Marie Bartête

Marie Bartête (25 February 1863 – 13 March 1938) was a French prisoner. She was sentenced on 4 June 1888 for shoplifting, and was the last woman to die in the penal colony of French Guiana.

Biography Bartête was born on 25 February 1863 in Monein, France. She was abandoned by her mother, and became an orphan at the age of 9. She married at the age of 15, and became a widow at the age of 20.

Bartête received the right to marry a former convict of the penal colony,

Following her death, Bartête was largely forgotten until the writer Katia-Christiane Ferré, whose father worked at a Cayenne hospital that treated Bartête, found old archives detailing her and started to research her. In 2014, a monument was erected in Monein near her place of birth.