Mrs. Blair Niles

              LEE KEEDICK 
presents
 MRS. BLAIR NILES 
Figure

Distinguished Novelist, Essayist, Lecturer and Explorer



Author of 
COSDEMSED
 TO DEVIL'S ISLAND




A book which has startled the civilized world




Also author of the thrilling novel entitled 
Free




LECTURE SUBJECT:



LIFE STORIES OF CONVICTS ON DEVIL'S ISLAND






DEVIL'S ISLAND
THE WORLD'S MOST TERRIBLE PRISON! 

M
RS. BLAIR NILES, who has gained wide distinction as a writer and public speaker, has arranged, this season, to deliver a lecture of remarkable interest, entitled 
Life Stories of Convicts on Devil's Island.
  In this lecture, which is certain to make a profound impression on every audience that hears it, Mrs. Niles will give a graphic account of her visit to the notorious French penal colony on the coast of South America.  
No other American had ever visited the terrible Devil's Island prison,
 but with the permission of the French authorities Mrs. Niles was enabled to see it thoroughly.  She also had opportunities for gathering the stories of convicts who had been transported from France to serve long sentences in this tropical plague spot.  These stories, which she will embody in her lecture, abound in features so tragic, pathetic and thrilling as to form a unique epic in the world's literature.



A LAND OF HORRORS



For some time, with her husband, Mrs. Niles kept house in the heart of the Devil's Island penitentiary concession, and had as a servant an old convict who had been thirty-nine years in the coast prisons.  In her lecture she will describe what she saw and heard during her visit to a land of horrors, where thousands of men, cast from civilization, endure a life of intense suffering, starved of sex and robbed of hope until released by death or sent adrift wasted in strength and broken in spirit.  Some of the scenes she witnessed vividly recall the heart-rending episodes depicted in Dante's Inferno.




LIVING DEAD MEN



Strange as it may seem, Devil's Island is closer to New York than to Paris.  The penal colony is situated on the coast of French Guiana, which lies north of Brazil and adjoins the Dutch and British Guianas.  The country, which has an area of over forty thousand square miles, is largely covered with a dense, pestilential jungle.  Being close to the equator it has a hot, stifling climate.  During Mrs. Niles' visit to the penal colony she witnessed the arrival of a convict ship which brought 687 new victims from France.  These were at once set to work with the other prisoners, toiling from day to day in the broiling heat of the tropics, half starved, and frequently drenched by rains.  Deaths from fevers and dysentery were numerous.  The bodies were dumped into a bamboo swamp or thrown to the sharks in the bay.  Those who survived were less fortunate.  To use Mrs. Niles' expression, they were really living dead men.



Figure

Copyright by Robert Niles, Jr.

SUFFERING AWAITS THEM
Prisoners landing at Devil's Island from a French convict ship.


THE PENAL COLONY



Mrs. Niles, in describing the prisons of French Guiana, explains that Devil's Island is devoted entirely to political offenders.  Thousands guilty of general crimes, such as murder, burglary, highway robbery, forgery and counterfeiting, are imprisoned either at Cayenne, on the mainland, or on the islands of Royale and Joseph, just off the coast.


  . . .
a tropical inferno

Figure

Copyright by Robert Niles, Jr.


WHERE HOPE IS DEAD
A captured fugitive condemned to solitary confinement in a narrow cell with a plank bed.

 Mrs. Niles, however, has used the term 
Devil's Island
 to stand for the whole penal colony, because it has been generally known by that name since the attention of the world was called to it, more than thirty years ago, when Captain Dreyfus was sent there after being falsely convicted of treason.  His sufferings during his imprisonment aroused universal indignation after his ultimate acquittal.  In writing about the French penal colony and in lecturing on this subject Mrs. Niles has had no idea of muck raking.  She realizes that in many of our own prisons conditions are shocking, a fact that was largely responsible for the recent outbreaks at Auburn, N. Y.


SHOCKING CONDITIONS REVEALED



The bulk of the convicts sent to Devil's Island, it is true, are often desperate and dangerous criminals, but that does not excuse the prison system, which is ruthless and terrible in its cruelty.  Even those who might be capable of reform are contaminated by their association with the more hardened criminals, large numbers of whom are typical Parisian apaches.  Degeneracy too horrible for description flourishes among the inmates of the prisons.  On the haggard faces of hundreds is the same expression of hopeless despair, which once seen remains in the memory with all the fascination of a dreadful picture.  Toiling incessantly in a climate that undermines even the strongest constitution, broken down through lack of proper food and the effects of tropical diseases, the majority of those who live to serve their sentences become prematurely aged, shattered in mind and body.





Copyright by Robert Niles, Jr.


A FAMOUS CASE RECALLED
The present occupant of the house in which Captain Dreyfus lived during his unjust imprisonment.


DESPERATE ESCAPES



Although closely guarded, some of the prisoners occasionally contrive to escape from their horrible captivity.  After facing many perils by sea and land they are invariably recaptured and brought back to undergo still harsher treatment.  As a rule they are sentenced to solitary confinement on one of the islands, where they sleep on hard planks and swelter in the tropical heat of their cells.  Oftentimes they are driven insane from despair caused by this dreadful existence.  Some of the stories of escapes which Mrs. Niles gathered rival the most thrilling incidents imagined by famous writ-ers of fiction.  In most cases prisoners try to force their way through the jungle to reach Brazil or the neighboring Dutch or British colonies.  Some are lost and die of starvation.  Those who succeed in reaching their destination are usually arrested soon afterwards and turned over to the French authorities.



EXPLORING THE JUNGLE



In order to gain an idea of the dangers faced by the men who make dashes for freedom Mrs. Niles, with her husband, journeyed through the interior of French Guiana, led by native guides, and followed the trails, streams and rivers used by prisoners who attempt to escape.  The miasmatic jungle, consisting of forest trees and almost impenetrable brush, stretches for hundreds of miles.  It was so dense that at times a machete had to be used to hew a path.  Mosquitos swarmed everywhere and there was the constant menace of poisonous snakes.  In the depths of this tropical wilderness live Carib Indians and Bush-negroes.  The latter, who are descendants of former slaves who revolted more than a hundred years ago, have reverted to the ways of old Africa.  Mr. Niles obtained a number of photographs showing their strange African dances and worship of African gods.



Figure

Copyright by Robert Niles, Jr.


FACING TRAGEDY
A dangerous dash for freedom through the jungle.


WRITER AND LECTURER



Mrs. Niles is not only highly qualified as a lecturer but she has also earned a brilliant reputation as a writer.  Her recently published book, 
Condemned to Devil's Island,
 in which she tells the story of her memorable visit to the penal colony, has been numbered among the best sellers in this country, and it has also had a wide circulation in Europe, where it is to be translated into several languages.  This book furnished material for a stirring motion picture story, 
Condemned,
 which met with such remarkable success when produced in New York that arrangements were made for its presentation in the principal picture theatres throughout the country.  Mrs. Niles' book received splendid tributes from the press as well as from eminent authors, including Havelock Ellis, the psychologist, Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, the sociologist and Ellen Glasgow, the novelist.  Percy Hutchison, writing in the New York Times, described the book as 
Amazing; not to be duplicated anywhere.  It fathoms the psychology of the convict with unerring accuracy.  It is an epic of the living dead.
  In addition to this book Mrs. Niles is the author of 
Free,
 a thrilling novel, which deals with a convict's escape from Devil's Island.




A NOTABLE EVENT



Because of the wide discussion her books have aroused Mrs. Niles is certain to attract large audiences wherever she lectures.  She has a thrilling story to tell and one that is certain to make a deep impression on every hearer.  She also possesses the ability to present it in a strikingly original manner.  Her remarkable experiences moreover have shown that she is endowed with a remarkable personality, a fact that will add much to her interest as a lecturer.  Consequently, her appearance on the platform is destined to be an outstanding event of the present season.




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