Anna Marie and the Revolution

Anna Marie Tussaud was a skilled wax modeler. Her mentor Kirchius opened an exhibition space in Paris when she was 16. During the French Revolution, Anna Marie was arrested as a royalist sympathizer and sentenced to the guillotine. She was spared the blade and recruited to make wax recreations of the most notorious guillotine victims. The wax heads were then put on pikes to show the public the evil oppressors had been brought to justice. After her husband Francois Tussaud died, she fled to England where she created a traveling wax work museum.