Definition
Rattening is the practice, associated historically with trade union activity, of taking, hiding, or otherwise interfering with a workman's tools, clothing, or personal property in order to coerce him into joining a trade union or to compel him to stop working. The object is economic pressure through deprivation of the means of labor rather than through direct physical force or formal strike action.
The term refers to a specific form of industrial coercion: it targets the individual worker's property rather than the employer's operations, and its mechanism is harassment and inconvenience rather than outright destruction. Where tools are damaged or machinery deliberately disabled, the conduct shades into sabotage, which is a related but legally and conceptually distinct wrong.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The practice of sabotaging machinery or tools as part of an industrial dispute.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered. The term does not appear to have been treated as a standard English word in Webster's 1913, suggesting it was regarded as a trade or regional term rather than general vocabulary.
The common usage captured by Wiktionary frames rattening primarily as sabotage of machinery — destruction or disabling of equipment. The legal definition in Bouvier's is narrower and more precise: it focuses on the taking or concealment of a workman's personal property, particularly tools, rather than destruction of plant or machinery. A researcher treating Wiktionary's framing as authoritative risks conflating rattening with sabotage, which carries different legal consequences and appears under different statutory provisions.
Common Confusion
Rattening and sabotage are sometimes used interchangeably in general historical writing, but they are legally distinct. Rattening involves removal or concealment of property to coerce; sabotage involves willful damage or destruction. The distinction mattered under Victorian labor legislation, which carved out different offenses and penalties for each. A researcher encountering "rattening" in a historical source should not assume destruction of property is alleged.
Why It Matters in Research
Rattening is a term almost entirely confined to Victorian British labor law and its immediate statutory context. American legal dictionaries and general common law sources largely ignore it. Researchers encountering the term in primary sources — parliamentary debates, trade union records, criminal prosecutions, or Victorian legal commentary — should understand it as a term of art tied to a specific statutory moment.
The governing statute referenced in Bouvier's is the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 86), which consolidated and reformed earlier labor legislation. That Act, along with the Trade Union Act 1871, represented a significant legislative effort to define the legal boundaries of union activity, distinguishing lawful collective action from criminal coercion. Rattening sat on the criminal side of that line.
In historical sources before the 1870s, the conduct now called rattening may appear described in more general terms — theft, unlawful taking, or intimidation — without the specific label. Researchers working with pre-1871 sources should search for the behavior, not the word. Conversely, after the early twentieth century, as labor law evolved and direct physical confrontation gave way to more formalized bargaining mechanisms, the term largely disappears from legal usage. Its presence in a source is itself a chronological marker.
Because rattening was associated with specific trades and regions — notably the Sheffield cutlery trade, which saw a notorious outbreak of rattening and associated violence in the 1860s known as the "Sheffield Outrages" — corpus researchers may find the term clustered around that episode and its parliamentary aftermath. The Sheffield Outrages led directly to the royal commission inquiry that informed the 1871 and 1875 legislation. Any Law Mind corpus materials touching Sheffield trades, the 1867 commission, or Victorian labor reform are likely the richest sources for this term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the primary legal dictionary treatment of rattening and grounds it explicitly in the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. The definition is compact but accurate: it correctly identifies the coercive purpose (compelling union membership or cessation of work) and the means (taking or hiding tools or other property). Bouvier's does not, however, address the historical background of the Sheffield Outrages that gave the term its legal urgency, nor does it distinguish rattening from the related offense of intimidation addressed elsewhere in the same statute.
No comparable entry appears in standard American legal dictionaries of the period, which reflects the term's essentially British statutory character. Researchers relying solely on American sources will find no help here.
Jurisdictional Note
Rattening as a defined legal offense is specific to English law and the Victorian statutory framework. It has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or colonial legal systems under that name, though analogous conduct would have been reached through general theft, malicious mischief, or intimidation statutes elsewhere.