[P2P-F] ran tan

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Mark!

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Mark Petz <ravenwyn at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://homepages.which.net/~rex/bourne/diary200903.htm<http://homepages.which.net/%7Erex/bourne/diary200903.htm>
>
> and the relevant bit is here (please note this website is a small local one
> and so they keep moving and deleting these bits). So keeping a copy like
> this is good.
>
> *Saturday 28th March 2009*
> *The retired banking *boss Sir Fred Goodwin whose windows were smashed and
> car vandalised this week as a reprisal for his gargantuan and unearned
> pension payout should count himself lucky for had he been living in this
> part of the country 100 years ago then the consequences would have been far
> more severe. Instead of a foray lasting a few minutes by angry
> anti-capitalist protestors outside his Edinburgh home, he would have found
> himself at the mercy of the mob for several days, anxious to vent their
> wrath by what was known as ran-tanning, a particularly nasty form of social
> punishment prevalent in the South Lincolnshire fens until the early years of
> the last century.
>
> Ran-tanning was a notorious method of expressing public indignation
> whenever someone transgressed the bounds of what was perceived to be good
> behaviour but as with all illegal gatherings the definition was usually
> confined to that laid down by the ringleaders and often closely resembled a
> riot. If a person had committed some act of which the other villagers
> disapproved, they would congregate near their house carrying an effigy of
> the persons who had incurred their displeasure and making a terrible
> commotion by beating with sticks, tins, cans, pots, pans, buckets and
> kettles, playing mouth organs, booing, shouting and singing and on occasions
> lighting bonfires. The demonstrations were carried on for a number of nights
> in succession, usually three, after which the effigy would be burned.
>
> This was a form of vigilantism likely to provoke social disorder, doled out
> to anyone who breached the local code of what was right and what was wrong
> and was particularly likely in the case of sexual misdemeanours such as
> adultery and domestic incidents such as wife beating. In fact, cases became
> so frequent and so serious during the late 19th century that they eventually
> attracted the attention of the authorities and ran-tanning was banned under
> the Highways Act of 1882. Yet cases persisted. Illicit sexual liaisons were
> particularly prevalent in this country during the Great War of 1914-18 when
> husbands had either volunteered or been conscripted into the army to fight
> in the trenches of Flanders and France leaving wives behind who were
> vulnerable to temptation although always wary of what the neighbours might
> say.
>
> Not all of the soldiers were sent home immediately after the Armistice and
> by the following summer, hundreds had still not been reunited with their
> loved ones and in 1919, a case came before the magistrates at the town hall
> in Bourne when it was alleged that a woman and her lover had been ran-tanned
> by a group of men at Rippingale on August 29th on the grounds that she had
> been carrying on with a sergeant-major on leave while her husband was still
> away from home serving with the army.
>
> Eight men were summoned to appear for unlawfully joining in a brawl and the
> case created so much interest that the courtroom was crowded with villagers
> for the entire two-hour hearing when the police described how they had been
> called out to quell a riot in which a crowd of men were causing pandemonium
> outside a house by beating drums, tins, buckets, plough shares, old pieces
> of iron and playing instruments, shouting and yelling, later gathering in a
> nearby field where two effigies were burned. The disturbances continued for
> three nights by which time the entire village was in a state of commotion
> and the noise could be heard two miles away but the men refused to stop
> despite warnings that they were guilty of disorderly conduct.
>
> Solicitor Cecil Crust, who appeared for the defendants, argued that the men
> were not guilty of a brawl and quoted the dictionary definition as “a noisy
> quarrel” and whilst he admitted that there had been some noise, insisted
> that the men were not quarrelling. His argument was overruled by the
> magistrates and Superintendent Herbert Bailey, head of the Bourne police,
> told the bench: “The conduct of these men was disgraceful and it is
> abominable that people should be subjected to such rowdyism.” After some
> discussion, the magistrates agreed to the charges being withdrawn provided
> the defendants expressed regret for their actions and undertook not to
> repeat such incidents under any circumstances in the future although they
> were ordered to pay costs.
>
> Ran-tanning was by then dying out and the last recorded case in these parts
> was at Quadring Fen, near Spalding on 15th February 1928 when the victim was
> a woman alleged to have made remarks scandalising her neighbours. Police
> intervened and 23 people were charged with disorderly conduct when the court
> was told that ran-tanning was perhaps the only survival of mob law which
> existed in this country. All of the defendants were fined between five and
> ten shillings and ordered to pay costs and there have been no further cases
> of this nature since.
>
> Perhaps the case of Fred the Shred has provoked a return to this old but
> effective method of castigation because we hear that banking fat cats in
> London have been warned to be on their guard during the G20 summit next week
> in case of revenge attacks by militants for the collapse of the financial
> system. We wonder if ran-tanning is likely to spread to the capital and if
> this is why the police are being issued with dozens more taser guns.
>



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