A British customs official tarred and feathered in America
The textbook case of humiliation-attacks on tax collectors is the “tarring and feathering” practiced, in particular, by American revolutionaries.
After the revolution, the Whiskey Rebels took up the practice.
In one case:
A party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid [Robert Johnson, collector of the revenues] at a place on Pidgeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation.
On other occasions, the rebels “docked [collectors’] horses’ tails, and in at least one instance tarred a collector and rolled him in leaves.”
One process server “was seized, whipped, tarred and feathered, and after having his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded and tied in the woods, in which condition he remained five hours.”
A delusional man named Wilson, “manifestly disordered in his intellects, imagining himself to be a collector of the revenue, or invested with some trust in relation to it, was so unlucky as to make inquiries concerning distillers who had entered their stills, giving out that he was to travel through the United States, to ascertain and report to Congress the number of stills, etc. This man was pursued by a party in disguise, taken out of his bed, carried about five miles back to a smith’s shop, stripped of his clothes, which were afterwards burnt, and, after having been himself inhumanly burnt in several places with a heated iron, was tarred and feathered, and about daylight dismissed — naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition.”
Violent humiliation attacks known as “carding” were also part of the Tithe War in Ireland.
According to one account:
Carding the tithe proctors (who certainly were the genuine tyrants of Ireland) was occasionally resorted to by the White Boys, and was performed in the following manner.
The tithe proctor was generally waked out of his first sleep by his door being smashed in; and the boys in white shirts desired him “never to fear,” as they only intended to card him this bout for taking a quarter instead of a tenth from every poor man in the parish.
They then turned him on his face upon the bed; and taking a lively ram cat out of a bag which they brought with them, they set the cat between the proctor’s shoulders.
The beast, being nearly as much terrified as the proctor, would endeavour to get off; but being held fast by the tail, he intrenched every claw deep in the proctor’s back, in order to keep up a firm resistance to the White Boys.
The more the tail was pulled back, the more the ram cat tried to go forward; at length, when he had, as he conceived, made his possession quite secure, main force convinced him to the contrary, and that if he kept his hold, he must lose his tail.
So, he was dragged backward to the proctor’s loins, grappling at every pull, and bringing away, here and there, strips of the proctor’s skin, to prove the pertinacity of his defence.
When the ram cat had got down to the loins, he was once more placed at the shoulders, and again carded the proctor (toties quoties) according to his sentence.
In , “An irate dry cleaner” named LaSaunders Hudson “who wouldn’t pay his taxes forced three state revenue agents to march naked out of his store”
Mabile said as the agents were removing their underwear, Hudson advised them that “this is part of the punishment we are going to give the white man for injustices done the black man.”
During the salt tax (gabelle) riots in Bordeaux in , “A few tax collectors were killed.
Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.”
In , Irish settlers in Canada who were refusing to pay a county tax there were confronted by a deputy sheriff who had intended to seize property for back taxes.
Instead, “they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
In one town, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, “the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ the municipal council is assailed, and two hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.”
Sometimes the humiliation attack would be performed on the tax collector in absentia or in effigy:
During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters
audaciously dug a grave within sight of Dinefwr Castle, the family seat, and announced that [Colonel George Rice] Trevor would occupy it by .
Trevor, however, surrounded by soldiers, survived unscathed.
During the Whiskey Rebellion,
[T]he inspector of the revenue was burnt in effigy in Allegany county, at a place, and on a day, of some public election, with much display, and without interruption, in the presence of magistrates and other public officers.
Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of attacks on police and soldiers when they attempt to enforce tax laws or to take reprisals against resisters.
, a crowd of people on the Greek island of Hydra attacked local police after they detained a restauranteur for tax evasion:
[T]he inspectors wanted to transport the restaurant owner to Athens, an hour’s ride away by fast boat.
They were set upon by a local crowd, which also attacked the boat’s crew.
The police, along with the restaurant owner, had to retreat to the island’s police station, which was besieged until riot police arrived .
Locals cut off the station’s electricity and water supplies.
a police bus on fire in Zhili, China
In , protesters in China “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.”
In another mob of tax protesters in China destroyed ten police vehicles including an armored car.
There were battles between police and protesters during the Poll Tax rebellion in the Thatcher years.
In Bristol, the crowd charged the police and rescued arrested demonstrators.
“One police officer was kicked unconscious when he tried to make an arrest.
Six more were dragged out of their van.”
In London, “As the police baton-charged the crowd… they were resisted by a hail of bricks, bottles, and stones.”
Police brutality turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot in Trafalgar Square.
“Mounted riot police baton-charged the crowd.
The crowd, angered by this violent provocation, retaliated by throwing sticks, banner poles, bottles — anything they could find.
Young people, armed only with placards, fought hand to hand with police.
… As the missiles began to rain down the police retreated:
…Pedestrian isles were being torn up and real serious lumps of concrete being thrown at the romper-suited police.
I found myself with rock in hand.
The first I threw was aimed at a group of police.
I watched it bounce off a shield.
My second rock was more specifically aimed at their front line.
Again, it was well-deflected.
I saw a rock strike a policeman’s visor and he didn’t even blink.
The police were shielding themselves from the missiles raining down, but they were vulnerable to rocks aimed at their legs and midriffs.
The police were taking a battering.
Every now and then a policeman would crumple to his knees and the crowd would roar.”
More than 100 police officers would be treated for injuries sustained during the riot.
A spokesman for the police said, “I have never seen such sustained and savage violence used directly against the police.”
During the Poujadist tax rebellion in France in , “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them.”
At the tail end of the Dharsana Salt Raid, some Indian nationalist sympathizers, disregarding Gandhi’s guidelines and “abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned guards and police.
Five police and three excisemen were injured by the pebbles.
Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire.”
In Spain in , when guardsmen tried to disperse protesters angry at the arrest of a tax resisting cattleman, the crowd fought back — “two persons were killed and five wounded.
Among the latter is a Sergeant of the Civil Guard.”
After the Russian duma-in-exile issued a tax resistance manifesto, the government said that if people refused to pay taxes, it would send in troops who would show no mercy.
“Without waiting for soldiers to put the threat of the government into execustion the peasants have inaugurated a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the troops already in the province.
… Within the last few days a number of military sentinels have been shot down in ambush or attacked by the peasants.”
In , the military were called in to Guerrero, Mexico, to put down a tax rebellion.
Instead, the rebels defeated the troops and took General Ranjel prisoner.
“Half-breeds” (people of mixed European immigrant and Native American parentage) in the Dakota Territory refused to pay taxes in .
When the Sheriff tried to collect, “the half-breeds assembled from all directions, and pressing about the Sheriff and his one man they forced him to surrender his well-earned pittance of taxes … and say they will resist to the last man.
Sheriff Flynn has been notified that he will be shot on sight if he again makes a similar attempt.”
“When a deputy sheriff went to make seizures” against Irish settlers in Canada who were resisting taxes in , “the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree.
Finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
A sheriff trying to enforce the “foreign miners tax” in California “in attempting to compel the foreigners to yield, was killed by them, and one or two of his posse wounded.”
The Rebecca Rioters in Wales targeted the constables who tried to stop or investigate the riots, or to conduct tax seizures:
Two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at a Pontyberem village, and while there “made some special constables promise not to serve, and took away their staves.”
“They then attacked the house of the blacksmith, who had previously said he would face fifteen of the best Rebecca boys, and who also had been sworn in as a special constable; according to his own statements he was a man devoid of fear.
The smith — fearless man of Vulcan — had, however, departed; but smash! went in his door and windows, and his deserted smithy was practically destroyed.”
“At the outset of these proceedings the toll-man ‘Dick’ contrived, by running over ditch and dell, to warn a parish constable, one Evan Thomas, otherwise ‘The Porthyrhyd Lion,’ of his own mishap, as well as the peril to which he thought him exposed, Evan being somewhat unpopular in the neighbourhood.
On receiving this hint, away bolted ‘Ianto,’ scampering over the ditches and fields until he found a cow-house where he lay concealed in anxious suspense the remainder of the night.
Notwithstanding the retreat of ‘Ianto,’ about seventy of the tribe visited his domicile, smashed in his windows and doors, destroyed his shelf and dresser, and all his crockery, as well as the spokes of a new cart, put a cheese on the fire, cut down some of the trees in the garden, and then simultaneously raised the cry, ‘Alas! poor Ianto!’
… Evan the constable… if found, was to have his ears cut off.”
“These riotous proceedings caused considerable excitement and alarm… The different persons in the neighbourhood who were sworn in as special constables… gave up their staves, with the determination of refusing on any future occasions to interfere with the movements of Rebecca or the protection of the toll-house.”
“John Evans and John Lewis, two Sheriff’s officers from Carmarthen, were sent… to make a distress on the goods and chattels of William Philipp… They were attacked by about twenty-five of the ’Beccas, and beaten in a dreadful manner.… John Evans was compelled to go on his knees before them, and put the distresses and authority to distrain in the fire.
He was then made to take his oath on the Bible, which one of them put in his hands, that he would never again enter the premises to make another distress.
He was compelled to make use of the following words: ‘As the Lord liveth, and my soul liveth, I will never come here to make any distress again.’
After taking the oath, he was set free, and the two bailiffs returned to town.”
William Chambers, who led a police unit that wounded and arrested some Rebeccaites, was targeted multiple times.
On one occasion, a stack of his corn was burned, on another, a stack of straw met the torch.
Later his farm and outbuildings were all engulfed in flames.
A horse of his that had been rescued from another of his farms as it burned down was later shot.
This panel from the Carrickshock memorial depicts an attack on British troops during the Irish Tithe War.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, British troops killed 18 resisters who were trying to reclaim distrained livestock.
In return, the resisters killed 18 troops in an ambush:
A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the Court of Exchequer, and intrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong force, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and despatch.
Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles through the dell, soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for hostile visitors.
But the yeomanry pushed boldly on: their bayonets were sharp, their ball-cartridge inexhaustible, their hearts dauntless.
Suddenly an immense mass of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them — a terrible struggle ensured, and in a few moments eighteen police, including the commanding-officer, lay dead.
The remainder fled, marking the course of their retreat by their blood… In the mêlée, Captain Leyne, a Waterloo veteran, narrowly escaped.
A coroner’s jury pronounced “Wilful murder.”
Large Government rewards were offered, but failed to produce a single conviction.
In Issoudun, France in , a general who was sent to try to quell a tax rebellion there “entered the town only through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hôtel-de-Ville a man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-hook around his neck, exclaiming, ‘No more clerks where there is nothing to do!’ ”
During the Fries Rebellion in the early United States, “it came to the knowledge of the authorities that several of the magistrates themselves were disaffected, and others were prevented doing their duty through fear of injury.”
During the French Revolution, when the people of Peronne and Ham got wind that an order had been issued to rebuild destroyed toll-houses, they destroyed the soldiers’ barracks.
In another case: “M. de Sauzay, commandant of the ‘Royal Roussillon,’ who was bold enough to save the [tax] clerks, is menaced, and for this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself.
When the municipal body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that ‘for so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the citizens,’ and the regular troops sent to the Hôtel-de-Ville are ordered by the people not to go except with the butt-ends of their muskets in the air.”
An Associated Press dispatch from the Watertown Daily Times, on .
Ottawa, Ont., .
Two hundred Irish settlers on the Stag creek section of Gatineau district, [illegible] miles north of the city, have refused for three years to pay a county tax.
When a deputy sheriff went to make seizures, the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree.
Finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.
Militia will be sent to aid the officials.
