thanks Mark!<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Mark Petz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ravenwyn@gmail.com">ravenwyn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<a href="http://homepages.which.net/%7Erex/bourne/diary200903.htm" target="_blank">http://homepages.which.net/~rex/bourne/diary200903.htm</a><br><br>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.<br>
<br><p align="center"><b><font size="4">Saturday 28<sup>th</sup> March 2009</font></b></p>
<b>The retired banking </b>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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net">http://p2pfoundation.net</a>� - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br>Connect: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.ning.com">http://p2pfoundation.ning.com</a>; Discuss: <a href="http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org">http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org</a><br>
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