Anecdotes around the guillotine (I)

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I commented in a discussion started by @Daljinder telling, among other interesting facts that "France was still using the guillotine when "Star Wars" came out" that I saw a few guillotines in the 1980's still stocked in central prisons of French départements when I was studying criminal law. Initially the guillotines were under the care of the public executioner of each French département. How they became placed under the custody of the director of the central jail ? In the 1840's the public executioner in Paris was Clément-Henri Sanson, who succeeded to his father Charles Sanson, died in August 1840. Charles Sanson had himself succeeded to his father Charles-Henri Sanson, who had been the public executioner of king Louis XVI in 1793. A public executioner had a bonus for each head cut, and, after the Revolution, a wealthy period for an executioner, the Sanson were not poor. Clément-Henri Sanson was living in a small private mansion in a district full of theaters and other houses of pleasure, and was of questionable morality. Let's say that he was not liking only good restaurants, but also gambling games and lose women. He squandered quickly the heritage of his father and was finally arrested for debts, at a time where you could go to jail for debts. His creditors accepted to let him free if he was pawning his guillotine, what he did. When, in 1847, he received the order to do a capital execution, he had to confess that he had not anymore his working tool. The ministry of Justice paid the debts of Sanson to recover the guillotine and revoked him after the execution. You should think that a good worker needs to have his tools near him. The state decided otherwise, and the guillotines of the executioners were placed in the central jail of each département. I guess that they are still there, even if we have no more death penalty in France since 1981.