![]() ![]() Of the three islands that make up Îles du Salut, the largest island, Île Royale, served as the administrative center of the prison. The policy was abandoned a few years later. ![]() In 1889, the French government started sending female prisoners as well in hope they would stay and settle on the colony. Political, dangerous, and incorrigible prisoners were sent to Îles du Salut. The majority of prisoners were first sent to St-Laurent-du-Maroni on the coast, where they would be assigned to work gangs to clear forests and build roads. About forty percent of the prisoners who arrived would be dead within a year. The rule hardly mattered since most would not live long enough to leave. Those with longer sentences were exiled for life. In 1854, France instituted the policy of doublage, a rule that forced prisoners serving less than eight years to remain on the island for a period equal to their sentence. In 1852, the government of Emperor Napoleon III established the islands and part of French Guiana as a penal colony. ![]() The name, Îles du Salut (Salvation's Islands), which was given by missionaries who encamped there to escape an outbreak of plague, would prove cruelly ironic over time. The prison often referred to as Devil's Island is in fact three islands called Îles du Salut, as well as a larger penal colony on the mainland. Many prisoners never made it back to their homeland, whether they served out their full term at the penal colony or not." To give a fuller picture of the world that Papillon and Dega found themselves in, we put together a brief history of the prison, both in real life and fiction. "Disease was rampant, and a lot of people died from malaria. "It was hellish over there, and not only the prison," explains Malek, who read several prisoner accounts of the horrors. Papillon was one of the only two successful prisoner escapes from the collection of islands off French Guiana. Of the 80,000 sent there, few returned to Paris after serving their sentences. ![]() Michael Noer's Papillon recreates the world of its title hero (Charlie Hunnam) and his friend Louis Dega (Rami Malek) as they attempt to escape the notorious Devil's Island prison. ![]()
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