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The Cayenne Penal Colony (Bagne de Cayenne), widely known as Devil’s Island (Île du Diable), was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and was officially closed in 1953 on the Salvation Islands of French Guiana.
Starting in 1852, Devil’s Island received prisoners from all corners of the Second French Empire. It was notorious both for the harsh treatment of prisoners by the staff and for the tropical climate and diseases that contributed to a high mortality rate, which reached 75%, leading to its final closure in 1953.
Devil’s Island was also infamous for being used to exile French political prisoners, the most famous of whom was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of spying for Germany. The Dreyfus Affair was a scandal that lasted several years in late 19th and early 20th century France, exposing antisemitism and corruption within the French armed forces.
The penal system included several colonies, both on the mainland and on the coastal Salvation Islands. Royal Island was the reception center for the entire penal colony population; prisoners were kept under conditions of moderate freedom due to the difficulty of escaping from the island. Saint Joseph Island was a place of isolation, where prisoners were sent for punishment by solitary confinement in silence and darkness for escape attempts or offenses committed within the penal colony. Devil’s Island was intended for political prisoners.
In addition to the prisons on each of the three islands of the Salvation group, the French built three adjacent prison facilities on the South American mainland: just across the strait in Kourou, 50 kilometers (30 miles) east in Cayenne (which later became the capital of French Guiana), and Saint-Laurent, 160 km (100 miles) to the west.
By the early 19th century, France’s urban population had increased from less than six million to more than 16 million, and crime kept pace. Recidivism, reaching up to 75%, became a serious problem; released and unemployed prisoners came to cities seeking means of subsistence.
In the 1840s, the state created internal agricultural penal colonies to receive prisoners, thereby removing them from the urban environment and giving them work. Prisoners were usually sentenced to double punishment, under which after serving their term they had to work as employees in the penal colony for an additional period equal to their original sentence.
After his coup d’état in 1851, Emperor Napoleon III ordered the permanent closure of prisons and the transfer of civil law convicts abroad to colonies. Debates about where the convicts would be sent dragged on. Algeria was excluded by the navy as it was under French army control; Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Texas in the United States were considered, but the government ultimately chose its own colony, French Guiana.
Since 1604, France had repeatedly failed to colonize French Guiana. The last colonization attempt was made in 1763. About 75% of the 12,000 colonists sent there died in the first year of their stay from tropical diseases. In 1852, Napoleon called for volunteer prisoners to the new colony Bagne de Cayenne (Cayenne Penal Colony) in French Guiana; 3,000 prisoners applied. Two categories of prisoners were eligible for transportation: civil law convicts sentenced to double punishment, and those convicted of political crimes such as espionage or conspiracy.
Devil’s Island and its associated prisons became one of the most notorious prison systems in history. Among the prisoners were many political ones, such as 239 republicans who opposed Napoleon III’s 1851 coup, as well as the most hardened thieves and murderers. The vast majority of the more than 80,000 prisoners sent to the Devil’s Island prison system never returned to France. Many died from diseases and harsh conditions. Medical care was practically nonexistent, and the region was infested with mosquitoes that carried tropical diseases. The only way out of the island prisons was by sea, teeming with sharks, and only a few prisoners managed to escape.
Prisoners fortunate enough to have family or friends willing to send them money had to hand it over to the prison guards for safekeeping. The guard kept a quarter of the amount sent and gave the rest to the prisoner.
On May 30, 1854, France adopted a new law on exile. It required convicts to remain in French Guiana after serving their sentence for a period equal to their forced labor term. If the original sentence exceeded eight years, they were forced to remain residents for life and were provided land for settlement. Over time, various regimes of serving sentences appeared, as convicts were divided into categories depending on the severity of their crimes and the length of their imprisonment or exile regime.
The 1885 law provided for sending recidivists for minor crimes to the French Guiana prison system, previously intended for serious offenders and political prisoners. A limited number of convicted women were also sent to French Guiana with the intention of marrying them off to released male prisoners to help settle and develop the colony. Since the results were unsatisfactory, the government discontinued this practice in 1907. On Devil’s Island itself, the small prison usually held no more than 12 people.
Alfred Dreyfus in his room on Devil’s Island, 1898,
The horrors of the penal settlements became public during the Dreyfus Affair, when French army Captain Alfred Dreyfus was unjustly convicted of treason and sent to Devil’s Island on January 5, 1895. After public outrage over prison conditions, the French government announced plans to close the Bagne de Cayenne. The start of World War II delayed this operation, but from 1946 to 1953 the prisons were closed one by one. The prison on Devil’s Island was the last to close.
About the mid-19th century, an experiment was conducted in which 15 prostitutes, believed to encourage prisoners to lead decent lives and start families, were brought to Devil’s Island. The women were guarded by nuns. No families were born, but the women offered sexual services to anyone who could offer them rum. Disputes arose among the men, and eventually a syphilis epidemic broke out on the island.
During the prison’s history, there were several successful escapes. One was the escape of Charles DeRudio. After the assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III on January 14, 1858, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, from where he escaped with twelve other prisoners, making his way to British Guiana. Later in life, he joined the American army and survived the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Clément Duval, an anarchist, was sent to Devil’s Island in 1886. Initially sentenced to death, he later received a life sentence of penal labor. He escaped in April 1901 and settled in New York, where he remained until the end of his life. Eventually, he wrote a book about his imprisonment titled "Outrage."
François Fréan, Paul Renucci, Raymond Vaud, and Giovanni Battistoti — these four escapees from Devil’s Island arrived in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, on October 18, 1936. Their boat nearly wrecked on a reef, and the convicts were initially received as guests and treated for injuries at the municipal hospital.
In Henri Charrière’s bestseller "Papillon" (1969), his successful escape from Devil’s Island with his companion Sylvain is described. They used two bags filled with coconuts. According to Charrière, the two men jumped into the stormy sea from a cliff and drifted to the mainland for three days. Sylvain died in quicksand near the shore. There Charrière was supposed to meet a man named Quick-Quick, who would help him complete his escape to freedom; instead, Charrière was caught again and served some time in Bagne in Eldorado, Venezuela. After his final release, he stayed in Venezuela. Charrière’s book sparked controversy; French authorities disputed his imprisonment on Devil’s Island and published registration records from the penal colony that contradicted his account. According to them, Charrière was never in that prison and escaped from another prison on the mainland. French journalists and prison authorities challenged other events in his book, writing that he fabricated many episodes and borrowed memories and stories from other prisoners.
René Belbenoît, perhaps the most famous escapee from the penal colony, wrote about his experience in two popular autobiographical books: "Hell on Trial" (1940) and "Dry Guillotine: Fifteen Years Among the Living Dead" (1938). Leaving the colony with temporary permission in 1930, he eventually reached the Panama Canal, where he worked for almost a year. At the end of 1930, he decided to return to France to fight for his freedom. However, for a prisoner from Devil’s Island, returning to France was a crime. In 1931, he was sent back to French Guiana, to the prison colony. This time he was sent to Royal Island, not Devil’s Island. He was placed in solitary confinement for almost a year. In 1934, he was released again, but as a freed prisoner, he was not allowed to return to France, just as in 1930. Eventually, he reached the United States, where he gained citizenship in 1956. He died in California in 1959 at the age of 59.
According to the second memoirs of American sailor and writer William Willis ("Damned and Damned Again"), a few days after New Year’s 1938 he rented a room in New York from a French immigrant named Madame Carnot. Her son, Bernard Carnot, was sent to Devil’s Island in 1922 for a murder he did not commit, and since then the Carnot family had moved to the United States. Out of compassion and thirst for adventure, Willis went to the penal colony to organize Bernard Carnot’s escape, which he eventually succeeded in. The book’s subtitle indicates that it documents "the true story of the last escape from Devil’s Island." Transported to Brazil on a supply ship, Carnot never reunited with his family, although through Willis they learned that he had gained freedom. With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to Europe and joined the French forces. He is believed to have been killed in action shortly before the liberation of Strasbourg.
In 1938, the French government stopped sending prisoners to Devil’s Island. In 1953, the prison system was completely closed. Most prisoners at that time were repatriated by the Salvation Army to metropolitan France. Some chose to stay and resettle in French Guiana.
Several films and series based on books and original scripts have been made about Devil’s Island, the most famous being the adaptation of Henri Charrière’s book "Papillon" (1969) in the eponymous American film released in 1973, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. In 2017, a remake of "Papillon" was released starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek. Michael Curtis’s comedy "We’re No Angels," featuring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Ustinov, was also filmed on Devil’s Island.
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