The Bulletin de la Société générale des…

The Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons for 1888 indicates that 10,428 convicts, including 2,329 freed ones, are on the island of New Caledonia as of May 1, 1888, by far the largest number of convicts detained in French overseas penitentiaries.

The convicts include many Communards, arrested after the failed Paris Commune of 1871, including Henri de Rochefort and Louise Michel.

Between 1873 and 1876, forty-two hundred political prisoners had "relegated" to New Caledonia.

Only forty of them of them had settled in the colony; the rest had returned to France after being granted amnesty in 1879 and 1880.