Word: conviction
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Most of French Guiana's chroniclers have followed a pat formula. The story usually starts with the teller being convicted of a felony. In a temporary prison at the citadel of St. Martin-de-Ré, in the Bay of Biscay, the convict awaits the sailing of the plodding 3,800-ton "hellship" La Martinière, formerly a German freighter, now outfitted with steel-girded cells and mutiny-suppressing hot-steam hose. Into her hold go Foreign Legion deserters, Algerian Spahis convicted of rape, French Indo-Chinese murderers, Circassian thieves, arch-crooks from Montmartre. The ship arrives...
...prisoners in the colony 4,500 never leave the mainland. If the convict is considered incorrigibly dangerous, however, he may be sent to one of the Iles du Salut, high, rocky, mile-long Ile Royale, and there set at hard labor, perhaps even put in an isolated pit. If considered a mental case he may enter a madman's cell, on Ile St. Joseph. If he has been convicted of treason, he will probably be sent to live in a hut on the most famous of this trio of islands-the 34-acre, bleak Il du Diable, or Devil...
Main deterrent to escape is the difficulty of finding money to buy and outfit a canoe. A convict is able to make from 25 centimes (less than 1? to 1.5 francs a day, must save many years before he can hope to buy even enough food to last him on what is usually a ten or twelve-day open-ocean trip. Chief feature of a French sentence to Guiana is that it means just half of what it says. A seven-year sentence is really for 14 years-seven years at hard labor, seven years...
...Convict Richard Whitney, onetime (1910) member of Harvard's varsity crew, onetime (1930-35) President of the New York Stock Exchange, in a game at Sing Sing, played first base for the prison's "school team," batted .667 in three times at bat, made no errors, stood a chance of promotion to the prison varsity...
Divorced. Ralph James ("Bottles") Capone, brother of Convict Al Capone; by Velma Capone; in Chicago, three days before their 10th wedding anniversary. Grounds: cruelty...