Colony Of Shame

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1937, Page 13 (Supplement)

Colony Of Shame

(By H.E.C.)

Long Experiment Ends

When New Plymouth was not quite ten years old the struggling colony of -Western ,Australia was in. danger of collapse. It had started well 20 years previously with the arrival of 2000 immigrants with ' property amounting to £1,000,000,. many of them "landed gentry who brought with them their servants and their carriages, their furniture, pianos and family pictures." But neither the servants nor their employers imderstood what "roughing it" entailed. Those who lear.ned pioneering ways wanted land and enterprises of their own, and in 1850 strong appeals were made to the Colonial Office for assistance. The Government's offer was that the colony should accept convict labour to do the rough work, and although the eastern Australian colonies had refused to continue as dumping ground for Britain's undesirables, Westem Australia agreed to accept convict labour and for 18 years transportation to the "Swan River Colony" was a possible sent.ence in the courts of the United Kingdom. The object-lesson provided. by Britain's transportation policy was not lost: sight of in Paris where the "President" Louis Napoleon, four years after the Bourbon King had been sent packing, was seeing the vision splendid of liimself as Emperor of France. Reports from London told him of the transportation of people sueh as the farm labourers of Tolpuddle who had dared to form the first labour union in Great Britain. The French President learned that Chartists, Ludclites and others who rebelled against authority were hustled out of the country in convict ships with a penalty of . death awaiting them if they returned, but an opportunity of regaining their :liberty in far away Australia. With a Frenchman's logic, Louis Napoleon and his advisers saw the advantage of a penal colony set in conditions that would add to the punishmeht of political as well as criminal offenders. A location was required that made escape difficult, far enough from other settlements . to allow prison discipline to be exercised without fear of public exposure, and if the climate and the conditions were so unliealthy as to cause heavy mortality among prisoners, well, a dead man gave no further trouble. The "colony of shame" was established in the South American tropical territory known as French Guiana. A main prison was established at Cayenne, the capital of the colony, with subsidiary gaols on three adjacent islands known as the Iles du Salut (Salvation Islands). On the island nearest to the mainland, Ile Royale, was the prison hospital, the next, St. Joseph, the most terrible of them all, became the place of silence, solitary confinement and other punishments unspeakably brutal, and the fartbest out was the notorious Devil's Island on which political prisoners were incarcerated. It was the imprisonment 'df Captain Alfred Dreyfus on this island, through the five interminable years he spent waiting for justice, that impressed the name on a public wider than that owing allegiance to France. Ever since Ihe penal colony was established in 1852 stories of horror have emanated from it.. One of the chief practices that brought censure upon tlie colony was that of herding together -all classes of criminals— hardened convicts and youths serving their first terms. Social conditions were reported of the

■ worst kind, and young men soon de- • generated to the level of the lowest. Added to that was the heat, the insects and the loneliness. All of this drove men ravinjg mad. But in spite of protests, to this reeking colony murderers, thieves, traitors and incorrigibles generally have been sent from France, and while many thousands hava never given up hope of escape, the number who have been successful is, in comparison to the population through the years, exceedingly small. Jungles and swamps hem in the mainland prison. Fierce tides sweep the islands, with sharks eternally waiting for unwary prey. Yet, report has it, some have deliberately east themselves to the sharks as the easiest way out, while others have fallen , victims in the innumerable attempts to escape. So wel! guarded by nStural elements, in fact, is this lonly colony that prisoners are not locked in cells except at night, and during the days are put to road building, cane cutting or hacking down the jungle growths in the swamps. There are thousands of "doublards," too, who check off one day on the calendar every time the sun sets, dreaming of the distant time when they will have doubled the length of their sentence. It has been French law that prisoners sentenced ■ to the island penitentiary must serve double the length of the sentence, first as a prisoner and then as a free man held in observation. A 20-year sentence is really 40 years in exile and .40 years at Devil's Island generally means life. Even were these men to complete their doubled sentences and return to France, life would still be miserable, for the stigma of' the colony follows them ever afterward.

There is a road from Cayenne across the swamps of Guiana that has been 40 years in building and is not yet half finished. How many lives have gone into every foot of its making no one will ever know. But with the closing of the colony, presumably the jungle will gradually obliterate this uncompleted monument to shame. For the penal colony is to be abolished. An announcement has been made in Paris that the Government will pass a Bill in the Chambsr of Deputies to end transportation of . criminals there. After years of agitation, during which a reform board condemned the deadly climate " and the inhumane living conditions,. a' move .will' be' made to repatriate all .prisoners to the' home soil of France. Hence .'the grim old prison ship Le Martiniere will1 no longer con vey its sordid cargoes of human wreckage to the colony, 'and ' the "absce'ss on the body cblohiaL'of France" will be healed.