Long before Alcatraz Prison there was Devil’s Island. It was a living hell, not just a violent, tropical prison, but also rampant with malaria, cholera and yellow fever. From 1852 to 1953, Devil’s Island operated as part of the Îles du Salut Penal Colony in French Guiana. Up to 90% of prisoners perished there due to its harsh and inhumane conditions. Of the 80,000 sent there, only about 2,000 returned to French territory after serving their sentences.
The notorious Devil’s Island was situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana in South America. The penal colony was in fact three islands called the Îles du Salut, plus a labor camp on the mainland. The ironic name, Salvation Islands, was given to it by a group of missionaries who escaped an outbreak of plague on the mainland by hiding there.
By the 18th century, French Guiana was home to some 500 Europeans and 5,000 slaves. For half a century, the colony stagnated under the administration of three French governors and the deadly reputation of its dense, inhospitable jungles. Thickly humid and full of diseases, an idea was formulated in Paris to convert the islands and part of the mainland into a prison and labor camp for the worst criminals in the French territories.
In 1852, Emperor Napoleon III formally established the penal colony.
France send both political and career prisoners were to the Îles du Salut. Prisoners with sentences under eight years had a chance of release. That rule hardly mattered since most would not live long enough. The vast majority never returned to France. About forty percent of those who arrived would be dead within a year. Those with eight or more years faced lifelong exile.
Unlike European or American prisons, this was a place where society’s unwanted were sent to disappear. Thousands of alleged criminals—some innocent, most not—were sent to Devil’s Island over the next 90 years. A prisoner’s odds of dying was extremely high, whether by the sadistic treatment by the merciless guards, a tropical disease, or the guillotine.
The largest of the 3 islands, Île Royale, in addition to housing prisoners, served as the administrative center, the reception port for new inmates, and housed the warden, who lived in a grand estate high on the island’s central hill. The worst prisoners were kept in the Crimson Barracks, so called for the vast amounts of blood spilled by prisoner and guard violence. The island’s guillotine was centrally located and used to demonstrate the warden’s absolute rule.
The southernmost island, Île Saint-Joseph, housed Camp Reclusion where prisoners were sent for solitary confinement. The place was called “the devourer of men” for the high numbers of prisoners who lost their minds or died there. The smallest and northern most island, Île du Diable, was for political prisoners. With rocky cliffs and shark-infested waters it was nearly impossible to escape from any of the islands.
Devil’s Island became known for the harshest punishment imaginable, a reputation well-earned.
Prisoners endured cruel, hard labor in sweltering conditions, shackled in chain gangs, and forced clear dense jungle. Solitary confinement was common, with inmates locked in tiny, dark, stagnant cells for weeks or even months, often for the most minor infractions.
Life imprisonment on Devil’s Island was a common death sentence-carried out by a “dry guillotine,” a slow death from disease, malnutrition, or insanity. Prisoners faced a daily regime designed to break both their spirits and bodies, with hard labor in the oppressive heat from dawn until dusk, clearing land, building infrastructure, or working in chain gangs.
Their living conditions were appalling. Prisoners were crowded into unsanitary barracks where clean water and proper food were scarce. Physical punishments such as beatings and floggings were handed out with little provocation, reinforcing the sense of hopelessness. Though many attempted escape, very few succeeded due to treacherous waters and hostile jungle terrain.
Despite these harsh conditions, some prisoners did manage to survive – and even escape!
Historically, the most well-known prisoner was Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French Army captain unjustly convicted in 1895. Suspicious of Dreyfus as a Jew, army officers arrested him as a spy and convicted him of treason. The army then sentenced him to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Even when later evidence exonerated him, the French government refused to release him. The French president finally pardoned him in 1899. Dreyfus was finally released and returned to France.
French author Émile Zola wrote a famous editorial about Dreyfus, lambasting the French government for antisemitism and accusing the army of a cover-up. The public attention now pointed an international spotlight on Devil’s Island. The treatment of prisoners drew widespread criticism, both in France and abroad. The island became a symbol of the inhumanity of the French penal system, a place where men were not just punished, but systematically disappeared.
One of only two inmates to successfully escape was Clément Duval, a French anarchist who was arrested in France for robbing a mansion and stabbing a policeman in 1886. His death sentence was commuted to hard labor on Devil’s Island. In 1901, after 20 attempts, he finally made it off the island to Dutch Guiana in a fragile canoe with an improvised sail. Setting up home in New York City, he wrote Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony.
Eddie Guerin was a London bank robber, arrested in France and set to Devil’s Island in 1903. After 5 years on the island, he was transferred to the mainland. From there he managed to escape to Dutch Guiana in a boat made from a scooped-out tree trunk. “Whatever I had done, it was not sufficiently bad to condemn me to a poisonous hole where men rotted away and were never heard of for ever more.”
In 1938, René Belbenoît also published his memoir of being a prisoner, entitled Dry Guillotine. Belbenoît arrived in 1920 for an eight-year sentence. His multiple, unsuccessful escape attempts extended his stay to 1934. Once released, Belbenoît found his way to New York City where he too published his memoir.
Perhaps the most famous inmate was Henri “Papillon” Charrière, convicted in 1931 of murdering a pimp, a charge he denied. He was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the mainland penal colony. His nickname came from the butterfly tattoo on his chest. After an escape attempt, he was transferred to Devils Island and placed in solitary confinement. He spent another 7 years on the island, finally escaping in 1941. Papillon managed to float away in shark infested waters using a bag of coconuts as a raft, riding the tide to the shore. He wrote a famous memoir in 1969, Papillon, and was pardoned in 1970.
The French justice system stopped sending prisoners to Devil’s Island in 1938.
It would take another 15 years before it would be permanently closed in 1953. Today, the penal colony on the mainland became home to the Guiana Space Center a spaceport for France. The remains on the islands are ironically now a macabre tourist attraction. Boats leave Kourou for Île Royale, giving guests a day to visit the warden’s mansion (now a museum), the barracks, hospital, and chapel. Limited travel is available to Île Saint-Joseph. However, Île du Diable remains off limits to this day.
Devil’s Island has been the subject of many books and films, most notably in the 1973 movie “Papillon” starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, and its 2017 remake starring actors Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek. The ruins of Devil’s Island serve as a powerful reminder of the cruel penal colony system of the last century and the misery endured by thousands of its prisoners. The French government has taken steps to preserve the ruins, ensuring that the suffering and endurance of its prisoners are not forgotten.
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