I always knew even as a small child how very special the woman of St. Helena are. I watched them raise their children, chopping wood and doing jobs only considered for men. Woman would knit, make their childrens clothes. In fact every thing was handmade back then. Woman would even do the gardening as the men would sometimes work on Ascension Island. The women would look after pigs and chickens.
If the new generation of woman think that their lives are hard then you must please think about your grandmothers. They did not have birth control. They had no choice of what life threw at them. Families were sometimes rather large with 10 to 12 children. The olders children would care for the younger children.
I remember the children were clean with well brushed hair. The girls would have pony tails, long plaits or ringlets. The boys would have very short cut hair. I did feel a sadness for the single mothers they would sometimes have 10 or more children and they would be supported by their parents. People would always help each other back then. I am sad to say however that the single mother would be frowned upon and called unpleasent names. It was mostly the men who would shout the names which in my mind seemed strange, because it was some of the men who would have caused the single mothers to be in the single mother in the first place.
Some men were good responsible fathers, but some simply didn’t want the responsibilityof being a parent. It was a blessing when birth control was introduced to St. Helena. Life was dfficult back then and woman would leave their children with relatives to find work. They would mainly find domestic work in England. Some of these woman were intelligent and they could have worked as professionals but did demeaning jobs to support their families back on St. Helena.
There were some children at my school that were left with their older sister when their mum came to work in England. I also grew up with Violet Moyce, her mother left her and her four brothers alone with their dad so she could work in England. Violets mother did take violet back to live in England. Life was very difficult for Violet as a child, but she did alright for herself after she came to England.
So if the woman on St. Helena think that their lives are hard now the woman back then had a much harder life, no choices and no birth control to protect them from the men that didn’t care.