The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves | Hacker News Reader

The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves

en.wikipedia.org

73 pointsdrdee32 comments

I sounds terribly exclusive,

> Since its founding there have been more than 10,000 members including heads of state, Supreme Court justices, governors, popes, professors, generals, and other notables.

But it’s just a small old club adding elite members as a joke.

> The person elected to membership in the society need not even know that they had been nominated.

> "I've always wondered what the reaction in the Vatican mail room is when they open the envelope and see the certificate."

Yeah I did a double take there.

> > Since its founding there have been more than 10,000 members including heads of state, Supreme Court justices, governors

Okay so what.

> , popes,

Uh what?

There are many organizations that similarly outlived their usefulness.

The Junior Order of United American Mechanics is another one. This was the kid's section of the Order of United American Mechanics. It survived the parent organization and is still in existence. Or at least the web site, not updated since 2019, is still up.[1]

[1] https://www.jrouamnationalcouncil.org

> similarly outlived their usefulness.

from the wiki article it does not sound like they have ever been useful.

I'll see your Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves and raise you the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George" (SPCSCPG)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Prevention_of_...

Another obscure Archer ("The Limited", Season 3 Ep 6) reference solved.

"There is only one instance of a horse thief being caught by the Society"

Hmmm.

Nonetheless the incidence of horse theft in Dedham has steadily declined since their founding.

That's what the 1987 source says, but the 1906 article says

> In days when vigilante justice was a major component of the Society, "not a few horse thieves were apprehended by the organization of the long name."

Technically 1 is not a few.

I just wanted to note how good the writing is on the first sign-up list when it was just 13 blokes in a local tavern.

> The great number of horses stolen from amongst us and in our vicinity is truly alarming, and calls for the attention of every well-disposed Citizen. It is evident that there has been, and probably will continue, a combination of Villains through the northern states to carry into effect this malignant design, and their frequent escape from the hand of justice stimulates them to that atrocious practice. And as that kind of property is most liable to be carried out of our knowledge, it requires the utmost exertion of every good member of society, to baffle and suppress depredations of this kind...

I do understand that it sounds fancy to us because of the old language, it was probably how normal people spoke back then. But man it’s still quite artful and epic the way they express such a mundane thing.

Growing up I got a glimpse into the dying days of the English pub, where it really was a living room where people went in the evenings to be social. Normal everyday people quickly became artists with words. Perhaps that is what we lost when tvs made everyone start staying home and what we may never get back now when everyone at home am just states into their own private screen?

The English pub was a critical “third space”, but modern life (especially car centric infrastructure) has made them go away.

To be fair, I think the Internet has filled that role. It has many fundamental issues, but in many ways it has been much more effective than the pub at connecting people and offering support.

It’s easy to romanticize those local communities, but as much as they offered some social support, they were also rough and ignorant spaces. They ruthlessly suppressed any behavior or personalities veering a bit outside the norm, and kept everyone down at their level.

Sometimes having a limited choice of friends can be good, but it can also be terrible. They killed innovation, diversity and ambition in people. Not to mention the alcoholism and the pull away from spending quality time with family.

The Shirky principle would suggest they need to steal horses to ensure their continued existence.

If I were a horse thief, I would definitely try to join to avoid suspicion

I know this was meant as a joke, but I can't resist the temptation to point out that this is a subtle misinterpretation of the Shirky principle (which I'm sure you're probably already aware since this was probably meant as a joke :p ).

The Shirky principle doesn't necessarily say that companies will engage in malicious behaviour in this manner. It's mostly about how, consciously or not, they tend to focus on solutions that continually mitigate problems, but tend to ignore solutions that could forever eliminate those problems, thus ensuring that they remain relevant in the mitigation space rather than successfully eliminate the need for them to exist in the first place.

Since they haven't found a horse thief since around 1907 I suspect they are looking assiduously but also carefully not where horse thieves actually are, within 20 miles of their courthouse. Therefore dutifully meeting the shirky principle in its finest sense.

I work in a policy forming not-for-profit which was tendered a "no more policy" policy in 2011 and voted it down. I am sure that meets the definition for perpetual problem solving.

so glad it still exists. the point is the continuity itself. pity so few men ride horses anymore, but I can see how that happened, barns are feminine coded spaces now and it'd probably be like getting guys to do zumba. however, places need social fabrics and a way to connect. I live rurally and the closest thing here would be the volunteer firemen groups and masonic lodges in the area. it's important to have a way to share some dignity and recognition that isn't monopolized by the state. sure they can be exclusive, but the point was to make yourself worthy of welcome somewhere.

in my collections I have a ritual book for The Society of the Horseman's Word, which was a quasi-masonic fraternity for horsemen loosely based on one for ploughmen in 19th c. scotland and I thought about a fun reboot for it, but really there's nothing in it that regular masonry doesn't provide and imposing a constraint where guys need to be capable of anything outside their jobs these days (let alone, riding) is too much of a self-handicap. the other problem is do you really want to attract people who need what you're offering?

orgs like these are a social fabric that forms the quality of life we appreciate when we go into small towns and imagine how peaceful living there is. if there is something like it in your area, you should join one, as it's a way of providing stewardship for the places and ways of life people enjoy.

> barns are feminine coded spaces now

That all depends upon the barn*, now doesn't it? Eg, I don't recall there being many female rough stock riders.

> places need social fabrics and a way to connect

Around here we do that with voluntary associations. De Tocqueville mentions them approvingly in Democracy in America (1835), but for some reason this aspect of culture has swapped over the intervening centuries, and I find there are way more here in my corner of the Continent than in the Old Country.

> a constraint where guys need to be capable of anything outside their jobs

What's even the point of living without an avocation beyond your vocation?

* [I'd say over the last several decades I've only had to (mostly teasingly, and each time in a barn chock full of DQs) request that people please not female bond around me 2 or 3 times. And come to think of it, back when I was still single, having a social spot that had the opposite ratio to the one at work was not exactly a bad thing. Has Jilly Cooper ever written any books with a Zumba® setting?]

always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me to call the spectacle of falling off an animal riding per se. we've got ways to back them now, even if they are a bit european, but I admire the grit. :)

it's leisure and guys don't do a lot of that because it raises questions about how serious they are when they could be using that time to get ahead in their jobs. pleasure itself is effete and often only acceptable in these relationships if it's ambitious social climbing. most of these activities and organizations are going the way of other institutions, so this horse thief catcher one just sounded really nice.

getting calves to run patterns is also pretty masculine coded (~80% in 2024?); you'll have to tell me if it counts as riding per se? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZmzAXg-zQ

Anybody remember Malcolm Baldridge, Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration? He died when his horse fell on him during a calf-roping contest.

No; thanks! I had been aware of Earl Warren, however, who once became state governor by winning both D and R primaries, making a general election moot.

Lagniappe: https://cfdrodeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TMIL_RODEO_0...

See also the one hundred and eleven Livery Companies of the City of London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livery_company

Some of the Livery companies were already hundreds of years old before the United States even existed, let alone the Society in Dedham!

Hundreds? I've been to an abbey which has been around for more than 1'500 years...

(the next jump, to tens of thousands, will be difficult, as anything over ~5k is prehistoric)

Somehow this article reminds me of the Lemony Snicket novels.

False, red hooks is older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hook_Society_for_the_Appre...

Not clear how this Wikipedia article survived deletion, given that while the society seems to actually exist the subject is clearly not notable (memberships are sent without request or consent) and the article is plainly not NPOV and misleading, presumably written as a joke or as a proof-of-concept of an attack on Wikipedia.

This subject seems more notable than many of the video game or movie articles that Wikipedia editors seems to love to spend large amounts of time on.

You can read the discussion yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio... The result was "no consensus". That in was 2006, before current policies were well-established, and at this point I think it would be a clear keep.

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