Is death by guillotine painless?

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The guillotine was originally designed to be a “humane and instant” form of execution — that is, if used correctly. If the blade was properly cleaned, the death would be pretty much instant.

There are claims from the French Revolution that victims would stay alive up to a minute after being beheaded, but these sources are unreliable at best. Further, nerves connecting the brain to the other parts of the body would certainly have been severed, so even in the unlikely case that a victim did survive, it wouldn’t have been painful.

However, as the guillotine was chosen as the national mode of execution during the French Revolution, it saw many, many executions per day. Often, it wasn’t cleaned properly after an execution, leaving blood on the blade. Thus, the first strike wouldn’t cut cleanly, leaving it to be used again or for the victim to bleed to death. That would have certainly been a horrible death, which many of those in the French Revolution experienced.