Ran-tanning - punishment by the mob

Sexual or other misconduct may be the cause of idle or malicious gossip among the neighbours but there the matter usually ends. Not so in past times when the culprits, especially if they lived in villages or small communities, were likely to be the victims of ran-tanning, a particularly nasty form of social punishment prevalent in this part of the 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 someone had committed some act of which the other villagers disapproved, they would congregate near their house and make 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 an effigy of the person who had incurred their displeasure would be burned in a nearby field.

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 including adultery and domestic incidents such as wife beating.

One of the earliest reported cases in Lincolnshire was in 1878 when four farm labourers were brought before the magistrates at Boston. The court was told that they had been arrested at Fosdyke on November 23rd for riotous and drunken behaviour while celebrating the custom of ran-tanning a village worthy who had thrashed his wife and having taken more beer than was good for them they were taken into custody. They were fined five shillings each.

The following January there was a similar case before Horncastle magistrates when eleven men were given small fines for causing an obstruction in the market place at Tattershall and refusing to move when ordered to do so by the police. The court was told that the village had been in uproar with sixty or more men ran-tanning a woman who had ill-treated her servant girl by banging pots and pans, sounding horns and even firing a pistol.

In the summer of 1879, a woman, Sarah Hodson, of New Quarrington, near Sleaford, was persecuted with ran-tanning by villagers for three consecutive nights although we are not told of her offence but as a result the windows of her house were broken and she was physically assaulted. As a result, eight men appeared before the magistrates and were fined 10s. each and ordered to pay the cost of replacing them.

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 offences 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 ignored all entreaties 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 South Lincolnshire 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 that still 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.

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