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Tarring and Feathering was a typical punishment used to enforce justice on the early American frontier. Both tar used in construction and feathers from food sources (e.g. chicken) were plentiful in the middle and western United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in where the practice primarily flourished. The idea was to hurt and humiliate a person enough so they would leave town and cause no more mischief. Hot tar was either poured or painted on to a criminal while he (rarely she) was immobilized.

Then the person either had feathers thrown on him from buckets or barrels or else he was thrown into a pile of them and rolled around. Then the victim was taken to the edge of town and set free in the hopes he would not return. The feathers would stick to the tar for days making the person's sentence clear to the public. While this practice was extremely cruel it was usually an effective manner of exileSee Exile (disambiguation) for other meanings. To be in exile means being away from your home (i. city, state or country) and being either explicitly refused permission to return or being threatened by prison or death upon return. Personal exile Exile has. It was eventually abandoned because it did nothing to rehabilitateRehabilitation is the restoration of lost capabilities, or the treatment aimed at producing it. As to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and concussions, see Rehabilitation (neuropsychology) As to addictions, see Substance-abuse rehabilitatio its victims of the criminal behavior for which they were sentenced.

The image of the tarred-and-feathered outlawButch Cassidy, a famous outlaw An outlaw a person living the lifestyle of outlawry is most familiar to contemporary readers as a stock character in Western movies. The Western outlaw is typically a criminal who operates from a base in the wilderness, and is so vivid that the expression remains a metaphorThere are broad categories of figurative language which are classified as metaphorical (see Literal and figurative language). The more common meaning of metaphor is a figure of speech that is used to paint one concept with the attributes normally associat for a humiliating public castigation, many years after the practice disappeared.

History

The earliest mention of the punishment occurs in the orders of Richard I of England, issued to his navy on starting for the Holy Land in 1191. "Concerning the lawes and ordinances appointed by King Richard for his navie the forme thereof was this . . . item, a thiefe or felon that hath stolen, being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne, and boyling pitch poured upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing-place they shall come to, there to be cast up" (trans. of original statute in Hakluyt's Voyages, ii. 21).

A later instance of this penalty being inflicted is given in Notes and Queries (series 4, vol. v.), which quotes one James Howell writing from Madrid, in 1623, of the "boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt ," who, "having taken a place where there were two monasteries of nuns and friars, he caused divers feather beds to be ripped, and all the feathers thrown into a great hall, whither the nuns and friars were thrust naked with their bodies oiled and pitched and to tumble among these feathers, which makes them here (Madrid) presage him an ill-death." In 1696 a London bailiff, who attempted to serve process on a debtor who had taken refuge within the precincts of the Savoy, was tarred and feathered and taken in a wheelbarrow to the Strand, where he was tied to the maypole which stood by what is now Somerset House.