St Kilda graveyard
n.d. Photographer unknown
The graveyard on St Kilda is oval in shape and surrounded by a wall to keep out livestock, and its position in the village can be seen on the of Village Bay. Many infants born on St Kilda during the 19th century lived only a short while, dying of an illness known on the island as the 'sickness of eight days', now known as neonatal tetanus. In 1838 it was recorded that eight out of ten babies born on St Kilda died of this illness, and in 1877 a visitor to the islands reported that one woman had given birth to twelve children, but only one had survived. Many of the graves are therefore of infants, and the tradition when a child died was to open an existing grave and add the body to the existing one.