Tag: penal colonies

• On This Day in 1953 – France’s last inmates return from Devil’s Island.

  

  “The Bagne is a charnel house, a mass grave, running from syphilis to tuberculosis, with all the tropical diseases one can imagine (carrying malaria, ankylosis, amoebic dysentery, leprosy, etc.), all destined to work hand in hand with an Administration whose task it is to diminish the number of prisoners consigned to its care. The fiercest…

  CrimeScribe

  August 22, 2018

  History, True Crime

  1852, 1938, 1946, 1953, 1964, Albert Londres, Alfred Dreyfus, anti-semitism, Brest, brutality, Cascade, Cayenne, Charvein, cholera, convict hulks, crime, crime and punishment, Crique Rouge, death, devil’s island, disease, Dustin Hoffman, dysentery, Emile Zola, executioner, France, Francois Lagrange, French, French Guiana, Gaston Monnerville, Godebert, guillotine, hard labour, Henri Charriere, History, Hollywood, Iles du Salut, Indochina, Indochinese, Inini, J’accuse!, justice, Kilo 40, Kilometre 42, malaria, malnutrition, Maroni, Martinique, movies, Napoleon III, on this day, overwork, Papillon, Paul Roussenq, Penal Administration, penal colonies, penal colony, prison, prisoners, prisons, punishment, Rene Belbenoit, Route Zero, Royale, Saint Joseph, Saint Laurent, South America, Steve Mcqueen, Toulon, tourists, transportation, true crime, typhoid

• Devil’s Island – Colony of the condemned.

  

  ‘The policy of the Administration is to kill, not to better or reclaim.’ – Rene Belbenoit. It is 1852. In France, Emperor Napoleon III, increasingly worried by rising crime and insufficient colonists to consolidate France’s empire, devises a new, dreadful solution. Napoleon isn’t interested in social reform, he’s interested in social cleansing where criminals can…

  CrimeScribe

  October 10, 2015

  True Crime

  capital punishment, convicted, conviction, court, courtroom, crime, cruel and unusual, death, death penalty, death sentence, Dustin Hoffman, Henri Charriere, Papillon, penal colonies, penal colony, prison, prisons, Rene Belbenoit, Steve Mcqueen

• Papillon – The Butterfly Pinned..?

  

  Meet Henri Charriere. Frenchman, Venezuelan, career criminal, transportee to Devil’s Island, denier of the murder that sent him there, happy to claim to have committed a murder while he was there and general storyteller and writer. Also known as ‘Papillon (due to a butterfly tattoo on his chest) and writer of the eponymous book turned…

  CrimeScribe

  October 20, 2014

  History, Odds And Ends, True Crime

  Alfred Dreyfus, capital punishment, Charles Brunier, Charles de Gaulle, Charles de Villiers, convicted, convicts, crime, crime and punishment, cruel and unusual, danger, devil’s island, escape, escaped, escaper, escapers, France, Free french, French, French Guiana, History, murder, Papillon, penal colonies, prison, prisons, Royale Island, St. Joseph Island, transportees, true crime, Truman Capote, Venezuela, wrongly convicted