Poster for the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock film Blackmail, the first British “talkie”
15 March 2023
[16 March 2023: clarified the Norse origin]
Whence blackmail?
The mail in blackmail is unrelated to either a type of armor or the postal service. It comes from the Old Norse mál, whose root means discussion or agreement, although the English usage corresponds more closely to the Old Icelandic derivative máli meaning contract or payment. The Old English mal, meaning payment, first appears in reference to the Danegeld, cash given to Vikings to prevent them from raiding. The uncompounded word survives in Scots and northern English dialects.
Blackmail was first used to refer to protection rackets run by Scottish clan chieftains against farmers in their territory. If the farmers did not pay the mail, the chiefs would steal their crops and cattle. The black probably comes from the unsavory nature of the practice. The earliest record of the practice that I’m aware of is from the trial of one, Adam Scot, who was beheaded in 1530 for blackmailing the people of the Scottish-English border counties:
Maii 18.—ADAM SCOT of Tuschelaw, Convicted of art and part of theftuously taking Black-maill, from the time of his entry within the Castle of Edinburgh, in Ward, from John Brovne in Hoprow: And of art and part of theftuously taking Black-maill from Andrew Thorbrand and William his brother: And for art and part of theftuously taking of Black-maill from the poor Tenants of Hopcailʒow: And of art and part of theftuously taking Black-maill from the Tenants of Eschescheill.—BEHEADED.
Eventually, blackmail generalized to refer to obtaining payment through threat of force. A 1774 letter by David Hume makes jocular reference to blackmail, using it in the sense of being friendly to a scandalmonger in hopes that he will say nothing bad about him:
I think I can reckon about twenty people, not including the King, whom he has attacked in this short performance. I hope all his spleen is not exhausted. I should desire my compliments to him, were I not afraid that he would interpret the civility as paying blackmail to him.
But a clear use of blackmail to mean payment obtained through threat of force doesn’t appear until 15 December 1818, when it makes its appearance in a letter from a British officer stationed in India that is published in the Calcutta Journal and later the London Times the following year:
The Coolies were in some measure surprised […] the fellows have, however, received a lesson they will not easily forget, and whether we shall march or not is uncertain. They have long been the dread of all the country, and levied black mail in all directions.
And the sense of obtaining payment by threatening to publish scandalous information about someone, a sense that is hinted at Hume’s 1774 letter, does not make a clear appearance until the mid nineteenth century. From New York’s Evening Mirror of 22 May 1848, in reference to a rival paper:
Not a day passes that this organ of scoundrelism does not in some way insult the American people, who, we must admit, seem to take it very meekly—not to say gratefully. We wonder what chance of success a low, dirty, blackguard penny-a-liner would have who should go from this city to London to establish a paper for the purpose of abusing everything English and blackmailing theatres, artists and all persons who could be made to “bleed,” or suffer!
There is also an archaic, sense of blackmail, dating to the seventeenth century, referring to rent or other payments that are made in something other than silver coin, such as cattle or labor. This sense dates to the seventeenth century. Payment in silver coin was sometimes referred to as white rent, which is a folk etymology of quit-rent, from the Anglo-Norman quiterente, meaning a nominal payment to a lord in lieu of providing services. If one goes searching for early uses of blackmail, especially in English, as opposed to Scottish, sources, it is this sense that one is likely to find.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2017, s.v. quiterente, n. https://www.anglo-norman.net/entry/quiterente
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, 1971, s.v. male, mail, n.1. Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL).
“East-Indies.” Times (London), 16 July 1819, 2. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.
Hume, David. Letter to John Home, 4 Jun 1774. In J.Y.T. Greig, ed. The Letters of David Hume, Vol. 2: 1766–1776. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1932. Oxford Scholarly Editions Online.
“In Perfect Keeping.” Evening Mirror (New York), 22 May 1848, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, s.v. blackmail, n., blackmail, v; June 2000, s.v. mail, n.1; March 2015, s.v. white, adj. (and adv.) and n.; December 2007, s.v. quit-rent, n.
Pitcairn, Robert. Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. 1, part 1. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1833, 145. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Scottish National Dictionary, 1941, s.v. black mail, n. Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL).
Image credit: Wardour Films, 1929. Public domain image as published prior to 1977 without copyright notice.