority, the maker should be put in the
stocks and I would have the machine publicly burnt by the common
executioner. What! Let the young play with anything so horrible,--place
in their hands for their diversion murder and blood-shedding? No, that
will never do!"
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