Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Tarring and Feathering

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Being tarred and feathered is an old trope in America, but the actuality of it was pretty brutal, not the least of which included burning skin. Let's dive into history - now!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The summer of sports is on and I'm feeling the competitive spirit. Luckily, I have Monopoly Go. Over 150 million have downloaded it to play with other tycoons to expand their empire and their riches. And my favorite part is playing with my friends. It's such a rush to win special rewards with a buddy and a partner event. Or I can go after their fortunes to be a top tycoon. I can smash their landmarks, pull bank heists, or charge them rent like in classic Monopoly. So make your move and download Monopoly Go. now free on the App Store and Google Play. Hey and welcome to The Short Stuff.

I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and we're about to demonstrate the subject of today's short stuff on Jerry. No, no, never, never. Okay, we're not going to do that. Let's just describe it instead, I guess. So we were just chatting before the show. I know we've talked about this at some point, tarring and feathering.

I don't know that I agree. I have zero recollection of that. I know we did. I know they covered it on Ridiculous History, our colleagues Ben and Noel, but I know we talked about the stocks and tarring and feathering. What? And I want to think it was like a top 10, you know, something like that, like punishments

or something from the old times. I really don't know what you're talking about, seriously. Well, maybe someone will remind us. I'm trying to Google it now, but I'm not really seeing anything come up except for that live July 4th show we did with Hallie Hagelin and Wyatt Sinak and- That could be it. Joe Rambazo. Mm-hm.

That's possible. But that was 2011, so I don't even count that. Okay, let's not. Let's just move on and talk about tarring and feathering. That's right. This was a form of punishment in colonial America that initially was done to criminals and then sort of quickly was co-opted and done to people that they thought were, you know, like the Sons of Liberty took over and they're like,

hey, if you're not on board with us and you're down with England, then we might just haul you out in the street and do this to you. Yeah. It was a tactic of mob justice in colonial America, essentially in revolutionary America. And it was so, you so did not want to be tarred and feathered. No. Because not only was it humiliating, it was also painful. And it usually was accompanied by pretty serious beatings. Um, that just the threat of being tarred and feathered could keep people in line, you know?

Yeah. And that's how they used it. And like you said, it's used on criminals first. But, um, after I think the British really kind of stepped up in its attempt to control and keep a stranglehold on the American colonies, the British really kind of stepped up in its attempt to control and keep a stranglehold on the American colonies, and that just kind of caused the revolutionary colonists to bristle even further, especially like when they passed the Townsend Acts, which were a series of acts that really kind of put the colonies back under the thumb of

Great Britain, Tarring and Fe feathering really stepped up around that. So we're talking late 1760s, early 1770s. It was, I guess, the golden age of tarring and feathering in the American colonies. I hope someone has a list that has named the golden ages that you have dubbed over the years. You too. No, no, but you feel more of a golden ager than me. I disagree. I think the golden age is your thing and I just took it. Well, this is the golden age of our disagreeing.

That's really funny, you really think that golden age is mine. I think of it as yours for real. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah, oh that's pretty funny. It's your gift to the world. You know what, someone will do the tally and it's probably like 15 to 15.

That'd be appropriate. So, here's how you tar and feather somebody. You first strip them down. Most of the times it was just taking their shirt off, but a lot of times it was, or sometimes rather, it was all of their clothes. Then you would brush hot pine tar on their body. This was a substance used on baseball bats and Major League Baseball to cause stickiness, and also to waterproof

ships and sails and things back in the day. And it was hot. It wasn't as hot as like our petroleum base tar that we use these days, but it would blister and burn your skin and it was not meant to be comfortable. I mean, not meant to be comfortable in the stickiness, but also it was meant to hurt you. Yeah.

So, pine tar melts at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 60 degrees Celsius. So you can imagine hot pine tar on your skin would not be, would not make you happy at all. The colonists would very frequently brush it on, and then sometimes they would pour it on, which would be way worse. And as far as we know, no one died from tarring and feathering. But like you said, this is not something you wanted to go through. That was the pain part. The humiliation part was quickly, quick on the heels of the pain part. That's right. They would stand someone up in front of a large fan,

and they would put a table full of chicken feathers in front of that fan and then plug it in. This is like a Muppet sketch. No, actually they wouldn't do it that way of course but they would they would then bring out those chicken feathers and they would dump them on someone to make them look like a big chicken and hopefully you weren't a colonial germaphobe because that would have freaked you out really badly. Yeah that's a good point. Like one on your tarred lip, no good. And then they would put them on a cart usually, and they would, or a wooden rail or something,

and they would parade them through town, mock them. Sometimes they would hold up signs saying like what they had done, that kind of thing. And like you said, a lot of times there were whippings and beatings that also came along with it. Yes, and one of the most famous episodes of tarring and feathering in colonial America took place on top of John Malcolm, a customs official. And I say we take a break and we'll come back and tell the sorry story of the tarring and

feathering of John Malcolm. The summer of sports is on and I'm feeling the competitive spirit. Luckily, I have Monopoly Go. Over 150 million have downloaded it to play with other tycoons to expand their empire and their riches. And my favorite part is playing with my friends. It's such a rush to win special rewards with a buddy and a partner event. Or I can go after their fortunes to be a top tycoon. I can smash their landmarks, pull bank heists, or charge them rent like in classic Monopoly. So make your move and download Monopoly Go. Now free on the app store and Google Play. For so many people living with an autoimmune condition, the emotional toll is as real as

the physical symptoms. Starting this May, join host, Martín Hackett for Season 3 of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production, and partnership with Argenics. From myasthenia gravis, or MG, to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP, untold stories highlights the realities of navigating life with these conditions, from challenges to triumphs. In this season, Martina and her guests discuss

the range of emotions that accompany each stage of the journey. Whether it's the anxiety of misdiagnosis or the relief of finding support and community, nothing is off limits. And while each story is unique, the hope they inspire is shared by all. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, Josh promised a specific case of tarring and feathering, and it's probably

the most egregious, famous case when customs official John Malcolm hit a supporter of the Patriots there in Boston, and I don't mean a Tom Brady fan. I mean, the OG Patriots, this is in 1774 in January, and the mob got a hold of him. They tarred and feathered him. And this is quotes from an actual article from the time, quote, punched with WTH, a long pole beaten with clubs, capital C, led to Liberty Tree, there whipped with cords, and though a very cold night, led on to the gallows, then whipped again. Mm-hmm. And because that tarring and feathering caused such burns and blisters, quote, they say his

flesh comes off his back in stakes. Ugh. I looked all over for what that use of stakes was, couldn't find it. and blisters, quote, they say his flesh comes off his back and stakes. I looked all over for what that use of stakes was, couldn't find it, but just suffice to say his flesh was coming off his back very easily. Well, I would think steaks like you would eat, but it's spelled S T A K E S. No idea. So John Malcolm, he was a real piece of work. Don't feel too sorry for him. The person that he struck in the street that led to his tarring and feathering interceded when John Malcolm was threatening a boy, right?

So he was not the greatest guy ever. And if that doesn't really kind of tell you what kind of person John Malcolm was that tarring and feathering was his second in two years. He was tarred and feathered. He was a tax collector a customs official I think customs official right and he was just a real jerk from what I can tell Yeah, he would be what's that reddit? Who's the a-hole or am I the a-hole? He'd be very popular thread on that one probably people would be like yes, yeah That was not the first one though. That's just merely the most famous.

The first one was in 1766, eight years before this in Norfolk, Virginia, when a William Smith, who was a sea captain, and this is another great quote, he wrote this down, that seven men, including the mayor, had bedobbed my body and face all over with tar and afterwards threw feathers upon me. The mayor. Can't you see him being like, you're the mayor? The mayor's like, so? Error.

So they also threw rotten eggs at him, stones. Then they humiliated him by carting him through every street in the town with two drums beating So they weren't trying to do this subtly and then they tossed him off a wharf where he nearly drowned from what I read And the reason that he was tarred and feathered is that he had been accused of tipping off a royal official about smuggling going on and the Patriots the Wigs did not take very kindly to that kind of thing. And because it worked so well, the Sons of Liberty and just Bostonians in general started adopting tarring and feathering three years after William Smith's TNF episode.

TNF, not PNV. So let's tell them a little bit about the who got tarred and feathered. Like we said, customs officials, that kind of stuff. People who were not loyal to the revolution, people who were more loyal to the crown still. But there was like a, even among those people, there was still just a certain subset that were true

targets of tarring and feathering. Yeah, there was sort of a carve out for the Brits or the colonial Brits, I guess, that were of a little higher status. They still had this kind of reverence for that social structure going on. And so if you were an officer, a British officer, or if you were loyal to the crown and you were wealthy or something or just of a higher class, you would not be tart and feathered. It was kind of just for the underclasses and the lower classes, you know, working class, middle class, kind of in the same way. I saw, I'm not sure where you got this, but it was likened to the fact

that you wouldn't be challenged to a duel if you wanted to get revenge on someone if they were of lower class. You would just, like, you know, get in a fight or horsewhip them or something. Yeah. It was an insult that really played up that person's inferior social status. Yeah, exactly. So, Chuck, there was one last instance of tarring and feathering that took place in the 1980s in Alabama in 1981. That's impossible.

No, no, it's not. So there was a woman named Marietta McElway and her sister got their hands on a woman named Elizabeth Jamison. And Elizabeth Jamison was going to marry Marietta McElway's ex-husband later that week. So Marietta and her sister held Elizabeth at shotgun point and cut her hair and tarred and feathered her in 1981. Wow. And you would think like,

wow, that must've really worked. Wrong. Marietta and her sister were both arrested appropriately. And Elizabeth washed off all the tar later that week, got a wig, and they got married after all. Wow. Isn't that quite a story? Yeah.

Where was that again? 1981 in Alabama. 81? 1981. I thought you said 91 earlier. No. I mean, 81's not any better. Yeah, you're like, oh.

Everybody was doing that in the 80s. No, no, no. That's still hard to believe. Yeah. You're like, 90s. That's crazy. So, can you imagine somebody tarring and feathering somebody dressed like Zack Morris or something wearing a Cosmos sweater. Yeah, not at all.

I guess Chuck, things seem to have petered out a little bit and we've said everything we have to say about tarring and feathering, so I say short stuff is out. Agreed. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.