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Clément Duval
Born	1850 France
Died	March 29th, 1935 New York City
Known for	Spending fourteen years on Devil's Island

Clément Duval (1850—29th March, 1935) was a French anarchist and criminal, whose beliefs and actions were influential on later illegalists like the Bonnot Gang. Michael Albert claimed the character of Papillion from Henri Charrière's novel of the same name was based on Duval but "shorn of all politics"

Biography

France

Duval fought and was injured sometime during the Franco-Prussian War. By October 1886, he had joined an anarchist group in Paris called "the Panthers of Batignolles". A statement authored by the group in support of their illegal activities appeared in the October 24th, 1886 edition of anarchist periodical Le Révolté

On October 25th, 1886, Duval broke into a rich woman's home and stole jewels from her and "accidentally set it [the house] on fire while destroying things he could not take". Soon after, Duval put up the jewels for sale, which attracted the suspicion of the police, leading to his arrest.

On January 11th, 1887, he was brought to trial for the theft, where he espoused his ideas of individual reclamation and justified his theft in explicitly anarchist terms, earning the support of the crowd. He cried "Long live anarchy!" as he was expelled from the court room, provoking the crowd into overwhelming and attacking the police sent to the courthouse. A month later, on February 11th, Duval was sentenced to death, a sentence that was protested by anarchists. On February 28th, the President of France had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment on Devil's Island in French Guiana. On March 25th, he departed from Toulon on a ship headed to the Salvation Islands.

Devil's Island, New York City and death

Duval would go on to spend fourteen years imprisoned on Devil's Island, from which he attempted escape twenty separate times. With the aid of Régis Meunier, a French anarcho-syndicalist, Duval and eight other prisoners escaped the prison on April 13th, 1901, rowing out to open sea in a fragile canoe.

Reaching land, Duval eventually made his way to New York City, where he integrated himself into Italian anarchist circles and became acquainted with insurrectionary anarchist Luigi Galleani and his followers, the Galleanisti. Duval died on March 29th, 1935, in New York City, surrounded by his Italian anarchist friends.

Writings

Duval's memoir, Memorie Autobiografiche, was published in 1929, translated by Galleani into Italian. In 1980, Marianne Enckell of C.I.R.A recovered part of Duval's original manuscript and had it published as Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony. Enckell's version of Duval's memoir was translated into English by Michael Shreve and published by PM Press in 2012.