In 2015 , we often apply the term “ tarred and feathered ” to discover crowd - sourced vendettas against stranger ( like ganging up on someonethrough social media ) or revenge from one’speers . What your distinctive furious mob might not know is that tarring and feathering did n’t actually practice pitch as we eff it ; that slay the hooey could be super rugged ( and very atrocious ) ; and how the centuries - old punishment stick around today .
RICHARD THE LIONHEART FEATHERS SEA BURGLARS
In the U.S. , we often associate tarring and feather with mob justice in the Old West . In the 1971 cartoonLucky Luke : Daisy Town , storyteller Rich Little ( impersonating James Stewart ) even gives simple , step - by - whole step instructionsfor turning a frontier hooligan into what he calls a “ Western souffle ” using gob and feathers . However , the practice in reality began far to begin with in Europe , and was first document in an 1189 proclamation from Richard the Lionheart for penalize any thief discovered on his crusading sea vessels :
TAR, PINE TAR, AND PITCH (OH, MY)
If you ’re envisioning miscreants being slathered with bubbling roofing sea dog , recollect again . Unlike the petroleum - based tar that we now use for paving roads , the sticky stuff used for tar and feathering unlucky truants for hundreds of age has usually been either pine mariner ( derived from the wood of pine trees , as the name suggests ) or pitch , which traditionally was the name for resin and only subsequently got attached to petroleum product .
woodwind instrument tar was first used for waterproofing wooden ship and structures in ancient Greece , and Northern Europeans began refining birch barque in the Neolithic . Using either destructive or dry distillation to debilitate the instinctive tar and pitch from Ellen Price Wood or peat slews by harnessing heat , time , and/or dim-witted gravitational attraction , they helped make tar a major manufacture — one that later garner North Carolinians the sobriquet “ Tar Heels ” because of their tar - rich pine forests .
For the most part , artificial sealants interchange natural woods tar and pitch in the 20th century , but petroleum sealants are very problematical viscoelastic polymers in their own right and take a long fourth dimension to convert soma . ThePitch Drop Experiment , the Guinness World Records ’ longest - running laboratory experiment , has been tracking a retinal cone of unwarmed tar as it ’s been slowly take shape and release droplet since 1930 — over 85 year later , that batch of pitch is only working on its 10th pearl . While pine Jack-tar and rake have down in the mouth melting points than petroleum tar , being paint with their melted forms could still be very sore , leading to vesicate sunburn and stripping the skin off when it came time to peel the tar aside .
TAR GOES GLOBAL
Centuries after Richard ordered the punishment for oceangoing robbers , it was being used throughout Europe for social indiscretions . Historian Benjamin H. Irvinpoints out , for instance , that “ the Bishop of Halverstade ordered that mariner - and - feather be applied to a company of bibulous friar and nuns ” in 1623 . Because tar and lurch were often in great supplying around shipyard and on ocean vessel , the naval boom of the last millennium ’s middle bring the practice around the world , too : Irving found that , “ in Dominica in 1789 , a British soldier caught committing zooerastia with a turkey was swot up out of his regiment while thrust to don the hiss ’s feather ‘ round his neck [ and ] on his beard . ’ ”
JOSEPH SMITH’S BRUSH WITH FEATHERS
Americans suffer in on the act as well . Joseph Smith , founder of the Mormon religion , endure his own tar and feather attempt in 1832 , possibly after an aborted attack to castrate him — the result , accord to different account statement , of community bad blood over either his intimate action , his attempt to take away community belongings , or a compounding thereof . Smithremembered ,
tar and feathering also became a form of political revenge for the poorer classes a few one C ago . In 1696 , Irving enunciate , “ an furious crowd imposed [ the ] punishment upon a London bailiff who attempted to arrest a debtor , ” while patriots in colonial New England seaports used it from the 1760s to oust customs official and British loyalist ( or “ make macarony ” ) and other traitor to their lawsuit , like those who fink on nationalist smuggling operation ( giving them the “ blabber ’s uniform ” ) .
By the 19th century , the practice had spread well inland in the U.S. , and was wielded by small towners of both genders , who often improvised with light - to - find materials like syrup and cattails when prescribed justice was absent or unsatisfactory .
Modern Takes on an Antiquated Punishment
Patriotic Americans might not mourn a few Brits getting feather 300 twelvemonth ago , but the proficiency lamentably did n’t fall off as a democratic signifier of U.S. mob " judge " even when the twentieth century rolled around . Starting in antebellum Day and continue beyond the civil rights era , many African Americans and polite right activist were tarred and feathered .
tar and feathering also saw a European revitalisation during “ The Troubles ” in Northern Ireland , in which the punishment was again handle to weed out perceived “ traitors . ” As in a1971 caseinvolving a teenage girl , some nationalist supporters used the method acting to monish and humble young women and some other community of interests members thought to have fraternize with occupying British soldiers . mariner and feathering has persevered into the 21st hundred in the orbit . In 2007,a Belfast manwas trussed by two others , thought to be UDA member , for allegedly deal drug in the community .
The episodic case of respond to supposed intimate indecency with tar and feathers has cut back up in recent X in the U.S. , too . In 1981 , an Alabama womanwastriedon various charge for the tarring and feathering of her ex - husband ’s then - fiancee using a tar - like substance meant for home weatherproofing — an act which she fight as necessary in taking a stand for “ a sense of community decency ” against the couple ’s wedding plans . While her act may have had a long historical precedent , she was still convicted .
