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Day 73, Monday, April 7 2025 - Île Royale (Devil’s Island), French Guiana
Île Royale, Île St-Joseph, and Diable (Devil’s Island) are the three small granite islands that are referred to as Devil’s Island.
The first prison infrastructure was set up and the first batch of convicts arrived in 1852.
Île Royale became the main prison colony and home to not only cell blocks but also a hospital, a church, warders’ bungalows, a commandant’s mansion and a grand officers’ mess.
The somewhat less accessible Île St-Joseph was reserved for extreme punishment: it was here that the cell blocks for solitary confinement were established. The official name of this compound was “réclusion”, but apparently it was also informally known as the ‘man eater’ and as the “guillotine sèche” (literally the ‘dry’ guillotine, meaning without the blood). Here, inmates deemed “incorrectibles” would be kept from between six months and several years in total isolation, in small square cells with no windows but a grille of metal bars instead of a roof from where they were also overseen by the warders. Not a word was spoken, making any noise or even minor offences like just touching the walls could result in extended punishment (longer terms, reduced rations). This was the place designed to really break the men’s spirits.
Île du Diable (Devil’s Island) is the most infamous of the trio. This was for political prisoners. And the best known case was that of Alfred Dreyfus, a military officer from Alsace who was wrongly accused of treason in 1894, convicted under dubious circumstances and sent to Devil’s Island in 1895, where he was housed in a specially constructed cottage surrounded by a wall, and with zero human contact, except for the warders who were not, however, allowed to speak to him.
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