Tarring and feathering is a physical
punishmentPunishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
, used to enforce unofficial justice or revenge. It was used in feudal Europe and its colonies in the
early modern periodIn history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...
, as well as the early American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance (compare Lynch law).
Description
In a typical tar-and-feathers attack, the mob's victim was stripped to his waist. Hot
tarTar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...
was either poured or painted onto the person while he was immobilized. Then the victim either had feathers thrown on him or was rolled around on a pile of feathers so that they stuck to the tar. Often the victim was then paraded around town on a cart or wooden
railRiding the rail was a punishment in Colonial America in which a man was made to straddle a fence rail held on the shoulders of at least two men, with other men on either side to keep him upright...
. The aim was to inflict enough pain and
humiliationHumiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It can be brought about through bullying, intimidation, physical or mental mistreatment or trickery, or by embarrassment if a person is revealed to have...
on a person to make him either reform his behavior or leave town. The practice was never an official punishment in the United States, but rather a form of
vigilanteA vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
justice.
A more brutal derivation, called
pitchcappingPitchcapping refers to a form of torture devised by British forces in 18th century Ireland which was widely used against suspected rebels during the period of the 1798 Rebellion, most famously on Anthony Perry, one of the leaders of the Wexford Rebels....
, was used by British forces against Irish rebels during the period of the
Irish Rebellion of 1798The Irish Rebellion of 1798 , also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion , was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in Ireland...
. Sometimes only the head was shaven, tarred and feathered; other times, a match was held to the feathers to light them and the tar on fire to inflict pain.
Materials
The assumption that tarring and feathering was a necessarily brutal procedure, a form of torture, seems to be belied by the often humorous manner in which it is presented in literature, where the punishment inflicts public humiliation and discomfort, not serious injury. This would be hard to understand if the tar used were the material now most commonly referred to by that name, which has a high melting point. However, the
tarTar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...
of the days of wooden ships was
pine tarPine tar is a sticky material produced by the high temperature carbonization of pine wood in anoxic conditions . The wood is rapidly decomposed by applying heat and pressure in a closed container; the primary resulting products are charcoal and pine tar.Pine tar consists primarily of aromatic...
, a completely different substance, with a much lower melting point. Some varieties were liquid at room temperature.
Petroleum Tar
Modern tar, also called bitumen or
asphaltAsphalt or , also known as bitumen, is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits, it is a substance classed as a pitch...
, is produced from either petroleum or coal. (Americans, at least colloquially, call all these materials tar, while the British seem to reserve ‘tar’ for coal or pine tar, while the petroleum derivative is called bitumen.) Typically used for tarring roads and roofs, the material must be semi-solid in normal weather under the hot sun, so it is formulated to have a high melting point. (Actually tar, which is a mixture of a large number of different complex hydrocarbons, doesn’t have a single melting point, but instead what is called a “softening point,” the temperature at which the material becomes too soft to do its job. It becomes more and more liquid as temperature rises above that.) For example, one modern brand of roofing asphalt has a softening point of 220⁰F (104⁰C), but is applied at 380⁰F (193⁰C). At the latter temperature it is a liquid that can be sloshed around. Obviously this kind of petroleum-based hot tar would burn any skin it came into contact with. Paving materials, both coal and petroleum-based, are mixed at somewhat lower temperatures (221⁰F (105⁰C) for coal tar, 302-357⁰F (150-180⁰C) for bitumen) , but when liquid would still be hot enough to cause severe injuries.
Pine Tar
However, historically, the most common tar was another material altogether, which had different properties and completely different uses. This was pine tar. It was used for waterproofing wooden ships and for weatherproofing rope. According to Wikipedia’s article on
pine tarPine tar is a sticky material produced by the high temperature carbonization of pine wood in anoxic conditions . The wood is rapidly decomposed by applying heat and pressure in a closed container; the primary resulting products are charcoal and pine tar.Pine tar consists primarily of aromatic...
, “Traditionally, hemp and other natural fibers were the norm for rope production. Such rope would quickly rot when exposed to rain, and was typically tarred to preserve it. The tar would stain the hands of ship's crews, and British Navy seamen became known as 'tars.' ” Melville, in
Moby Dick, mentions “putting your hand in the tar-pot” as one of the undignified things sailors were expected to do. It was not a punishment, just a duty, like sweeping down the deck.
Clearly this would not have been possible with asphalt. But rope, unlike roads, must remain flexible, so the tar used had to be softer (closer to liquid) at lower temperatures. According to ScienceLab.com, a purveyor of chemicals and lab equipment, the melting point of its pine tar is 77⁰F (25⁰C). That is a comfortable room temperature. It is lower than the melting point of butter. Pine tar’s boiling point is listed at 235⁰F (113⁰C). This leaves a wide range of temperatures (77-235⁰F) at which pine tar might have been used on a targeted person, from roughly the temperature of dipping butter, or even room temperature, to something truly scalding.
A further note: since each of these materials – bitumen, coal tar, pine tar, pitch – is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, its viscosity/temperature characteristics can vary greatly, depending on how it was made and treated, though pitch is by definition darker and thicker than tar. Somewhat like molasses, which comes in different grades, some pine tars were like golden syrup at room temperature, others much blacker and thicker. The latter had to be heated to a higher temperature to use, and so was called “hot tar.” Therefore it is difficult to know, in a particular instance, just what the material might have been that someone was tarred and feathered with. Unless the tar was boiling, it was not necessarily a brutal procedure. Often it seems to have been more a matter of humiliation than torture.
History
The earliest mention of the punishment appears in orders that
Richard I of EnglandRichard I was King of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period...
, issued to his navy on starting for the
Holy LandThe Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
in 1189. "Concerning the lawes and ordinances appointed by King Richard for his navie the forme thereof was this... item, a thiefe or felon that hath stolen, being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne, and boyling pitch poured upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing-place they shall come to, there to be cast up" (transcript of original statute in
HakluytRichard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...
's Voyages, ii. 21).
A later instance of this penalty appears in
Notes and QueriesNotes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...
(series 4, vol. v), which quotes
James HowellJames Howell was a 17th-century Anglo-Welsh historian and writer who is in many ways a representative figure of his age. The son of a Welsh clergyman, he was for much of his life in the shadow of his elder brother Thomas Howell, who became Lord Bishop of Bristol.-Education:In 1613 he gained his B.A...
, writing in Madrid in 1623, of the "boisterous Bishop of Halberstadt," who, "having taken a place where there were two monasteries of nuns and friars, he caused divers feather beds to be ripped, and all the feathers thrown into a great hall, whither the nuns and friars were thrust naked with their bodies oiled and pitched and to tumble among these feathers, which makes them here (Madrid) presage him an ill-death."
In 1696 a London
bailiffA bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...
, who attempted to serve process on a
debtorA debtor is an entity that owes a debt to someone else. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor...
who had taken refuge within the precincts of the
Savoy, was tarred and feathered and taken in a
wheelbarrowA wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel, designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles to the rear, or by a sail to push the ancient wheelbarrow by wind. The term "wheelbarrow" is made of two words: "wheel" and "barrow." "Barrow" is a...
to
the StrandStrand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...
, where he was tied to a
maypoleA maypole is a tall wooden pole erected as a part of various European folk festivals, particularly on May Day, or Pentecost although in some countries it is instead erected at Midsummer...
that stood by what is now
Somerset HouseSomerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It...
, as an improvised
pilloryThe pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...
.
The first recorded incident in America occurred in 1766: Captain William Smith was tarred, feathered, and dumped into the harbor of
NorfolkNorfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
,
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, by a mob that included the town's Mayor. A vessel picked him out of the water just as his strength was giving out. He survived, and was later quoted as saying that "...[they] dawbed my body and face all over with tar and afterwards threw feathers on me." As with most other tar-and-feathers victims in the following decade, Smith was suspected of informing on smugglers to the British
CustomsCustoms is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, transports, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country...
service.
The practice appeared in
SalemSalem is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,407 at the 2000 census. It and Lawrence are the county seats of Essex County...
,
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, in 1767, when mobs attacked low-level employees of the Customs service with tar and feathers. In October 1769, a mob in Boston attacked a Customs service sailor the same way, and a few similar attacks followed through 1774 (the tarring and feathering of customs worker
John MalcolmJohn Malcolm was a sea captain, army officer, and British customs official who was the victim of the most publicized tarring and feathering incident during the American Revolution....
received particular attention in 1774). Such acts associated the punishment with the
PatriotPatriots is a name often used to describe the colonists of the British Thirteen United Colonies who rebelled against British control during the American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United States of America an independent nation...
side of the
American RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. The exception was when, in March 1775, a British regiment inflicted the same treatment on
Thomas Ditson, a
Billerica, MassachusettsBillerica is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,243 at the 2010 census. It is the only town named Billerica in the United States and borrows its name from the town of Billericay in Essex, England.- History :...
man who attempted to buy a musket from one of the regiment's soldiers. There is no known case of a person dying from being tarred and feathered in this period. During the
Whiskey RebellionThe Whiskey Rebellion, or Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States in the 1790s, during the presidency of George Washington. Farmers who sold their corn in the form of whiskey had to pay a new tax which they strongly resented...
, local farmers inflicted the punishment on Federal tax agents.
During the night of March 24, 1832, Joseph Smith, Jr.—leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—was dragged from his home by a group of men who stripped and beat him before tarring and feathering him. His wife and his infant child, who was knocked from his bed by the attackers, were forced from the home and threatened (the infant died several days later from exposure). Smith was left for dead, but limped back to the home of friends. They spent much of the night scraping the tar from his body, leaving his skin raw and bloody. The following day, Smith spoke at a Church devotional meeting and was reported to have been covered with raw wounds and still weak from the attack.
In 1851 a Know-Nothing mob in
Ellsworth, MaineEllsworth is a city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Maine, United States. The 2010 Census determined it had a population of 7,741. Ellsworth was Maine's fastest growing city from 2000-2010 with a growth rate of nearly 20 percent...
, USA, tarred and feathered a Swiss-born Jesuit priest, Father John Bapst, in the midst of a local controversy over religious education in grammar schools. Bapst fled Ellsworth to settle in nearby
Bangor, MaineBangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, where there was a large Irish-Catholic community, and a local high school there is named for him.
In 1917, during an incident known as the
Tulsa OutrageThe Tulsa Outrage was an act of vigilante violence perpetrated by the Knights of Liberty against members of the IWW on November 7, 1917 in Tulsa, Oklahoma....
, a group of black-robed Knights of Liberty tarred and feathered seventeen members of the
IWWThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
in Oklahoma.
In the 1920s, vigilantes opposed to
IWWThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
organizers at California's harbor of
San PedroSan Pedro is a port district of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was annexed in 1909 and is a major seaport of the area...
, kidnapped at least one organizer, subjected him to tarring and feathering, and left him in a remote location.
This was a relatively rare form of mob punishment for Republican African Americans in the post-bellum U.S. South, as its goal is typically pain and humiliation rather than death (as in the more common
lynchingLynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
and burning alive). There were several examples of tarring and feathering of African Americans in the lead-up to
World War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in
Vicksburg, MississippiVicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...
.
Following the Liberation of France in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
there were instances of alleged German collaborators being tarred and feathered by street mobs. Most of the victims of this practice were women accused of
a Collaboration horizontale, i.e., sexual relations with German soldiers.
Similar tactics were also used by the
Provisional Irish Republican ArmyThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
(IRA) during the early years of
The TroublesThe Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
. Many of the victims were women accused of sexual relationships with policemen or British soldiers.
In August 2007,
loyalistUlster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...
groups in Northern Ireland were linked to the tarring and feathering of an individual accused of drug-dealing.
Pop culture
- In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
, the Dauphin and the Duke are tarred, feathered, and ridden on a railRiding the rail was a punishment in Colonial America in which a man was made to straddle a fence rail held on the shoulders of at least two men, with other men on either side to keep him upright...
in Pikesville after performing the Royal Nonesuch to a crowd that Jim had previously forewarned about the rapscallions.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's humorous short story, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is a comedic short story written by American author Edgar Allan Poe.-Plot summary:The story follows an unnamed narrator who visits a mental institution in southern France known for a revolutionary new method of treating mental illnesses called the...
," features the staff of an insane asylum being tarred and feathered.
- Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
's 2003 novel Hornet's Nest describes the tarring and feathering of a ToryToryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
by members of the Sons of LibertyThe Sons of Liberty were a political group made up of American patriots that originated in the pre-independence North American British colonies. The group was formed to protect the rights of the colonists from the usurpations by the British government after 1766...
.
- The avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
artist Fad GadgetFad Gadget is the stage name of Francis John Tovey , a British avant-garde electronic musician and vocalist. He was a proponent of both New Wave and early Industrial music....
often performed on stage while tarred and feathered. He was photographed in tar and feathers for the cover of his album Gag.
Metaphorical uses
The image of the tarred-and-feathered
outlawIn historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...
remains a
metaphorA metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for public humiliation many years after the practice became uncommon. To tar and feather someone can mean to punish or severely criticize that person.
Sources and external links
- Text of law of Richard I http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/richard.htm
- "Has anyone actually ever been tarred and feathered?" at Straight Dope
The Straight Dope is a popular question-and-answer newspaper column published in the Chicago Reader, syndicated in thirty newspapers in the United States and Canada, as well as being available and archived at the .-Newspapers:...
- Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder is a biography of Joseph Smith Jr., founder and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement, by Richard Bushman...
., Alfred Knopf, 2005, ISBN 1-4000-4270-4