Short Stuff: Tarring and Feathering
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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 ten, 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 Sinek and Joe Randazzo. That could be it. That's possible. But that was 2011, so I don't even count that.

OK, 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...

Yeah. Yeah.

after I think 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 Townshend 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 1760s, early 1770s is

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, I don't know. 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-based 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 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 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 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. S-Y-L-Y-S-K-S-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-

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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 steaks. Ugh. I looked all over for what that use of steaks 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. Mm-hmm. No idea. Hmm.

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. Yeah.

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 a 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 bedaubed 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? 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 Whigs, 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 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 Catholics

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 wealthy or something, or just of a higher class, you would not be tarred 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'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. Let's hear it.

In the 1980s. No. In Alabama in 1981. That's impossible.

Oh, no, it's not. So there was a woman named Marietta McElway and her sister got their hands on a woman named Elizabeth Jameson. And Elizabeth Jameson was going to marry Marietta McElway'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 1981. Wow.

And you would think like, wow, that must have really worked wrong. Marietta and her sister were both arrested like 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. You're like, oh. Yeah. 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 just 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. Agreed.

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