October is more than the month of spooks and spirits – it is also the anniversary month of the most infamous property manager in history: Captain Charles C. Boycott. If you don’t know him, you know his name, as it has been in our lexicon ever since he was forced from his community.
After his retirement from the British Army, Boycott worked as what would now be considered a property manager, acting as the land agent on property owned by Lord Erne. He collected the rent from tenant farmers in the County Mayo area, and after a bad harvest, he was told to lower the local rent by the Land League, an organization created to reform the previous landlord system.
The Land League stated that due to the likelihood of famine, rent should be lowered by 25%. By September of 1880, tenants were late on rent, and Boycott informed them that though they demanded that 25%, Lord Erne only accepted 10% deduction. He issued requests for the late rent and began issuing eviction notices for eleven tenants.
And thus, began the downfall of Captain Charles C. Boycott as a property manager. After three of his tenants were officially notified of their evictions, a fourth refused to officially accept the notification and began to alert other tenant farmers to what was happening. They successfully stopped the notification process by running the server and constabulary into hiding by chasing him with rocks and manure.
That was not the end of it. The next day, everyone who worked for Boycott was encouraged to quit, from laborers to servants. People in town began to refuse serving him, from the postal to laundry service. When Boycott’s nephew tried to get his mail, he was stopped along the trail. It became such a mess that on October 14, 1880, Boycott wrote to The Times:
When preparing for your property tour, efficiency is key. Small mishaps throughout the day may ruin chances with a prospective renter.
A good real estate agent should be knowledgeable about the surrounding area and what it has to offer prospective tenants. Or better yet, find out what aspects of a neighborhood are important to them beforehand and include that on the tour.
Be sure to have contact information for the landlord or their representative. If there is sincere interest, they’ll need this information once they sign the lease.
… The shopkeepers have been warned to stop all supplies to my house, and I have just received a message from the post mistress to say that the telegraph messenger was stopped and threatened on the road when bringing out a message to me and that she does not think it safe to send any telegrams which may come for me in the future for fear they should be abstracted and the messenger injured. My farm is public property; the people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale. The locks on my gates are smashed, the gates thrown open, the walls thrown down, and the stock driven out on the roads. I can get no workmen to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody who knows the country.
In late October, Boycott reported that he had $500 of crops that would rot underground with no one to harvest them. His tenants refused to farm and wouldn’t let others near it. By November, Boycott decided to leave Ireland, but no one would drive his family to the train station. He became a land agent instead, and remained infamous for quite some time. Luckily, no modern property manager has gained the same level of notoriety as he had.
Thanks to Captain Boycott, the idea of social ostracization began to spread as a tool to pressure those in charge to listen to the consumer. By 1888, the word was even included in dictionaries, and is now used so widely that though everyone knows what a boycott is, there is a good chance that they do not know who he was.
Who are your favorite notorious property managers of history?
Let us know in the comments!
