Western New York Neighborhood Has A Guillotine?

It would be difficult to pass by this house without looking back for a second glance. 

One resident in the Upper West Side of Buffalo happened to notice something odd in one of their neighbor’s backyards. 

Someone has a real-life guillotine in their backyard, and there’s no way you can miss it. 

Guillotine on the Upper Westside
byu/Oosplop inBuffalo

For most people, it is the only time you have ever seen a guillotine out in the open rather than in a movie or in a museum. 

A guillotine was an instrument used to inflict capital punishment by decapitation, and it was originally introduced to France in 1792. It consists of two upright posts surmounted by a crossbeam, and it is grooved in such a way to guide an oblique-edged, angled knife to make it fall forcefully towards the victim below. 

While the guillotine device seems to be such a thing of the past, it actually wasn’t outlawed in France until September 1981, according to History.com. The guillotine was used all the way up until 1977, when the last execution by guillotine occurred. 

Why is there a guillotine in the Upper West Side of Buffalo? Who knows…maybe it’s for the vegetables in the garden?