The Prisoners of Noumea Some New Caledonian History

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 572, 26 January 1929, Page 16

The Prisoners of Noumea Some New Caledonian History

■ ITHIN four days’ sail of Sydney there is a sjnallish, dusty, hot, shabby town which is ' tagnating in an atmosphere of second-rate French provincialism. but which was once the scene of the miseries and violence of a penal settlement about which Australians know too little. This is Noumea, the capital of the c-’ —y of New Caledonia. To-day (writes Neville Smith in the Melbourne “Herald”), New Caledonia is one of the minor French outposts of civilisation. Business is not as brisk as it was 20 years ago. The French take but a casual interest in the place, and are leaving affairs more and more to people of mixed blood. Compounded of Kanakas, Polynesians, Asiatics and w'hite people, these “metises” now form the bulk of New Caledonia’s population. The mines and smelting works which form the colony’s economic mainstay are to a large extent managed by Britons. But New Caledonia was not always like this. There was a penal settle-

ment which was officially abolished in 1897.

To think nowadays, however, that Noumea is a big prison, is as wrong as to think that present-day Mormons all have several wives. New Caledonia was established as a penal settlement in 1853, the year in which Napoleon 111. made himself Emperor of the French, and began the Third Empire which crashed into oblivion in the smoke and dust of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1. It was copied from the example of the Australian penal colonies, and in any ways bore a strong resemblance to Port Arthur in Tasmania. Even today the ruins of the old prison on lie Nou, in the bay on which Noumea stands, are not unlike those at Port Arthur. The prisoners who were sent to this lonely, semi-tropical isle, had a most unhappy time, partly because it was so far away from France, and partly because their guards were often of a coarse and brutal type. The administration by the French Government, however, was not specifically

harsh or cruel. Prisoners were supposed to be properly fed, housed and clothed, and. if they did not attempt to rebel against the discipline or to escape, there was little ill-treatment of them provided for in the penal code. Life was not unbearable, for the climate of Noumea, though warm, is healthy enough. There is no malaria in New Caledonia, and the dreaded yellow fever, which has added so much horror to the history of France’s other penal settlement, Devil’s Isle, off French Guiana, is not present. To-day there are still nearly 100 prisoners immured on He Nou, of whom half a dozen are women. All of them were transported on criminal charges and all are old. Since 1897 transportation of prisoners to New Caledonia for criminal offences has ceased, but during the war a dozen political prisoners were sent there in connection with military affairs. Most of these “deportes” had been found guilty of treason or sedition, and have now been returned to France. Two of them attracted attention a couple of years ago by escaping and finding their way to Newcastle, N.S.W., where they were arrested by the Australian authorities and handed over to the French. In the parlance of Noumea, a “deporte” is a political convict and a criminal is a “condamne.” Nearly all of the condamnes left in the penitentiary were convicted of murder or some other capital offence. They are pathetic sights as they lounge about the sunny grey courtyards of the prison in shabby old clothes, waiting for death. The modern French administration regards the place more as an old folks’ home than as a prison, and the inmates receive special food, medical attention, and larger issues of fresh milk than are allowed to the patients in the Noumea hospital. Thejnen are all supposed to do hard labour, but present-day officialdom interprets this by giving each man a small garden plot to care for and by not harassing him if he neglects it. Since some of them are blind and many are partially crippled, they cannot be forced to work. There is a special block of cells set apart for the most pathetic of all the

prisoners, the “alienes/* or lunatics. Confined to small, securer cells, these unfortunate men lead what would be an intolerable life for a sane man, but they seem happy enough with their fantasies. One whom I saw had snowwhite hair and beard at least 18 inches long, and imagined himself in communication with the Almighty. Another, in a queer uniform of his own manufacture, was the ‘‘Prince ot Tunis/* and the prison officials were his retinue. . Hard by is a small hut where, two aged Tonkinese are housed. Tuese inoffensive old men were convicted ot a bomb conspiracy in Hanoi, in InaoChina, 22 years ago, r„nd are now serving the last years of their sentences before returning home. They have both become skilled engravers id prison. In the shabby, dusty town of Noumea across the bay may be seen numbers of aged, decrepit, ragged* homeless and lonely men. They ea what they can beg, spend any money given to them on wine, and dream away the last years of their lives in the shabby Place des Cocotiers. They are ‘Tiberes/* or freed prisoners, ana they lead this type of life from choice. The French administration has settled hundreds of liberes on plantations all over the islands, but these men not w'ant plantations. There is also home to which they can go, but perhaps this savours too much of P r *® OT '” of which they have had more tna enough. Noumean citizens and bu ness men would find many of the work if necessary', but they do n want it.