DREADED DEVIL’S ISLAND

Hawera Star, Volume L, 1 December 1930, Page 5

DREADED DEVIL’S ISLAND

ANOTHER CONVICT “CARGO”

ENGLISH WRITER’S APPEAL

HORRORS OF CONFINEMENT

vl ■ «il'resa Association—By Electric Telegraph rtifo. LONDON, Nov. 29. •‘ln the name of humanity should this iterror go oaf” asks a writer m the “Daily Express” consequent on an announcement that tell cages on the French convict ship La Martiniere are .igain being filled with human cargo tor transportation to Devil’s Island. “Such babarism still lingers in France despite the abolition of public executions and its claim that Paris is a city of light.” The writer describes boiling steam pipes encircling the cages which are turned on in the event of unrest on board. The (ship’s average quota is 600 and many have to be carried ashore at the destination half dead from the hardships of the voyage. The writer estimates that an average of 36 a month dies in the hospitals on the island, or nearly 60 per cent, of the annual arrivals. “I have spent a.night in the hospital in Devil’s Island with a convict holding his head in his hands sobbing his heart out. Words cannot depict the awful horror of the place. There is a look in the eyes of the convicts which .1 cannot eradicate from my mind. Their very souls seem to start from their eyes crying to humanity for mercy. ’ “I walked through with the governor. when the majority of convicts lowered their eyes. Here and there a convict bared his teeth and snarled behind the governor’s back. Had he made anv other move he would have been taken hack to the cells for punishment ,-■>)• sent to work in the forests boot-; less and sockless. “I have seen men who have fallen at work lying on the ground shaking from heads to feet with fever begging lor aid which never comes. “Even when they have finished their sentence the convicts arc unable to Jeave the island because there is a tacit understanding with the civilian population that no ex-convict is to he allowed to earn enough money to take him back to France. . , , “This is 1930,” the writer concludes, “and still this monstrous thing goes on The French are a brave chivalrous people; what is the explanation? They live in their own fair land flowing with milk and honev and thev do not know what is happening in the colonies.”