If so, it was by law. In the US, as far as I know, it was always an expression of mob violence.
There is somewhere in the press archives a picture of a young girl in Northern Ireland who was tied to a lampost and tarred and feathered by the IRA, it is one of those images that sticks firmly in the mind. It would have been mid to late 70’s and the picture was carried by all the British papers, I remember finding it very unsettling
just done my reasearch. It was 1972, the girls were shorn, tared and feathered for the crime of dating British soldiers, cannot however find the picture that sprang so readily to mind
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