DEVIL’S ISLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 23000, 4 July 1938, Page 8

DEVIL’S ISLAND.

Writers of sensational truth—and fiction—can look forward to having one less topic now that all the penal establishments in French Guiana, including that most denounced one, Devil’s Island, have been by law abolished. Actually no convicts have been shipped there, though many have been committed, since a Bill to alter the system was brought down two years ago. Sentences of deportation have meant, in practice, imprisonment in the gaols of France. Now the law has been given its full validity, though it has one harsh limitation. Prisoners already in Guiana will not be repatriated, but will be allowed to die out. Devil’s Island, which was reserved for political offenders, gained special notoriety when the unfortunate Dreyfus was sent there for a crime of which he was afterwards proved innocent. It was not a cruel prison system which made life tejrible there so much as the sweltering, malarial climate and isolation from the world. Mrs Rosita Forbes, the famous traveller, has written one of the latest accounts of convict life in French Guiana in her story called * Zebra Men ’ —the name given to the convicts, or “ condamnes ” because of the broadly striped red and white pyjamas which, with straw hats like cart wheels, make their garb. The seclusion cells which have been ascribed to Devil’s Island are really on the neighbouring island of St. Joseph. On Devil’s Island there is no prison, in the ordinary it is the pnly island, out' of three, from which no escapes are ever made; the “ Devil’s rocks ” which surround it are too formidable.

The cruellest part of the law which governs the Guiana prison settlements is the part which has not been altered—for present prisoners. The gaol sentence is usually associated with a provision that when the man is liberated he must still remain an exile for twice the period, or for life, if his sentence exceeded seven years. “ In prison”’ writes Mrs Forbes, “ the convict is sure at least of food and shelter.” As a “ libere ” he can be much worse off. “If he has friends to send him money he can make for himself some sort of existence, but all labour is supplied by convicts and there is no work left for the unfortunate ‘ libere,’ who can barely keep body and soul together. If he happens to be a technical expert he may be able to find employment, but the ordinary criminal, accustomed to live on his wits, finds himself with no choice but to steal in order to get back into prison, or starve.” There is—and there will be—no repatriation for men who have been once condemned, and they are not likely to earn enough to get back to France from their own resources. Sometimes escapes are made, with vast risk and hardships, through the forests into the neighbouring Dutch Guiana. The majority of convicts, it was explained, are not fit to return to a civilised country as soon as the prison door opens for them, and, except when mistakes were made, it was only the worst criminals who were sent to these tropical settlements. The “libere”'in Rosita Forbes’s story who dressed the curls of the Governor’s daughter, and so could earn money and save, explained that bis offence had been “ a quite small affair . . . Twice I tried to shoot my wife’s lover and twice I killed the wrong man.” The comment of the young lady was: “ They all say they’ve murdered their mistresses. It is a respectable crime.”