Tarring and feathering is a form of public torture where a victim is stripped naked (or to the waist), wood tar is either poured or painted onto them, and feathers are thrown on them or they are rolled around on a pile of feathers so that they stick to the tar. Used primarily as extrajudicial punishment or for revenge, it was used in medieval Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as on the early American frontier, mostly as a form of vigilante justice. The image of a tarred-and-feathered outlaw remains a metaphor for severe public criticism. Tarring and feathering was a common punishment in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution. The most famous instance of tarring and feathering in the colonies was that of John Malcolm, a Boston customs official who was tarred and feathered by Patriots.
Early history The earliest mention of the punishment appears in orders that Richard I of England issued to his navy on starting for the Holy Land 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 Hakluyt's Voyages, ii. 21). A later instance of this penalty appears in Notes and Queries (series 4, vol. v), which quotes James Howell writing in Madrid in 1623 of the "boisterous Bishop of Halberstadt, a German Protestant military leader ... 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." (The Bishop was apparently Christian the Younger of Brunswick.) In 1696, a London bailiff attempted to serve process on a debtor who had taken refuge within the precincts of the Savoy. The bailiff was tarred and feathered and taken in a wheelbarrow to the Strand, where he was tied to a maypole that stood by what is now Somerset House as an improvised pillory.
18th-century North America The practice of tarring and feathering was exported to the Americas, gaining popularity in the mid-18th century. Throughout the 1760s it saw increased use as a means of protesting the Townshend Revenue Act and those who sought to enforce it. After a period of few tarrings and featherings between 1770 and 1773, the passage of the Tea Act in May 1773 led to a resurgence of incidents. During the crisis in the Thirteen Colonies over the Stamp Act 1765, Archibald McCall, a wealthy Loyalist landowner, was targeted by a Patriot mob in Westmoreland and Essex County, Virginia. He insisted on collecting the tax that the Act placed on stamps and other documents. In reaction, a mob formed and stormed his house in Tappahannock, Virginia. They threw rocks through the windows, and McCall was seized, tarred and feathered. In 1766, Captain J. William Smith was tarred, feathered, and dumped into the harbor of Norfolk, Virginia, 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 in a letter as saying that they "be-dawbed my body and face all over with tar and afterwards threw feathers on me." Smith was suspected of informing on smugglers to Crown customs official, as was the case with most other tar-and-feathers victims in the following decade. The practice appeared in Salem, Massachusetts in 1768, 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. Customs Commissioner John Malcolm was tarred and feathered on two occasions. First, in November 1773, he was targeted by sailors in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, before undergoing a similar, albeit arguably more violent, ordeal in Boston in January 1774. Malcolm was stripped, tarred, feathered, beaten, and whipped for several hours. He was then taken to the Liberty Tree and forced to drink tea until he vomited. In February 1775, Abner Bebee, a Loyalist of East Haddam, Connecticut, was tarred and feathered before being taken to a hog sty and covered in dung. Hog dung was then smeared in his eyes and forced down his throat. Bebee was subjected to this as a perceived punishment for expressing Loyalist sentiment by his local Committee of Safety. A particularly violent act of tarring and feathering took place in August 1775 northeast of Augusta, Georgia. Landowner and loyalist Thomas Brown was confronted on his property by members of the Sons of Liberty. After putting up some resistance, Brown was beaten with a rifle, fracturing his skull. He was then stripped and tied to a tree. Hot pitch was poured over him before being set alight, charring two of his toes to stubs. Brown was then feathered by the Sons of Liberty, who then took a knife to his head and began scalping him. Such acts were often associated with the Patriot side of the American Revolution. An exception occurred in March 1775, when a number of soldiers from the 47th Regiment of Foot tarred and feathered Thomas Ditson, a colonist from Billerica, Massachusetts, who attempted to illegally purchase a musket from one of the regiment's soldiers. Ditson was tarred and feathered before having a placard reading "American Liberty: A Speciment of Democracy" hung around his neck whilst regimental musicians played "Yankee Doodle". During the Whiskey Rebellion, local farmers inflicted the punishment on federal tax agents. Beginning on September 11, 1791, western Pennsylvania farmers rebelled against the federal government's taxation on western Pennsylvania whiskey distillers. Their first victim was reportedly a recently appointed tax collector named Robert Johnson. He was tarred and feathered by a disguised gang in Washington County. Other officials who attempted to serve court warrants on Johnson's attackers were whipped, tarred, and feathered. Because of these and other violent attacks, the tax went uncollected in 1791 and early 1792. The attackers modeled their actions on the protests of the American Revolution.
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