A 150-year-old guillotine with "a few dents on the blade" will go under the hammer in Paris today.
The 10-foot (three-metre) tall instrument of execution which was used to dispatch criminals in France until 1977 is in working order. But the Drouot auction house insisted that the model was built as a replica and has never been used to behead anyone.
The sale of guillotines has been highly controversial in France where the death penalty was only abolished in 1981, with the French auction watchdog already objecting to the auction.
"They should not be selling this guillotine," a spokesman told the Parisien newspaper. "Objects like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and instruments of torture are sensitive."
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