In the midst of this garden stood the hospital, built in quadrangular form, but with one side of each “quad” open to the garden. The houses were raised on stone platforms something like the stoep of a Dutch house, and over these the roofs came down in broad verandahs. Grey-clad figures were sitting or lying about on the flags underneath, a few reading or doing some trifling work, and others were wandering about the garden or sleeping in some shady nook. It was, in short, very different from the central prison and the disciplinary camp.
I was introduced to the Medical Director, and he showed me round, omitting one wing, in which he told me there were a couple of cases of plague. I happened to know that there were really about a dozen, so I readily agreed that that part should be left out.
As prison hospital, it differed very little from others that I had seen in England. There was the same neatness and exquisite cleanliness everywhere, though the wards were somewhat darker, and therefore cooler, which, with the midday sun at 106° in the shade, was not a bad thing. All the nurses were, of course, Sisters of Mercy.[3] In fact, practically all the nursing in New Caledonia is done by Sisters, and not a few of these heroic women had become brides of the Black Death before I left.
Here, as in all other prison hospitals I have visited, diet, stimulants, and medicine are absolutely at the discretion of the Director. No matter what the cost, the spark of life must be kept alive as long as possible in the breast of the murderer, the forger, and the thief, or the criminal whose light of reason has already been quenched in the darkness of the Black Cell.
In fact, so careful are the authorities of their patients’ general health that they give them nothing in the way of meat but the best beef and mutton that can be imported from Australia; Caledonian fed meat is not considered nourishing enough. In normal times the death-rate of Ile Nou, which is wholly given over to convict camps, is two or three per cent. lower than that of the town of Noumea.
Part of the Hospital Buildings, Ile Nou. The roofed-terrace in front is where the patients take their siesta in the middle of the day. One of these is attached to each court of the Hospital. Some of the mattresses may be seen to the right.
Then from this little flowery paradise of rest and quietness we went across the road to another enclosure in which there were two long, white buildings, a prison and a row of offices, at right angles to each other. This was the “bad” side. On the other there had been invalids and invalid lunatics; here there were only lunatics, and mostly dangerous at that—men who, after being criminals, had become madmen; not like the dwellers in Broadmoor, who are only criminal because they are mad.
I once paid a visit to the worst part of the men’s side at Broadmoor, but I don’t think it was quite as bad as the long corridor which led through that gruesome home of madness. On either hand were heavy black-painted, iron doors, and inside these a hinged grating through which the prisoner could be fed.
The cells were about nine feet by six feet. They had neither furniture nor bedclothes in them. The furniture would have been smashed up either in sheer wanton destruction or for use as missiles to hurl through the grating, and the bedclothes would have been torn up into strips for hanging or strangling purposes.