"Devils Island, Papillon and all that" Devils Island by PeterVancouver

Royale, St Joseph and Devils Islands, some 15Km off the Coast of French Guiana, are collectively and commonly known as Salvation Islands, where originally a leper colony was established and later, convicts from France were housed for the best part of a century, up until its closing in 1950. It is a very inhospitable and humid place, where numerous tropical diseases took their toll with inmates, guards, and their families alike. Even today visitors are required to be innoculated against Yellow Fever.The sea around the Islands have very strong currents and are infested with shark so escape become almost impossible other than for Henri Charriere or Papillon who claimed to be the only convict to escape and survive. From the size and quality of the cells it was clearly an extraordinarily harsh place to be a captive and clearly it is impossible to imagine the horrors of what went on in that place.

Devils Island taken from Royal Is. These two islands were for a number of years connected by a metal cable with a hopper used for transporting food and warders between the Islands

• In a nutshell:A place where souls and spirts clearly were crushed