An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Last week, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore an­nounced that this year would be the last one for the is­land prison of Car­rera, which is slat­ed to be closed per­ma­nent­ly.

This draws the cur­tain on a chap­ter of lo­cal his­to­ry few know. The rocky lime­stone islet per­haps was used as a tem­po­rary prison de­pot around 1854 when Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons Daniel Hart lodged some con­victs who were labour­ing on cut­ting a chan­nel for small boats through Pointe Gourde. This wa­ter­way was named Hart's Cut af­ter its in­no­va­tor sang his own prais­es and wrote:

"This is a Canal cut across the Isth­mus of Ch­aguara­mas 2,165 feet in length, 15 feet in width, and four feet deep from the banks. The cut­ting was sug­gest­ed by Mr Daniel Hart, Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons, ap­proved of by the Gov­er­nor, Sir Charles El­liot, KC, and or­dered to be car­ried out un­der Mr Hart's su­per­in­ten­dence by means of con­vict labour.'

The work was com­plet­ed on May 29, 1856........ To the in­hab­i­tants of Ch­aguara­mas, Monos, and Cha­cachacare, the cut is one of the great­est of boons that could have been con­ferred, ob­vi­at­ing as it does, the ne­ces­si­ty (as pre­vi­ous­ly) of go­ing round the dan­ger­ous pas­sage by Point Gourde, a place where many peo­ple have lost their lives."

In 1966, the canal which had served so many for so long was filled in and is now the carpark for prison of­fi­cers on the is­land.In 1866 Car­rera be­came a short-lived quar­an­tine de­pot for In­di­an in­den­tured labour be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty moved to Nel­son Is­land. Around 1875 con­victs were set to work "bussin stone" to pro­vide hard pun­ish­ment and sup­ply road met­al to the Pub­lic Works De­part­ment.

This was done on a star­va­tion di­et of a few bis­cuits and tea twice dai­ly and a mid­day pint of soup. It was the harsh­est form of in­car­cer­a­tion for in those days: pris­on­ers did not en­joy hol­i­days at tax­pay­ers' ex­pense as they now do, but were pressed in­to chain gangs for the main­te­nance of pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture (ceme­ter­ies, road verges, etc) or else quar­ried on Car­rera and its neigh­bour, Kro­n­stadt Is­land.

In 1876 con­struc­tion of a huge stone-walled prison com­plex was ini­ti­at­ed and com­plet­ed by 1880. Pris­on­ers from a de­funct con­vict tim­ber de­pot in Long­denville and lat­er, one in the Irois for­est, were crowd­ed in­to tiny cells.For many years the Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons was Capt Per­cy Fras­er, who im­ple­ment­ed many changes and saw in­car­cer­a­tion as both a stern process and one in­tend­ed to re­form and mod­i­fy the char­ac­ter of the of­fend­er.

Dur­ing World War I (1914-18), Car­rera pris­on­ers were used to erect a gun on Gas­par Grande Is­land, hav­ing to cut the road­way to the top of a steep hill and then drag­ging the mas­sive weapon by hand all the way un­der the per­son­al su­per­vi­sion of Capt Fras­er and the gov­er­nor of the colony him­self, Sir John Chan­cel­lor. To­wards the end of Per­cy Fras­er's ad­min­is­tra­tion in 1931 there was a prison ri­ot, which saw the warders be­ing held hostage un­til the sit­u­a­tion was de­fused by the ar­rival of Fras­er him­self.

A Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was ap­point­ed to look in­to the colony's pe­nal sys­tem and mas­sive re­vi­sions im­ple­ment­ed, in­clud­ing an ex­pan­sion of the fa­cil­i­ties on the is­land. Adult lit­er­a­cy class­es, movie nights and trade-school were some of the im­prove­ments but may have failed to make an im­pact on all, since one of the most in­fa­mous prod­ucts of the sys­tem in this pe­ri­od was Boysie Singh, the pi­rate, gang­ster and mur­der­er who paid for his crimes at the end of a hang­man's rope.

For all the up­grades to the sys­tem it must not be imag­ined that Car­rera was par­adise. There was once an epi­dem­ic of blind­ness among the In­di­an pris­on­ers. Many were there for the crime of wife-mur­der, which was preva­lent at the pe­ri­od. Ap­par­ent­ly, a ru­mour spread that blind pris­on­ers would be re­leased and repa­tri­at­ed to In­dia, where there were na­tive doc­tors who could re­store their sight.

The blind­ness was achieved by catch­ing crabs on the rocky shore­line and squeez­ing the tox­ic bile from their in­nards in­to the eyes, which caused rapid in­flam­ma­tion and loss of sight. On an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, a pris­on­er con­vict­ed of a sex­u­al of­fence con­trived to silent­ly am­pu­tate his own tes­ti­cles, which were lat­er kept in al­co­hol in the prison in­fir­mary as a cu­rios­i­ty.

At times Car­rera could in­deed be akin to the oth­er fa­mous is­land-prison, Al­ca­traz, which seems to whis­per Dante's words: "Aban­don hope, all ye who en­ter here." Yet among this there are pos­i­tive sto­ries, one of which is quite per­son­al to me.

Af­ter leav­ing his fa­ther's co­coa es­tate in Siparia to see ser­vice dur­ing World War II, 21-year-old Eu­lick Bisses­sars­ingh be­came a prison of­fi­cer in His Majesty's ser­vice, be­ing post­ed to fa­cil­i­ties in the Ba­hamas and St Vin­cent be­fore be­ing sta­tioned at Car­rera Is­land, where he re­mained un­til 1954.Of his time on Trinidad's Dev­il Is­land, Eu­lick al­ways re­marked that aside from the odd dis­tur­bance or two, jail­birds and warders shared a kin­ship, since the long fur­loughs of du­ty (some­times last­ing weeks) made them all pris­on­ers.

This is not to say that the jail was a so­cial club. Mis­de­meanours amongst the in­mates were pun­ished with soli­tary con­fine­ment in a cell reek­ing with sewage, flog­gings with the cat-o'-nine tails (a dread­ful whip) and a sin­gle meal of bread and wa­ter dai­ly. It is per­haps no sur­prise that on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, pris­on­ers dared swim the shark-in­fest­ed chan­nel sep­a­rat­ing the is­land from Ch­aguara­mas in a des­per­ate bid for free­dom.

Amidst this ter­ror was an­oth­er young man, Ru­pert "Archie" Archibald, who, like Eu­lick, hailed from Siparia–his crime, mur­der. Archie at age 14 lived un­der the shad­ow of abuse and be­ing un­able to see his step­fa­ther bru­talise his moth­er any longer, took up an axe and cleft the man's skull.

Eu­lick and Archie fast be­came friends be­hind the omi­nous walls of Car­rera. An ac­com­plished artist, the prison warder passed on his skills to the in­mate and al­so taught him to read and write. Eu­lick al­so in­ter­ced­ed on Archie's be­half in writ­ing sev­er­al times, un­der­stand­ing that Archie's of­fence was a crime of ne­ces­si­ty.

Eu­lick left the prison ser­vice in the 1950s and a cou­ple of years af­ter, Archie was grant­ed his free­dom and the two re­newed their old friend­ship back in their home­town of Siparia. The ex-con­vict took on a new man­tle as the Mid­night Rob­ber every Car­ni­val in a most im­pres­sive form, his tow­er­ing stature and ex­pres­sive lyrics mak­ing him one of the past-mas­ters of ole mas. His elab­o­rate cos­tume was de­signed and con­struct­ed by Eu­lick.

Many years af­ter his friend died in 1986, I re­mem­ber Archie–then a very old man and near­ly blind–tot­ter­ing up the steep poui-lined dri­ve­way lead­ing to our home. He would sit and re­gale us for hours with sto­ries of Car­rera and his life be­fore, as well as the times he and Eu­lick, my grand­fa­ther, shared as friends.

Archie gave me a bay-leaf tree which he asked me to plant in Eu­lick's mem­o­ry, which I did, in 1993, and it still thrives. Archie is dead now, end­ing a great friend­ship of seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble ori­gins that be­gan and last­ed on Car­rera Is­land.

Now that this his­toric place is about to be de­mo­bilised, it is my fer­vent hope as a his­to­ri­an that it will be pre­served as a rel­ic of our past and can serve as a bea­con for tourism which has al­ready proven to be a prac­ti­cal use for old is­land pris­ons at Al­ca­traz and Dev­il's Is­land.