Boycott, Charles Cunningham

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Boycott, Charles Cunningham (1837–97). Boycott came from Norfolk and after a career in the army retired as a captain. He was engaged in 1873 as land agent by Lord Erne for his Mayo estates. In September 1880 at Ennis, Parnell announced a new policy of ostracizing an opponent of the Irish Land League ‘by putting him into a sort of moral Coventry … as if he were a leper of old’. Boycott was an early victim and the following month his crops had to be harvested by Orange volunteers, protected by hundreds of police and military at great cost. John Dillon used the phrase ‘boycotting’ on 17 November in a speech at Cashel and it was reported in The Times. The verb made its way into French, German, and Russian, as well as English.

J. A. Cannon

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Boycott, Charles Cunningham

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