19th-century executions by France

Martin Dumollard (June 22, 1810 − March 8, 1862) was a French serial killer condemned to the guillotine after having been arrested and charged with the deaths of maids from 1855 to 1861. His victims were approached in Lyon by Dumollard, who offered them a nice house in Côtière. Convinced, they would eventually follow him and, during their wanderings on foot, he attacked them. All twelve assaults or attempted assaults occurred in the late 1850s and early 1860s until that of Marie Pichon on May 28, 1861. He was quickly arrested, along with his wife and accomplice, Marie-Anne Martinet, who stole the personal belongings and used them for resale. Their trial took place from January 29 to February 1, 1862: Dumollard was sentenced to death and his wife, twenty years of penal labour. This affair, which preceded that of Joseph Vacher by about thirty years, had a great repercussion in France; it is often considered one of the first cases of a serial killer in France. Dumollard is notably mentioned in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

Joseph Gleydson Vacher (16 November 1869 – 31 December 1898) was a French serial killer and necrophile, sometimes known as "The French Ripper" or "L'éventreur du Sud-Est" ("The South-East Ripper") owing to comparisons to the more famous Jack the Ripper murderer of London, England, in 1888. His scarred face and plain, white, handmade rabbit-fur hat composed his trademark appearance. He killed 11 to 27 people, many of whom were adolescent farm workers, between 1894 and 1897.

Auguste Vaillant (27 December 1861 – 5 February 1894) was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates.
Vaillant threw the home-made device from the public gallery and was immediately arrested. The weakness of the device meant that the explosion only caused slight injuries to twenty deputies. At his trial in Paris he was defended by Fernand Labori. Vaillant claimed that his aim was not to kill but to wound as many deputies as possible in revenge for the execution of Ravachol. Despite this, Vaillant was sentenced to death. He was put to death by the guillotine on 5 February 1894.
His bombing and execution in turn inspired the attacks of Émile Henry and Sante Geronimo Caserio (who stabbed to death Marie François Sadi Carnot, President of the French Third Republic) and Bhagat Singh (who threw a low-intensity bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly in British India, and was hanged later). Vaillant's last words were "Death to the Bourgeoisie! Long live Anarchy!"