Sticking Tommy

Hello Everyone,

The object pictured above is one that could once be found in the thousands, but is now, to quote an older member of the community, "as scare as hen’s teeth".

It is called a Sticking Tommy.

In effect, it is a portable candle holder and was used extensively in the schooner fishery.

The two points are used to "stick" the Sticking Tommy. If a fisherman needed extra light in the hold of the vessel, he would stick the horizontal point into a post or beam. If they needed light on deck, the end point would be driven into the rim of a barrel or some other upright structure.

The Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982) refers to such objects as a tommy-sticker, with the following definition:

tommy-sticker: makeshift candle-holder. "When we’d want to stick the candle up for to burn, where he wouldn’t burn the wood, we had a tommy-sticker. There’s a cone-shape in the top-end large enough for the candle to go into, and a point, a spear on the end, and another spear on the side where we could stick him up perpendicular or stick him up on the side of the ship, or anywhere."

Similar objects were used in coal mining.

Wishing you Smooth Sailing,

Heather