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Short Stuff: Tarring and Feathering · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're about to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: demonstrate the subject of today's Short Stuff.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: On Jerry No, no.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Never, never, Okay, we're not going to do that. Let's
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: just describe it instead.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I guess. So we were just chatting before the show.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I know we've talked about this at some point, tarring
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: and feathering.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I agree. I have zero recollection
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of that.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: I know we did. I know they covered it on
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Ridiculous History, our colleagues Ben and Knowle. But I know
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: we talked about the stocks and tarring and feathering what
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: and I'd like to I want to think it was
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: like a top ten, you know, something like that, like
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: punishments or something from the old times.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I really don't know what you're talking about.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Seriously, Well, maybe someone will remind us. I'm trying to
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: google it now, but I'm not really seeing anything come
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: up except for that live July fourth show we did
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: with Hallie Haglin and Wyatt Sinek and Joe Randezzo.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Mm hm.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: That was twenty eleven, So like I don't even count that.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's not let's just move on and talk about
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: tarring and feathering.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: That's right. This was a form of punishment and colonial
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: America that initially was done to criminals and then sort
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: of quickly was co opted and done to people that
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: they thought were you know, like the Sons of Liberty
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: took over and they're like, hey, if you're not on
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: board with us, and you're you're down with England, then
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: we might just haul you out in the street and
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: do this to you.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a tactic of mop justice in colonial America,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: essentially in revolutionary America, and it was so you so
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: did not want to be tarred and feathered, no, because
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: not only was it humiliating, it was also painful and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: it usually was a ay by pretty serious beatings that
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: just the threat of being tarred and feathered could keep
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: people in line, you know. Yeah, and that's how they
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: used it. And like you said, it's used on criminals first,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: but after I think the British really kind of stepped
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: up and its attempt to control and keep a stranglehold
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: on the American colonies, and that just kind of caused
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the revolutionary colonists to bristol even further, especially like when
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: they passed the Townsend Acts, which were a series of
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: acts that really kind of put the colonies back under
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the thumb of Great Britain. Tarring and feathering really stepped
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: up around that, So we're talking late seventeen sixties, early
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: seventeen seventies is when it was I guess the golden
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: age of tarring and feathering or in the American colonies.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I hope someone has a list that has named the
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Golden ages that you have dubbed over the years. You too, Yeah, no,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: but I don't know. You feel more of a Golden
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Ager than me.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: A I disagree. I think the Golden Age is your thing,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and I just took it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the Golden age of our disagreeing.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That's really funny. You really think that Golden age's mine.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I think of it as yours first.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Oh really?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, oh, that's it's your gift to the world.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: You know what someone will do Italian it's probably like
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: fifteen to fifteen.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: That'd be appropriate.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So here's how you tar and feather somebody. You first
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: strip them down. Most of the times it was just
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: taking their shirt off, but a lot of times it
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: was or sometimes rather it was all of their clothes.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Then you would brush hot pine tar on their body.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: This was a substance used on baseball bats and Major
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: League Baseball to cause stickiness and also to waterproof ships
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: and sails and things back in the day. And it
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: was hot. It wasn't as hot as like our petroleum
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: based tar that we use these days, but it would
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: blister and burn your skin, and it was not meant
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: to be comfortable. No, I mean not meant to be
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: comfortable in the stickiness, but also it was meant to
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: hurt you.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So pine tar melts at one hundred and forty
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: degrees parent height, which is sixty degrees celsius. So you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: can imagine hot pine tar and your skin would not
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: be would not make you happy at all. The colinist
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: would very frequently brush it on, and then sometimes they
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: would pour it on, which would be way worse. And
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, no one died from tarring
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and feathering. But like you said, this is not something
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: you wanted to go through. That was the pain part.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: The humiliation part was quickly quick on the heels of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the pain part.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: That's right. They would stand someone up in front of
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: a large fan and they would put a table full
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: of chicken feathers in front of that van and then
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: plug it in.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: This is like a muppet sketch.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: No, actually, they wouldn't do it that way, of course,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: but they would. They would then bring out those chicken
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: feathers and they would dump them on someone to make
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: them look like a big chicken.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And hopefully you weren't a colonial germophote, because that would
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: have freaked you out really badly.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, like one on your tard lip.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: No good. And then they would put them on a
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: cart usually and they would or or a wooden rail
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: or something, and they would parade them through town mock them.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they would hold up signs saying like what they
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: had done that kind of thing. And like you said,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of times there were whippings and beatings that
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: also came along with it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, And one of the most famous episodes of tarring
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and feathering and Colonial America took place on top of
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: John Malcolm, a customs official. And I say, we take
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a break and we'll come back and tell the sorry
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: story of the tarring and feathering of John Malcolm.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: As why s k as.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Should know, definitely should know child of y S.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: K all Right, Josh promised a specific case of tarring
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and feathering. It's probably the most egregious famous case when
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: customs official John Malcolm hit a supporter of the Patriots
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: there in Boston. And I don't mean a Tom Brady fan,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I mean the og Patriots. This is in seventeen seventy four,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: in January, and the mob got ahold of him. They
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: tarred and feathered him. And this is quotes from an
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: actual article from the time. Quote punched with wh a
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: long pole, beaten with clubs, capital c led to Liberty tree.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: They're whipped with cords and though a very cold night,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: led onto the gallows, then whipped again.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And because that tarring and feathering caused such burns and blisters, quote,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: they say his flesh comes off his back in steaks.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I looked all over for what that use of steaks was,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: couldn't find it, but just suffice to say his flush
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was coming off his back very easily.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I would think steaks like you would eat, but
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: it's spelled st A k E.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: S no idea hm. So John Malcolm, he was a
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: real piece of work. Don't feel too sorry for him.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: The person that he's struck in the street. That led
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: to his tarring and feathering interceded when John Malcolm was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: threatening a boy, right, So he was not the greatest
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: guy ever. And if that doesn't really kind of tell
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: you what kind of person John Malcolm was. That tarring
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and feathering was his second in two years he was
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: tarred and feathered. He was a tax collector of customs
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: official I think customs official right, and he was just
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a real jerk from what I can tell.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he would be what's that Reddit? Who's the a hole?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Or am I the a hole? He'd be very popular
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: thread on that one. Probably people would be like, yes, yeah,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: that was not the first one though, that's just merely
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: the most famous. The first one was in seventeen sixty six,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: eight years before this, in Norfolk, Virginia, when a William Smith,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: who was a sea captain, and this is another great quote,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: he wrote this down that seven men, including the mayor,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: had bedaubed my body and face all over with tar
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  Speaker 2: and afterwards threw feathers upon.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Me the mayor. Can't you see him being like you're
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the mayor? The Mayor's like so eruh. So they also
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: threw rotten eggs at him stones. They then they humiliated
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: him by carting him through every street in the town
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: with two drums beating, so they weren't trying to do
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: this subtly. And then they tossed him off a wharf
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: where he nearly drowned from what I read, and the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: reason that he was tired and feathered is that he
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: had been accused of tipping off a royal official about
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: smuggling going on, and the Patriots the Whigs did not
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: take very kindly to that kind of thing. And because
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: it worked so well, the Sons of Liberty and just
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Bostonians in general started adopting tarring and feathering three years
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: after Williams Smith T andF episode.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Not P ANDV.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So let's tell them a little bit about the who
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: got tard each other, Like we said, customs officials, that
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, people who were not loyal to the revolution,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: people who are more loyal to the crown still, but
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: there was like a even among those people, there was
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: still just a certain subset that were true targets of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: tarring and feathering.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was sort of a carve out for the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Brits or the colonial Brits. I guess that were of
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: a little higher status. It wasn't They still had this
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: kind of reverence for that social structure going on. And
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: so if you were an officer, a British officer, or
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: if you were loyal to the crown and you were
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: wealthy or something, or just of a higher class, you
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: would not be tart and feathered. It was kind of
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: just for the under classes and the lower classes, you know,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: working class, middle class, kind of in the same way
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I saw. I'm not sure where you got this, but
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: it was likened to the fact that you wouldn't be
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: challenged to a duel if you wanted to get revenge
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: on someone, if they were a lower class you would
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: just like, you know, get in a fight or horsewhip
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: them or something.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an insult that really played up that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: person's inferior social status.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: So it took There was one last instance of tarring
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: and feathering that took clear it in the nineteen eighties.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: So in Alabama in nineteen eighty one, that's impossible, No,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: oh no, it's not. So there was a woman named
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Marietta Macklway and her sister got their hands on a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: woman named Elizabeth Jamison, and Elizabeth Jamison was going to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: marry Marietta Macklway's ex husband later that week, and so
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Marietta and her sister held Elizabeth at shotgun point and
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: cut her hair and tarred and feathered her in nineteen
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: eighty one. Wow, and you would think, like, wow, that
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: must have really worked wrong. Marietta and her sister were
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: both arrested like appropriately, and Elizabeth washed off all of
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the tar later that week, got a wig, and they
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: got married after all. Wow, isn't that quite a story?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Where was that again?
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty one in Alabama?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Eighty one?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty one?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I thought you said ninety one earlier? No, I mean
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: eighty one's not any better.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, everybody's doing that in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the eighties.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: No, No, No, that's still hard to believe.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, nineties, that's crazy. So can't you imagine
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: somebody tarring and feathering somebody just like Zach Morris or
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: something wearing.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: A cosmic shudder? Yeah not at all.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I guess, Chuck. Things seem to have petered out a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: little bit, and we've said everything we have to say
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: about tarring and feathering. So I say short stuff is
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that agreed?
• 12:01
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