His name was Charles Cunningham Boycott.
But after failing a periodic exam, Boycott was discharged from the academy.
Boycotts responsibility was to collect rents from tenant farmers and evict those who didnt or couldnt pay.
Boycotts high handedness and unsavory character made him unpopular with the tenants.
These fines sometimes exceeded their wages.
The leagues ultimate goal was to make tenant farmers owners of the land they farmed.
In September 1880, Lord Erne’s tenants were due to pay their rents.
Some of the tenants paid their rents in due course, but three families were subsequently evicted for non-payment.
A caricature of Charles Cunningham Boycott that appeared in Vanity Fair magazine, January 29, 1881.
Those who didnt were threatened with ulterior consequences.
Subsequently, Boycott found himself isolated in his community.
No one would buy from him; no one would sell to him.
He was unable to harvest his own land or transact business of any kind in the community.
Even the postman stopped coming.
Helpless at his predicament, Boycott penned a desperate letter toThe Timesin mid-October.
My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale.
In addition, some nine hundred soldiers were sent to protect the labourers anticipating violence from the locals.
The entire regiment stayed in town for two weeks.
Worse still, some 10,000 were spent to rescue crops worth at most 350.
The Boycott affair became a big news in Ireland, England and other English-speaking countries.
Photo:Library of Congress
It is difficult to say exactly when the word boycott entered English usage.
According to journalist James Redpath, the term was coined by local priest Father O’Malley.
Ostracism won’t do the peasantry would not know the meaning of the word.
Apparently, no other word in the English language existed that adequately described the dispute.
But New York newspapers got wind of his arrival.
He died at his home in 1897, but his name lives on in infamy forever.
