School of Humans. Have you guys done your taxes yet? Yeah? Me neither.
I mean, if you have, that's great of you, A very responsible ten out of ten, you win the award for today. But I do stand up comedy, so sometimes you'll get like you'll get like a W two for some place that you did a show at where you got like fifteen dollars, And I'm like, do I can we just like not? Can we just not report this? I think it's fine, it's just fifteen. But do you guys know who was really annoyed about taxes, like even
more than we are. The American colonists before the American Revolution, they were pissed.
They were pissed.
About those taxes, stamps, tea. They're like, is nothing sacred? In the mid eighteenth century, revolution was rumbling in the streets. People were whispering or even sometimes talking quite loudly about liberty and Indians from Britain because I didn't want to pay those gosh dang taxes. I mean other reasons too, but mostly the taxes.
It seems.
The stampback lasted less than a year due to boycotts and protests, but the Brits.
Kept at it.
They were like, we'll create more taxes, maybe they won't notice. Well they did, and some of them decide to do something more about it, something dramatic. They're like, yeah, we can protest, we can boycott, but let's do something a bit crazier. Why don't we take these loyalists or these people trying to enforce the taxes, or also the importers and exporters who aren't boycotting. What if we cover them in tar and then roll them in feathers.
Obviously that's the solution.
Appropriately, this is called tar and feathering, and it's been happening since the medieval period in Europe, and then it got exported to the Americas and became trey potlair during the Revolutionary period. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of it today and learn about this sticky and feathery torture and its many victims. Cue the theme song. This is American filth. I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history. This week
tar and feather. I know, not very creative, but I'm tired. So tar and feathering really caught on in the Americas in the mid eighteenth century, the Sons of Liberty were super into it.
That was a band of dudes that was formed.
To fight for the rights of the colonists, intimidate any person trying to enforce British taxation, sometimes with the violence, and then eventually they would fight for American independence.
They were the ones who were like no taxation without representation.
And they were the ones who made tar and feathering iconic. Starting in the late seventeen sixties, a slew of tarn featherings occurred throughout the colonies, from Virginia up to New England. Historians think that American colonists learned about the practice from sailors, like in seventeen sixty six in Virginia, a ship captain got tarred and feathered because he told royal officials that contraband was on board another ship. But then that captain
was attacked by the owner of the ship. He tattled on the owner and some of his cronies smeared tar all over him, doused him in feathers, and then paraded him through the streets of the town. Finally, once their revelry was completed, they dumped the captain in the harbor. I would imagine at this point, while flailing in the water, he regretted his choice. After all, the royal officials were doing nothing to save him, and also while.
He was paraded through the streets.
Apparently even the mayor was there ello welling at the captain like everyone else. The captain almost drowned, but before he sank, a passing boat rescued him. He probably resembled one of those pelicans covered in gas from an oil spill, but unfortunately at the time they did not yet have don dish soap. While dumping the captain into the harbor was a unique garnish for that particular case. This was
how most tarn featherings would go. And if any of you are in need of a historical torture method for your enemies, here is what you need to tar and feather someone. First, it's hard to tar and feather someone by yourself. You know, most people won't sit still and let you tar them up, so it's good to have some cronies with you, or even better, a whole mob.
Mobs love to tar and feather.
Indeed, tar and feathering is actually a great community building exercise and create sponds that will last to lifetime. Then Obviously, you need to get some tar, and most of the tar that was used was pine tar, which you could find almost everywhere in the colonies. It was used on ships to protect the ropes and use for axles and machinery. Tar was also used to cauterize and sterilize wounds somehow, and then sometimes you could use it in your hair if you're trying to do a nice stiff updo. Okay,
so now you got your tar. Now it's time to put it all over your victim. Here, you got some options. You could tar them up while they're still in their clothes. That would actually be the nicer way to do it. It's like, yeah, you're ruining that outfit, but it will be a lot easier for them to get all of the tar off later. Alternatively, you could strip them out of all their clothes and you could just dunk them
in a tar barrel. Now, it appears most of the time the tar that was used had been cooled down.
It wasn't fresh hot tar.
But there were a couple unhappy cases where people were actually tarred with warm tar, and that's bad. It would blister your skin, just burn you up. So luckily they usually had the humanity to use cool tar, okay, And now once you got the tar on them, you got to find some feathers. Feathers were also pretty common, you know. They stuffed mattresses and pillows, and if you wanted to find the right quantity, usually you just needed a couple pillows of down to cover your victim from head to
toe and become the ugliest bird you've ever seen. There are plenty of cases, though, where people would rip open a mattress and then just throw their victim into the feathers.
Now.
Once you have your victim covered in tar, covered in feathers, it's time to show off the great work you have done.
You and your.
Mob of friends parade the victim around the town, being like, look at.
This loyalist fool moa haa haa haa. And for them, a lot.
Of the pain from his experience came from the humiliation of being in this parade. Sometimes crowds would gather in the thousands to see a feathered man, and they would last for hours while people were cheering and hurling insults
at you. Wow, what a fun time. Sometimes they'd even make the victim make a speech to renounce his loyalist ways and embrace the fervor of liberty, and when it came to physical pain, in some cases the process was quite violent, Like there was one case where a dude was forced to pluck the feathers off of a live goose, and then after he was tar and feathered, they kept
throwing the goose at him. In some other cases, once a man was covered in feathers, they let them on fire, burning his skin underneath aUI also, it was just really hard to get the tar off, like you'd have to scrub and scrub and scrub and maybe use turpentine to help dissolve it. And almost every single victim of this they had a lot of hair loss, and sometimes they would get this thing called tar acne, which I can
only imagine is fucking terrible acne. A lot of these events happened in Boston and in the surrounding New England area, but it wasn't just the sons of Liberty who engaged in it. In fact, it caught on all across the colonies. Everyday people on the side of independence from Britain might partake in some recreational torture if someone started being too loyalist around them. Also, some of these colloquial tar and featherings kind of demonstrate the creativity and diy spirit that
many folks had at the time. Like there was one that happened in Kinderhook, New York. There's a group of women just sitting around quilting, just girly things, and then this guy came up to them who was a loyalist, and he started complaining about the Continental Congress. He was like, Gough, why on earth would you want to advocate for your independence? That's so stupid boo the Congress. The women who were quilting were probably looking at this dude like, why are
you loyalist explaining to us right now? We will not do emotional labor for you random man. Also, quilting is a serious and tedious process not to be interrupted, so I don't know why he was just talking at them.
So while the dude was spewing his loyalist garbage, the women suddenly stopped their quilting and we're probably like, shut up, you little British cuck bit which they grabbed him, pinned him down, stripped him down to the waist, girl boss, girl power, etc. But the thing is these women, they did not have any tar on hand. They were probably like hell fire and damnation. The one time I didn't bring tar with me, we need to tar a son
of a female dog. But luckily the quilt squad had a bunch of molasses.
You know.
That's why you eat with the girlies when you're quilting, you know, before the invention of SIPs and strokes, where you drink wine and paint a horrendous picture of a flower with your gal pals, they had quilt to molasses parties, probably called sticky and so I'm just kidding that was a stupid joke.
I should delete it, but I'm not going to.
Ha So, with the spirit of diy or die, they took the molasses and poured it all over the loyalist dude. And then, as they had no feathers on hand, what they did instead is they just rolled them around in the meadow collecting the debris of wild life flowers. And they were like, yeah, that's what you get, scum. Now, I want to be clear, it wasn't like everyone was
getting tar and feathered. Historians have found that there were probably like a dozen or so, maybe two dozen that have actually been written down and recorded there was probably some other ones, but it kind of happened in different phases. Like it seems that they started after the Stamp Act was repealed, and then when the British enacted the Townshend Act, which tax glass, lead, paint, paper and tea, and as an act of protest, they were like, we're going to
tarn feather. But then it seems like the sons of Liberty kind of change their methods. Instead of tar and feathering people who are importing British goods or trying to enforce taxes, they started tar and feathering the goods themselves, you know, property and in one case someone's horse. Why they decide to do this, IDK, but it seems that from like seventeen seventy to seventeen seventy two there were
only a couple of cases where people got tar and feathered. Also, at this point the Townshend Act had been repealed, So the Liberty Boys, the Whigs, the Patriots, they seemed to be losing steam and motivation, but luckily for their resolve in seventeen seventy three, that's when the Tea Act was passed. Wasn't that compelling information about taxes whatever? But we all know about the Tea Act. Blah blah blah blah. There's the Boston Tea Party, and then the patriot passion was
ignited once again. After the Boston Tea Party. That's when one British official got a particularly violent tar and feathering in Boston. His name was John Malcolm. He was despised by the sons of Liberty and independent supporters because he was a big fat ladist.
That's right.
He worked in customs and he loved his job. If people weren't paying their taxes, if people weren't paying their duties, John Malcolm was gonna come for them. Now mob came after him after this one particular event that really didn't have anything to do with taxes, but he was just being an asshole, and they're like, that's enough of an excuse for us. So Malcolm had been walking around Boston when suddenly a young boy riding in a sled ran
into him. Now, Malcolm, it seems he probably had a reputation where he wouldn't take it too well if someone ran into him with a sled. So a shoemaker named George Hughes saw the incident and he came to the defense of the boy, which then resulted in Malcolm beating the shit out of George.
What a nice guy.
And so the Liberty boys were like, that's all we need. We got a tar and feather this asshole. And for Malcolm, while he's not the most sympathetic person, this was really quite unfortunate for him because he's probably one in a small handful of people who have been through this twice. Two months earlier, he had been in New Hampshire and got tar and feathered. But this tar and feathering that was about to happen in Boston was about to be
a whole heck of a lot worse. Once word of the assault got around, a mob descended upon Malcolm and they tore his clothes off, beat him up, gave him the tar and feathering treatment, and then paraded him through the town, stopping at various Patriot attractions like the Liberty Tree, and at each stop they would flog him. And you know, because they were still pissed off about the tea, they forced him to drink so much tea that he vomited.
And yeah, through this experience he almost died. Hoops, And how did our revered founding fathers and Patriot leaders feel about this. You know, for a lot of these the worst thing that happened was the humiliation of being torn around the streets and then you know, getting the tar off of your skin. But as we've learned, sometimes they
were extremely brutal. Well, it seems that some of the Patriot leaders were like really into it, Like apparently John Hancock paid the legal fees of one man who was arrested as a tar and featherer. But this last one with John Malcolm, they're like, hey, guys, I think you went a bit too far with this one. We should probably calm it down. They're like, no one's going to be sympathetic to our cause if we are literally being a crazy mob. And then also, how did the British feel about this?
Not great?
In March seventeen seventy five, a group of British soldiers.
Were outside of Boston.
They're being harassed, they were annoyed, they're fed up. So what they did is they set up this guide named Thomas Ditson. And Thomas wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree. So one of the officers offered to sell him a gun, which was illegal, and Thomas was like, hell, yes, brother,
I'll buy that gun from you. But then they arrested him, and the commanding sergeant of these soldiers was like, damn you, I am going to serve you as you have served our men, and then commanded the soldiers to tarn feather this random dude. Then they put a sign on him that said American Liberty a specimen of democracy, and then they paraded him around the town while playing Yankee Doodle.
Out of spite. Of course, at this the colonists were like, oh my god, how dare you. It's like, I know we.
Were doing that, but how could you technically the governing body do something as wicked as that? But you know, they didn't really resolve anything because Whoop's wares on the horizon and tarn feathering wasn't happening just in the north, Oh no, it was making its way down south. And they're one brutal feathering left another man near death, but that man survived and vowed to get his revenge. Be right back after these soothing advertisements. All right, let's talk
about the Continental Congress real fast. So in seventeen seventy five, they came up with this policy. They're like, hey, don't import, don't export British goods. And then they called on these local committees across the colonies to form so that they could enforce this plan. And the Continental Congress came up with the Articles of Association where they would force colonists to publicly declare if they were four or against American liberty.
And if they refused to sign these articles, well, the Continental Congress was like, local committees, you can make a public example out of them, that's fine.
And what's a great.
Way to make a public example out of someone, Tar and feather them, obviously, And so the tarn feathering was making its way down south, and it was about to be used upon a dude named Thomas Brown, who would later be called Burnfoot.
You'll see why anyway. Thomas Brown was.
Born in the North of England in seventeen fifty and his dad was a prosperous merchant and manufacturer. When he turned twenty four, it was Thomas's turn to go out in the world and make his fortune. He got a boat and enlisted seventy indentured servants from Scotland to go on the long voyage to Georgia to work on a plantation.
How fun.
The boat arrived in Georgia in November seventeen seventy four, and with three thousand pounds of his family's money, he established Brownsboro. Remember his name was Thomas Brown, so Brownsborough. Honestly, I think it would have had a better ring to it if it was called Browntown, but that's just me. Also, I guess that does sound gross. Anyway, Brownsboro was near Augusta,
and Thomas had a fifty six hundred acre plantation. And when he arrived, the Royal Governor of Georgia made Thomas a magistrate of the area.
Wow.
And according to historians, it does appear that Thomas fully intended.
To lead a peaceful life as a planter.
Ah. Yes, isn't it peaceful to have seventy indentured servants?
Ah?
The definition of tranquility. But unfortunately for him.
He arrived at a bad time.
The Revolution was nigh, the Continental Congress was convening. They were making people say yay or nay to American liberty. The Georgia Provincial Congress voted to enforce the no import and export rule as the Continental Congress decreed. Thomas Brown, though he wasn't into independence, he wasn't into any of it.
He had hardly been away for a year.
He was a magistrate, He had indentured servants and a rich dad. Why would he ever be on the side of this silly American cause his life is awesome. Thomas ended up joining a loyalist group that opposed the provincial Congress. But alas I guess he was doxed or something, or it was just well known who he was associated with, because on August second, seventeen seventy five, more than one hundred men who were part of the Sons of Liberty
arrived at his plantation. They're like, hello, loyalists, scum, you must sign these articles of association. But Thomas he refused to pledge allegiance to the not yet created American flag and stated that he was against independence. So this Horde of Liberty boys took it upon themselves to try to convince him otherwise. First what they did is they beat him up. Someone had a rifle and they started hitting him with it. Then they tore off his clothes and tied him to a tree. And once he was tied
to the tree, they set his feet on fire. There we go, there's the burn foot and then it gets worse. They scalped him. That's right, They cut the scalp right off, and finally they painted him with tar and covered him in feathers. Now, some accounts say that they tarred and feathered him and then let him on fire, but others, you know, say the opposite. But either way, he wasn't feeling good. Thomas was obviously in bad shape after this happened.
He ended up losing two toes from the burns and from being beaten with the rifle.
His skull was fractured.
For the rest of his life, he had headaches, and he became addicted to laudanum, probably from trying to get a break from his chronic pain. But instead of forcing Thomas into submission, the Sons of Liberty accidentally made a great enemy, because even though Thomas Brown had been beaten down in the muck, he was now pissed as frick. No longer was he under the delusion that he would
be a peaceful, happy planter. Oh No, Instead, he doubled down and became a Tory loyalist extraordinaire, ready to fight these Patriot jackasses. He said that even though the Patriots had quote presented him with a genteel and fashionable suit of tar and feathers end quote. He was undaunted by the task to shut them down. In a couple months after the attack, Thomas Brown recovered and he began supporting the Loyalist effort in South Carolina. But then, unfortunately for him,
he was overrun. So Thomas had to flee. And where were the Loyalists fleeing to at this moment, Well, they were going to East Florida. You know, Florida, a safe place where nothing bad has ever happened.
When Thomas got to East.
Florida, he formed his own militia called the East Florida Rangers.
Pew pew pew pew pew.
He and his men raided Georgia, defended East Florida, and eventually helped the British get Georgia back from the Patriots. After they disbanded, Thomas formed a new militia called the King's Rangers, and he continued to fight and fight and fight and fight to get vengeance for his missing toes and his headaches. Finally, in seventeen eighty one, Thomas and his militia had to surrender. And at this point, I don't know if Thomas had fully quenched his thirst for revenge.
You know, it's like, how many patriots do you have to kill in order to get over being tar and feathered?
I don't know.
Meanwhile, tar and feathering was falling out of fashion. People were like, are we bad for doing this? I mean, it's the age of enlightenment after all, maybe we shouldn't behave like animals. In seventeen seventy seven, Thomas Paine wrote about tar and feathering. He wrote, quote, it is time to be done with tarring, feathering, karting, and taking securities for their future behavior. Every sensible man must feel a conscious shame at seeing a poor fellow hawked for a
show about the streets. And after the war there was still some tarring and feathering. Like some of the loyalists who went back to their homes after the war, some of them got tarred and feathered, you know, just on principle, I guess. But there are fewer instances than there used to be. And throughout American history there have been other instances of tarring and feathering, and eventually the practice, you know, did get picked up by white supremacists. Classic anyway, on
that note of white supremacy. Let's get back to Thomas Brown. After the war, he was able to get back to East Florida in a prisoner exchange, but unfortunately he wasn't able to stay there because part of the treaty ending the war meant that Spain got Florida.
Whoop sees.
So Thomas spent the next few years bouncing around islands in the British Caribbean. And this is kind of funny because at one point he was on this island in the Bahamas and he got really pissed off there because he and the other British settlers couldn't get representation in their government. It's like, buddy, what are you trying to say? No taxation without representation. He eventually ends up on Saint Vincent.
And because you know, he was loyal, because he's a Tory, la la la la la, the British gave him a lot of money, a lot of land.
And six hundred enslaved people.
One thing I want to point out is that a lot of articles about Thomas Brown, they sometimes just skip over the part where it says he had enslaved six hundred people. They're like, Oh, he just got to live his dream of being a planter. Okay, but let's remember his true accurate legacy. Okay, but let's get back to the subject of tar and feathering.
What do you think we can learn from this episode?
What I've learned is that if you're gonna tar and feather someone, you gotta make sure you know who you're dealing with. If you tar and feather that person, are they gonna seek revenge?
Also how much revenge?
And that might help you make a choice, because if Thomas Brown hadn't been tar and feathered, maybe he wouldn't have fought so hard. Anyway, if you are going to tar and feather someone, I would say make a pros and cons list and just sort of really assess the situation before you do it, okay by American Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was hosted and written by Me Gabby Watts. The
theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger. Our senior producers Amelia Brock, and our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the sew on Instagram at American Filth Pod and if you liked this episode, or if you didn't like this episode, please leave a review, leave a comment if it's me, and make it very funny. Okay, I do read them and I do enjoy them. All right, bye, talking to you next time.
School of Humans