Photo: Wilkins
THE OLDEST INHABITANT OF TRISTAN DA CUNHA, MISS BETTY COTTON (AGED 95 YEARS)
Frequently it happens that a couple do not become married until after a child has been born; often a considerable period elapses. They are not, however, “marriages of necessity.” A young man in Tristan da Cunha is very peculiarly placed. There are no jobs or trades or form of employment in the ordinary sense. There is no currency. If any individual wants help, his neighbours give him a hand, during which time he is expected to feed them. A young man, therefore, can acquire nothing except as a gift from his parents. In many ways it may not suit his parents to allow him to marry, for it means, first of all, another family on the island drawing a full share of common goods. It means also the loss of an adult worker. Again, they may not be in a position to spare him anything in the way of household goods, and, if he has not already built a house, it means a wife and any family he may have quartered upon them. So the young couple use compulsion, for with the advent of the child the parents think it is time to make a move, and present the pair with a cow, a sheep or two, and a few household necessities to enable them to make a start. Until the formal marriage takes place, the child takes its mother’s name, and so it occasionally happens that a bewildered tot of three or four years of age suddenly finds one day that, instead of being Tommy Green, its name has become Tommy Swaine, or vice versa, as the case may be.
Promiscuity is not common and morals, on the whole, appear to be remarkably good, though to the casual observer the reverse might seem to be the case. The remarks in “Sailing Directions” seem to me to cast an unfair stigma upon the islanders.
In some ways they are very casual. Appointments are rarely kept punctually, and they are apt to put things off for another day.
In the hours of rising and going to bed they are governed by the sun. The only form of artificial illumination known to them is candle-light, and frequently they have no candles. They have, as a rule, three meals a day, which they take at times convenient on any one day. The men seek to avoid going out to work in wet weather, but at times—for instance, in the potato season—they fare forth before dawn so as to be ready for work the moment daylight appears, and do not return till dusk. On these occasions it is the duty of the womenfolk to take them out their meals.
There is an island custom that when the men have been engaged on an arduous piece of work at some distant part of the island or have had a heavy day in the boats, the women come out to meet them on their return with something hot to drink. Indeed, the women are by no means idle, for they have all the inside housework, cleaning, cooking, mending, sewing and washing of clothes, to do. They card the fleece from the sheep into wool and twist it into strands, using for the purpose old-fashioned wheels which are manufactured with much ingenuity from all sorts of odds and ends of wood and metal. They knit excellent socks of pure wool, which are soft and comfortable to wear. Usually, also, they take charge of the geese and poultry, and, of course, have the children to look after. They frequent each other’s houses a good deal, but there are one or two who keep to themselves and do not encourage visiting.
Sanitation is very much neglected. Closets do not exist, and the present clergyman had the greatest difficulty in getting one built for his own house. Animals are slaughtered in close proximity to the houses, and no proper steps taken for the removal of entrails and offal, which are left for the dogs to eat. Nothing is done to protect the water supply, which is derived from open streams that have been diverted to pass close to the houses, and the water becomes fouled before it reaches the lower parts of the settlement. Nevertheless, the settlement compares favourably in this respect with many of the remote villages in European countries.
The people are very free from sickness of any kind, which is probably due to their simple mode of life and the absence of any epidemic diseases. They escaped the widespread epidemic of influenza. It is likely that any infectious disease introduced would run rapidly through the whole community. They say that almost invariably when a ship has visited the island “colds” run the round of the settlement.
Maternity cases are dealt with by an old midwife, who adopts the wise policy of leaving things very much to Nature.