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"The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring and Feathering."

A 1774 British print depicts the tarring and feathering of Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm. Tarring and feathering was a ritual of humiliation and public warning that stopped just short of life-threatening injury. In this print, Malcolm was attacked under the Liberty Tree by several Patriots, including a leather-aproned artisan, while the Boston Tea Party occurred in the background; in fact, the Tea Party had taken place four weeks earlier. This anti-Patriot print may have been a response to the sympathetic “The Able Doctor” published earlier the same year.

Source: Philip Dawe, "The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering"—Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library.

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