August 14, 2024 • 12 mins
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.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On Jerry No, no.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Never, never, Okay, we're not going to do that. Let's
just describe it instead.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I guess. So we were just chatting before the show.
I know we've talked about this at some point, tarring
and feathering.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I don't know that I agree. I have zero recollection
of that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I know we did. I know they covered it on
Ridiculous History, our colleagues Ben and Knowle. But I know
we talked about the stocks and tarring and feathering what
and I'd like to I want to think it was
like a top ten, you know, something like that, like
punishments or something from the old times.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I really don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
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 fourth show we did
with Hallie Haglin and Wyatt Sinek and Joe Randezzo.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
That was twenty eleven, So like I don't even count that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, let's not let's just move on and talk about
tarring and feathering.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's right. This was a form of punishment and 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 you're down with England, then
(01:40):
we might just haul you out in the street and
do this to you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah. It was a tactic of mop 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 a ay by pretty serious beatings that
just the threat of being tarred and feathered could keep
(02:05):
people in line, you know. Yeah, and that's how they
used it. And like you said, it's used on criminals first,
but after I think the British really kind of stepped
up and its attempt to control and keep a stranglehold
on the American colonies, and that just kind of caused
the revolutionary colonists to bristol even further, especially like when
(02:25):
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 feathering really stepped
up around that, So we're talking late seventeen sixties, early
seventeen seventies is when it was I guess the golden
age of tarring and feathering or in the American colonies.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I hope someone has a list that has named the
Golden ages that you have dubbed over the years. You too, Yeah, no,
but I don't know. You feel more of a Golden
Ager than me.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
A I disagree. I think the Golden Age is your thing,
and I just took it.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, this is the Golden age of our disagreeing.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's really funny. You really think that Golden age's mine.
I think of it as yours first.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Oh really?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah? Yeah, oh, that's it's your gift to the world.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
You know what someone will do Italian it's probably like
fifteen to fifteen.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
That'd be appropriate.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
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
(03:37):
and sails and things back in the day. And it
was hot. It wasn't as hot as like our petroleum
based tar that we use these days, but it would
blister and burn your skin, and it was not meant
to be comfortable. No, I mean not meant to be
comfortable in the stickiness, but also it was meant to
hurt you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah. So pine tar melts at one hundred and forty
degrees parent height, which is sixty degrees celsius. So you
can imagine hot pine tar and your skin would not
be would not make you happy at all. The colinist
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
(04:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
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 van and then
plug it in.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
This is like a muppet sketch.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And hopefully you weren't a colonial germophote, because that would
have freaked you out really badly.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, that's a good point, like one on your tard lip.
No good. And then they would put them on a
cart usually and they would or 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
(05:13):
also came along with it.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yes, And one of the most famous episodes of tarring
and feathering and 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.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
As why s k as.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Should know, definitely should know child of y S.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
K all Right, Josh promised a specific case of tarring
and feathering. 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 seventeen seventy four,
(06:15):
in January, and the mob got ahold of him. They
tarred and feathered him. And this is quotes from an
actual article from the time. Quote punched with wh a
long pole, beaten with clubs, capital c led to Liberty tree.
They're whipped with cords and though a very cold night,
(06:36):
led onto the gallows, then whipped again.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And because that tarring and feathering caused such burns and blisters, quote,
they say his flesh comes off his back in steaks.
I looked all over for what that use of steaks was,
couldn't find it, but just suffice to say his flush
was coming off his back very easily.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, I would think steaks like you would eat, but
it's spelled st A k E.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
S no idea hm. So John Malcolm, he was a
real piece of work. Don't feel too sorry for him.
The person that he's 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
(07:19):
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 of customs
official I think customs official right, and he was just
a real jerk from what I can tell.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
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 seventeen sixty six,
eight years before this, in Norfolk, Virginia, when a William Smith,
(07:59):
who was a sea captain, and this is another great quote,
he wrote this down that seven men, including the mayor,
had bedaubed my body and face all over with tar
and afterwards threw feathers upon.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Me the mayor. Can't you see him being like you're
the mayor? The Mayor's like so eruh. So they also
threw rotten eggs at him stones. They 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
(08:33):
where he nearly drowned from what I read, and the
reason that he was tired and feathered is that he
had been accused of tipping off a royal official about
smuggling going on, and the Patriots the Whigs did not
take very kindly to that kind of thing. And because
it worked so well, the Sons of Liberty and just
(08:54):
Bostonians in general started adopting tarring and feathering three years
after Williams Smith T andF episode.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Not P ANDV.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So let's tell them a little bit about the who
got tard each other, Like we said, customs officials, that
kind of stuff, people who were not loyal to the revolution,
people who are 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
(09:26):
tarring and feathering.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, there was sort of a carve out for the
Brits or the colonial Brits. I guess that were of
a little higher status. It wasn't 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
(09:49):
wealthy or something, or just of a higher class, you
would not be tart and feathered. It was kind of
just for the under classes 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 a lower class you would
(10:10):
just like, you know, get in a fight or horsewhip
them or something.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, it was an insult that really played up that
person's inferior social status.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So it took There was one last instance of tarring
and feathering that took clear it in the nineteen eighties.
So in Alabama in nineteen eighty one, that's impossible, No,
oh no, it's not. So there was a woman named
Marietta Macklway and her sister got their hands on a
(10:43):
woman named Elizabeth Jamison, and Elizabeth Jamison was going to
marry Marietta Macklway's ex husband later that week, and so
Marietta and her sister held Elizabeth at shotgun point and
cut her hair and tarred and feathered her in nineteen
eighty one. Wow, and you would think, like, wow, that
must have really worked wrong. Marietta and her sister were
(11:06):
both arrested like appropriately, and Elizabeth washed off all of
the tar later that week, got a wig, and they
got married after all. Wow, isn't that quite a story?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah? Where was that again?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Nineteen eighty one in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Eighty one?
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Nineteen eighty one?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I thought you said ninety one earlier? No, I mean
eighty one's not any better.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, everybody's doing that in
the eighties.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
No, No, No, that's still hard to believe.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, you're like, nineties, that's crazy. So can't you imagine
somebody tarring and feathering somebody just like Zach Morris or
something wearing.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
A cosmic shudder? Yeah not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
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
that agreed?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On Jerry No, no.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Never, never, Okay, we're not going to do that. Let's
just describe it instead.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I guess. So we were just chatting before the show.
I know we've talked about this at some point, tarring
and feathering.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I don't know that I agree. I have zero recollection
of that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I know we did. I know they covered it on
Ridiculous History, our colleagues Ben and Knowle. But I know
we talked about the stocks and tarring and feathering what
and I'd like to I want to think it was
like a top ten, you know, something like that, like
punishments or something from the old times.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I really don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
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 fourth show we did
with Hallie Haglin and Wyatt Sinek and Joe Randezzo.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
That was twenty eleven, So like I don't even count that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, let's not let's just move on and talk about
tarring and feathering.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's right. This was a form of punishment and 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 you're down with England, then
(01:40):
we might just haul you out in the street and
do this to you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah. It was a tactic of mop 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 a ay by pretty serious beatings that
just the threat of being tarred and feathered could keep
(02:05):
people in line, you know. Yeah, and that's how they
used it. And like you said, it's used on criminals first,
but after I think the British really kind of stepped
up and its attempt to control and keep a stranglehold
on the American colonies, and that just kind of caused
the revolutionary colonists to bristol even further, especially like when
(02:25):
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 feathering really stepped
up around that, So we're talking late seventeen sixties, early
seventeen seventies is when it was I guess the golden
age of tarring and feathering or in the American colonies.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I hope someone has a list that has named the
Golden ages that you have dubbed over the years. You too, Yeah, no,
but I don't know. You feel more of a Golden
Ager than me.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
A I disagree. I think the Golden Age is your thing,
and I just took it.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, this is the Golden age of our disagreeing.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's really funny. You really think that Golden age's mine.
I think of it as yours first.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Oh really?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah? Yeah, oh, that's it's your gift to the world.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
You know what someone will do Italian it's probably like
fifteen to fifteen.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
That'd be appropriate.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
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
(03:37):
and sails and things back in the day. And it
was hot. It wasn't as hot as like our petroleum
based tar that we use these days, but it would
blister and burn your skin, and it was not meant
to be comfortable. No, I mean not meant to be
comfortable in the stickiness, but also it was meant to
hurt you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah. So pine tar melts at one hundred and forty
degrees parent height, which is sixty degrees celsius. So you
can imagine hot pine tar and your skin would not
be would not make you happy at all. The colinist
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
(04:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
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 van and then
plug it in.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
This is like a muppet sketch.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And hopefully you weren't a colonial germophote, because that would
have freaked you out really badly.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, that's a good point, like one on your tard lip.
No good. And then they would put them on a
cart usually and they would or 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
(05:13):
also came along with it.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yes, And one of the most famous episodes of tarring
and feathering and 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.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
As why s k as.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Should know, definitely should know child of y S.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
K all Right, Josh promised a specific case of tarring
and feathering. 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 seventeen seventy four,
(06:15):
in January, and the mob got ahold of him. They
tarred and feathered him. And this is quotes from an
actual article from the time. Quote punched with wh a
long pole, beaten with clubs, capital c led to Liberty tree.
They're whipped with cords and though a very cold night,
(06:36):
led onto the gallows, then whipped again.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And because that tarring and feathering caused such burns and blisters, quote,
they say his flesh comes off his back in steaks.
I looked all over for what that use of steaks was,
couldn't find it, but just suffice to say his flush
was coming off his back very easily.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, I would think steaks like you would eat, but
it's spelled st A k E.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
S no idea hm. So John Malcolm, he was a
real piece of work. Don't feel too sorry for him.
The person that he's 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
(07:19):
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 of customs
official I think customs official right, and he was just
a real jerk from what I can tell.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
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 seventeen sixty six,
eight years before this, in Norfolk, Virginia, when a William Smith,
(07:59):
who was a sea captain, and this is another great quote,
he wrote this down that seven men, including the mayor,
had bedaubed my body and face all over with tar
and afterwards threw feathers upon.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Me the mayor. Can't you see him being like you're
the mayor? The Mayor's like so eruh. So they also
threw rotten eggs at him stones. They 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
(08:33):
where he nearly drowned from what I read, and the
reason that he was tired and feathered is that he
had been accused of tipping off a royal official about
smuggling going on, and the Patriots the Whigs did not
take very kindly to that kind of thing. And because
it worked so well, the Sons of Liberty and just
(08:54):
Bostonians in general started adopting tarring and feathering three years
after Williams Smith T andF episode.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Not P ANDV.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So let's tell them a little bit about the who
got tard each other, Like we said, customs officials, that
kind of stuff, people who were not loyal to the revolution,
people who are 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
(09:26):
tarring and feathering.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, there was sort of a carve out for the
Brits or the colonial Brits. I guess that were of
a little higher status. It wasn't 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
(09:49):
wealthy or something, or just of a higher class, you
would not be tart and feathered. It was kind of
just for the under classes 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 a lower class you would
(10:10):
just like, you know, get in a fight or horsewhip
them or something.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, it was an insult that really played up that
person's inferior social status.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So it took There was one last instance of tarring
and feathering that took clear it in the nineteen eighties.
So in Alabama in nineteen eighty one, that's impossible, No,
oh no, it's not. So there was a woman named
Marietta Macklway and her sister got their hands on a
(10:43):
woman named Elizabeth Jamison, and Elizabeth Jamison was going to
marry Marietta Macklway's ex husband later that week, and so
Marietta and her sister held Elizabeth at shotgun point and
cut her hair and tarred and feathered her in nineteen
eighty one. Wow, and you would think, like, wow, that
must have really worked wrong. Marietta and her sister were
(11:06):
both arrested like appropriately, and Elizabeth washed off all of
the tar later that week, got a wig, and they
got married after all. Wow, isn't that quite a story?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah? Where was that again?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Nineteen eighty one in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Eighty one?
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Nineteen eighty one?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I thought you said ninety one earlier? No, I mean
eighty one's not any better.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, everybody's doing that in
the eighties.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
No, No, No, that's still hard to believe.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, you're like, nineties, that's crazy. So can't you imagine
somebody tarring and feathering somebody just like Zach Morris or
something wearing.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
A cosmic shudder? Yeah not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
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
that agreed?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.