By the 1930s, hope had dawned somewhat for the lepers of Chacachacare. New treatments were being used in an attempt to force their disease into remission, but the painful injections of the chemicals were an ordeal all of their own. Nevertheless, several women and children were discharged and mercifully allowed to leave the island.
Periodically, there were several more episodes of the sort throughout the decade. Dr Urich was replaced as medical superintendent by Dr Muir who had specialist training in the treatment of Hansen’s disease. Nevertheless, admissions of new patients continued to rise, with the population ballooning to 395 by 1940. With the outbreak of World War II and the arrival of American forces in T&T in 1941, the pace of life changed.
In 1943 six hundred men of the US Marine Corps were stationed at Chacachacare where a large submarine net had been laid across the Bocas. They had no contact with the lepers but provided help for the Dominican Sisters by constructing a cable-tram from the jetty to the convent to enable the nuns to transport supplies more easily. The 900 odd acres occupied by the Americans were separated from the leper colony by a barbed wire fence.
In 1946 electric generators were landed and installed with some difficulty, but they allowed patients a new form of recreation in the form of movies which were screened weekly. Dr Muir’s successor, Dr Campbell, did much to improve the living conditions of patients. Some thought was given to closing the settlement, but this was never done.
The Government passed certain regulations at the end of the 1940s which required nursing degrees for medical staff, which of course placed the hardworking Dominican Sisters at a disadvantage although they had done this work and so much more since their arrival in Trinidad.
Dr Mackay who succeeded Dr Muir in 1948 introduced new treatments which were painful but effective, increasing the number of people discharged. A school for the children on the island was established and staffed by Sisters of Mercy who arrived to relieve the Dominicans. These new nuns did not remain long, departing in 1955.
By 1950 specialist surgeons were visiting the island to perform reconstructive surgery on the faces of inmates whose features had been horribly disfigured by the disease, depriving them of noses, eyelids and lips. Amidst the scattered and abandoned medical records visitors come across in the ruins of the old hospital one may find invoices for prosthetic noses among other things.
In 1952 the Dominican Sisters left Chacachacare, handing over to paid government nurses the care of the lepers to whom they had given their all for nearly 80 years. Throughout the decade and into the 1960s, numbers fell at Chacachacare as medical treatments proved effective and more patients were discharged. There were also several Hansen’s Disease treatment centres across the nation which stemmed the admission of new people to the settlement.
As the stringent controls on outside contact began to relax, inmates were visited by various religious groups and social workers to enhance their quality of life. Mr Rudolph Sitahal, a national awardee and music teacher of many years, recalls visiting Chacachacare where he played his signature lap-steel guitar and interacted with the patients. Art and craft classes were conducted as well, with periodic exhibitions of the work produced at the National Museum in Port-of-Spain.
The last medical superintendent of Chacachacare was Dr Walter Von Crosson. Dr Von Crosson deliberately volunteered his services on the island. Under his administration, activities were gradually wound down and on July 23, 1984, sixty-three years of exile at Chacachacare ended as the last patients were transferred back to Trinidad.
Today, the island has returned to the forest. The buildings are empty and vandalised. Patient records flutter about like confetti, left where they were last placed. The shell of the convent and chapel where the brave Dominican Sisters lived still stands and the little graveyard containing the remains of nine of their order and one Sister of Mercy stand as a solemn reminder of the great price they paid for their unfailing devotion.
Instruments and operating tables rust in the old hospital and the ancient house where the medical superintendents once lived at Rust’s Bay is now a derelict ruin. The patients’ villages at Sander’s and Cocos Bays have vanished as the dry scrub forest have reclaimed them. Chacachacare and its ghosts are now at peace.