Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir
Two ordinary Parisian workmen were caught together in a doorway in 1750 – and became the last people executed in France for homosexuality.
Jean Diot, 40, worked in a charcuterie near the rue Montorgueil in Paris; Bruno Lenoir, 23, was a shoemaker from the same neighbourhood. Late on the night of 4 January 1750 a watchman of the city guard caught the two men having sex in a doorway on the rue Montorgueil. He arrested them.
The charge stated only that they had behaved “in an indecent and reprehensible manner”; one magistrate spoke of crimes that decency did not permit him to describe in writing. The trial began in April, and on 27 May 1750 both men were sentenced to death. The severity was unusual: at that time most proceedings against so-called sodomites ended with a few days in prison or a warning, and death sentences were almost always linked to other crimes such as murder or rape. The chronicler Edmond Barbier noted that the two workmen had no connections to people of rank – an example could be made of them without consequences.
On 6 July 1750 Diot and Lenoir were taken to the Place de Grève, the usual place of execution, strangled and burned. Their crime was not announced to the crowd; some authorities feared public punishments would only teach the young what they knew nothing about. They were the last people executed in France for homosexuality. In 1791 the French Revolution removed sodomy from the criminal code.
In 2014 the city of Paris set a memorial plaque into the pavement of the rue Montorgueil in their memory. It has since been vandalised several times.