Jam Boy

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A jam boy was an individual utilised by golfers as a decoy to draw insects away from the players.

In the early 1920s in this country, rich guys would hire two caddies -- one to carry the bag and one to cover himself in jelly in order to attract flies away from the golfers? They were known as "jam boys."^[1]

—Rick Reilly, Who's Your Caddy?

The term and practice were apparently revived in South Africa in the 1980's during the apartheid regime of the Afrikaaners.

This individual might wear an industrial boiler suit covered in a sugary syrup intended to attract flies. The purpose of this was that the jamboy or jammee would stand 20-30 metres away from the player and attract flies and other pestilence to his person while his patron would be undisturbed during his round of golf. A jam boy was predominately paid less than a caddy.

This practice was abolished with the overthrow of the National Party by the ANC. Nelson Mandela stated that there would be 'no more jamboys in my country'. The term is still used in South Africa as a derogatory term for labourers.

The term jam boy may have originated from the English colonial image of a Gollywog used by Robinsons Jam throughout most of the 20th Century. Robinsons decided to cease portraying this image in the 1990's when it was criticised as racist.