title: Sniper

text: Despite its success at the trials, the rifle was not adopted by the British Army. However, the Whitworth Rifle Company was able to sell the weapon to the French army, and also to the Confederacy during the American Civil War, where both the Union and Confederate armies employed sharpshooters. The most notable incident was during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, where on 9 May 1864, Union General John Sedgwick was killed by a Confederate Whitworth sharpshooter at a range of about after saying the enemy "couldn't hit an elephant at this distance".


title: Sniper

text: During the Boer War the latest breech-loading rifled guns with magazines and smokeless powder were used by both sides. The British were equipped with the Lee–Metford rifle, while the Boers had received the latest Mauser rifles from Germany. In the open terrain of South Africa the marksmen were a crucial component to the outcome of the battle.


title: Sniper

text: The first British sniper unit began life as the Lovat Scouts, a Scottish Highland regiment formed in 1899, that earned high praise during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The unit was formed by Lord Lovat and reported to an American, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the British Army Chief of Scouts under Lord Roberts. Burnham fittingly described these scouts as "half wolf and half jackrabbit.". Just like their Boer scout opponents, these scouts were well practised in the arts of marksmanship, field craft, map reading, observation, and military tactics. They were skilled woodsmen and practitioners of discretion: "He who shoots and runs away, lives to shoot another day." They were also the first known military unit to wear a ghillie suit.


title: Sniper

text: Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard said of them that "keener men never lived", and that "Burnham was the greatest scout of our time." Burnham distinguished himself in wars in South Africa, Rhodesia, and in Arizona fighting the Apaches, and his definitive work, "Scouting on Two Continents," provides a dramatic and enlightening picture of what a sniper was at the time and how he operated.


title: Sniper

text: After the war, this regiment went on to formally become the first official sniper unit, then better known as "sharpshooters".


title: Sniper

text: During World War I, snipers appeared as deadly sharpshooters in the trenches. At the start of the war, only Imperial Germany had troops that were issued scoped sniper rifles. Although sharpshooters existed on all sides, the Germans specially equipped some of their soldiers with scoped rifles that could pick off enemy soldiers showing their heads out of their trench. At first the French and British believed such hits to be coincidental hits, until the German scoped rifles were discovered. During World War I, the German army received a reputation for the deadliness and efficiency of its snipers, partly because of the high-quality lenses that German industry could manufacture.


title: Sniper

text: During the First World War, the static movement of trench warfare and a need for protection from snipers created a requirement for loopholes both for discharging firearms and for observation. Often a steel plate was used with a "key hole", which had a rotating piece to cover the loophole when not in use.


title: Sniper

text: Soon the British army began to train their own snipers in specialized sniper schools. Major Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard was given formal permission to begin sniper training in 1915, and founded the First Army School of Sniping, Observation, and Scouting at Linghem in France in 1916. Starting with a first class of only six, in time he was able to lecture to large numbers of soldiers from different Allied nations, proudly proclaiming in a letter that his school was turning out snipers at three times the rate of any such other school in the world.


title: Sniper

text: He also devised a metal-armoured double loophole that would protect the sniper observer from enemy fire. The front loophole was fixed, but the rear was housed in a metal shutter sliding in grooves. Only when the two loopholes were lined up—a one-to-twenty chance—could an enemy shoot between them. Another innovation was the use of a dummy head to find the location of an enemy sniper. The papier-mâché figures were painted to resemble soldiers to draw sniper fire. Some were equipped with rubber surgical tubing so the dummy could "smoke" a cigarette and thus appear realistic. Holes punched in the dummy by enemy sniper bullets then could be used for triangulation purposes to determine the position of the enemy sniper, who could then be attacked with artillery fire. He developed many of the modern techniques in sniping, including the use of spotting scopes and working in pairs, and using Kim's Game to train observational skills.


title: Sniper

text: In 1920, he wrote his account of his war time activities in his book "", to which reference is still made by modern authors regarding the subject.


title: Sniper

text: The main sniper rifles used during the First World War were the German Mauser Gewehr 98; the British Pattern 1914 Enfield and Lee–Enfield SMLE Mk III, the Canadian Ross rifle, the American M1903 Springfield, the Italian M1891 Carcano, and the Russian M1891 Mosin–Nagant


title: Sniper

text: During the interbellum, most nations dropped their specialized sniper units, notably the Germans. Effectiveness and dangers of snipers once again came to the fore during the Spanish Civil War. The only nation that had specially trained sniper units during the 1930s was the Soviet Union. Soviet snipers were trained in their skills as marksmen, in using the terrain to hide themselves from the enemy and the ability to work alongside regular forces. This made the Soviet sniper training focus more on "normal" combat situations than those of other nations.


title: Sniper

text: Snipers reappeared as important factors on the battlefield from the first campaign of World War II. During Germany's 1940 campaigns, lone, well-hidden French and British snipers were able to halt the German advance for a considerable amount of time. For example, during the pursuit to Dunkirk, British snipers were able to significantly delay the German infantry's advance. This prompted the British once again to increase training of specialized sniper units. Apart from marksmanship, British snipers were trained to blend in with the environment, often by using special camouflage clothing for concealment. However, because the British Army offered sniper training exclusively to officers and non-commissioned officers, the resulting small number of trained snipers in combat units considerably reduced their overall effectiveness.


title: Sniper

text: During the Winter War, Finnish snipers took a heavy toll of the invading Red Army. Simo Häyhä is credited with 505 confirmed kills, most with the Finnish version of the iron-sighted bolt-action Mosin–Nagant.


title: Sniper

text: One of the best known battles involving snipers, and the battle that made the Germans reinstate their specialized sniper training, was the Battle of Stalingrad. Their defensive position inside a city filled with rubble meant that Soviet snipers were able to inflict significant casualties on the Wehrmacht troops. Because of the nature of fighting in city rubble, snipers were very hard to spot and seriously dented the morale of the German attackers. The best known of these snipers was probably Vasily Zaytsev, featured in the novel "War of the Rats" and the subsequent film "Enemy at the Gates".


title: Sniper

text: German "Scharfschützen" were prepared before the war, equipped with Karabiner 98 and later Gewehr 43 rifles, but there were often not enough of these weapons available, and as such some were armed with captured scoped Mosin–Nagant 1891/30, SVT, Czech Mauser rifles or scoped Gewehr 98 from WW1. The Wehrmacht re-established its sniper training in 1942, drastically increasing the number of snipers per unit with the creation of an additional 31 sniper training companies by 1944. German snipers were at the time the only snipers in the world issued with purpose-manufactured sniping ammunition, known as the 'effect-firing' sS round. The 'effect-firing' sS round featured an extra carefully measured propellant charge and seated a heavy 12.8 gram (198 gr) full-metal-jacketed boat-tail projectile of match-grade build quality, lacking usual features such as a seating ring to improve the already high ballistic coefficient of .584 (G1) further. For aiming optics German snipers used the Zeiss Zielvier 4x (ZF39) telescopic sight which had bullet drop compensation in 50 m increments for ranges from 100 m up to 800 m or in some variations from 100 m up to 1000 m or 1200 m. There were ZF42, Zielfernrohr 43 (ZF 4), Zeiss Zielsechs 6x, Zeiss Zielacht 8x and other telescopic sights by various manufacturers like the Ajack 4x, Hensoldt Dialytan 4x and Kahles Heliavier 4x with similar features employed on German sniper rifles. Several different mountings produced by various manufacturers were used for mounting aiming optics to the rifles. In February 1945 the Zielgerät 1229 active infrared aiming device was issued for night sniping with the StG 44 assault rifle.


title: Sniper

text: A total of 428,335 individuals received Red Army sniper training, including Soviet and non-Soviet partisans, with 9,534 receiving the sniping 'higher qualification'. During World War ІІ, two six-month training courses for women alone trained nearly 55,000 snipers, of which more than two thousand later served in the army. On average there was at least one sniper in an infantry platoon and one in every reconnaissance platoon, including in tank and even artillery units. Some used the PTRD anti-tank rifle with an adapted scope as an early example of an anti-materiel rifle.


title: Sniper

text: In the United States Armed Forces, sniper training was only very elementary and was mainly concerned with being able to hit targets over long distances. Snipers were required to be able to hit a body over 400 meters away, and a head over 200 meters away. There was almost no instruction in blending into the environment. Sniper training varied from place to place, resulting in wide variation in the qualities of snipers. The main reason the US did not extend sniper training beyond long-range shooting was the limited deployment of US soldiers until the Normandy Invasion. During the campaigns in North Africa and Italy, most fighting occurred in arid and mountainous regions where the potential for concealment was limited, in contrast to Western and Central Europe.


title: Sniper

text: The U.S. Army's lack of familiarity with sniping tactics proved disastrous in Normandy and the campaign in Western Europe where they encountered well trained German snipers. In Normandy, German snipers remained hidden in the dense vegetation and were able to encircle American units, firing at them from all sides. The American and British forces were surprised by how near the German snipers could approach in safety and attack them, as well as by their ability to hit targets at up to 1,000m. A notable mistake made by inexperienced American soldiers was to lie down and wait when targeted by German snipers, allowing the snipers to pick them off one after another. German snipers often infiltrated Allied lines and sometimes when the front-lines moved, they continued to fight from their sniping positions, refusing to surrender until their rations and munitions were exhausted.


title: Sniper

text: Those tactics were also a consequence of changes in German enlistment. After several years of war and heavy losses on the Eastern Front, the German army was forced to rely more heavily on enlisting teenage soldiers. Due to lack of training in more complex group tactics, and thanks to rifle training provided by the Hitlerjugend, those soldiers were often used as autonomous left-behind snipers. While an experienced sniper would take a few lethal shots and retreat to a safer position, those young boys, due both to a disregard for their own safety and to lack of tactical experience would frequently remain in a concealed position and fight until they ran out of ammunition or were killed or wounded. While this tactic generally ended in the demise of the sniper, giving rise to the nickname "Suicide Boys" that was given to those soldiers, this irrational behavior proved quite disruptive to the Allied forces' progress. After World War II, many elements of German sniper training and doctrine were copied by other countries.


title: Sniper

text: In the Pacific War, the Empire of Japan trained snipers. In the jungles of Asia and the Pacific Islands, snipers posed a serious threat to U.S., British, and Commonwealth troops. Japanese snipers were specially trained to use the environment to conceal themselves. Japanese snipers used foliage on their uniforms and dug well-concealed hide-outs that were often connected with small trenches. There was no need for long range accuracy because most combat in the jungle took place within a few hundred meters. Japanese snipers were known for their patience and ability to remain hidden for long periods. They almost never left their carefully camouflaged hiding spots. This meant that whenever a sniper was in the area, the location of the sniper could be determined after the sniper had fired a few shots. The Allies used their own snipers in the Pacific, notably the U.S. Marines, who used M1903 Springfield rifles.


title: Sniper

text: Common sniper rifles used during the Second World War include: the Soviet M1891/30 Mosin–Nagant and, to a lesser extent, the SVT-40; the German Mauser Karabiner 98k and Gewehr 43; the British Lee–Enfield No. 4 and Pattern 1914 Enfield; the Japanese Arisaka 97; the American M1903A4 Springfield and M1C Garand. The Italians trained few snipers and supplied them with a scoped Carcano Model 1891.


title: Sniper

text: Military sniper training aims to teach a high degree of proficiency in camouflage and concealment, stalking, observation and map reading as well as precision marksmanship under various operational conditions. Trainees typically shoot thousands of rounds over a number of weeks, while learning these core skills.


title: Sniper

text: Snipers are trained to squeeze the trigger straight back with the ball of their finger, to avoid jerking the gun sideways. The most accurate position is prone, with a sandbag supporting the stock, and the stock's cheek-piece against the cheek. In the field, a bipod can be used instead. Sometimes a sling is wrapped around the weak arm (or both) to reduce stock movement. Some doctrines train a sniper to breathe deeply before shooting, then hold their lungs empty while they line up and take their shot. Other doctrines assert that exhausting the lungs results in an accelerated heart rate and suggest only a partial exhale before firing. Some go further, teaching their snipers to shoot between heartbeats to minimize barrel motion.


title: Sniper

text: The key to sniping is accuracy, which applies to both the weapon and the shooter. The weapon should be able to consistently place shots within tight tolerances. The sniper in turn must use the weapon to accurately place shots under varying conditions.


title: Sniper

text: A sniper must have the ability to accurately estimate the various factors that influence a bullet's trajectory and point of impact, such as range to the target, wind direction, wind velocity, altitude and elevation of the sniper, and the target and ambient temperature. Mistakes in estimation compound over distance and can decrease lethality or cause a shot to miss completely.


title: Sniper

text: Snipers zero their weapons at a target range or in the field. This is the process of adjusting the scope so that the bullets' points-of-impact are at the point-of-aim (centre of scope or scope's cross-hairs) for a specific distance. A rifle and scope should retain its zero as long as possible under all conditions to reduce the need to re-zero during missions.


title: Sniper

text: A sandbag can serve as a useful platform for shooting a sniper rifle, although any soft surface such as a rucksack will steady a rifle and contribute to consistency. In particular, bipods help when firing from a prone position, and enable the firing position to be sustained for an extended period of time. Many police and military sniper rifles come equipped with an adjustable bipod. Makeshift bipods known as shooting sticks can be constructed from items such as tree branches or ski poles. Some military snipers use three-legged shooting sticks.


title: Sniper

text: Range and accuracy vary depending on the cartridge and specific ammunition types that are used. Typical ranges for common battle field cartridges are as follows:


title: Sniper

text: Servicemen volunteer for the rigorous sniper training and are accepted on the basis of their aptitude, physical ability, marksmanship, patience and mental stability. Military snipers may be further trained as forward air controllers (FACs) to direct air strikes or forward observers (FOs) to direct artillery or mortar fire.


title: Sniper

text: From 2011, the Russian armed forces have run newly developed sniper courses in military district training centres. In place of the Soviet practice of mainly squad sharpshooters, which were often designated during initial training (and of whom only few become snipers per se), these new army snipers are trained intensively for three months (for conscripts) or longer (for contract soldiers). The training program includes theory and practice of countersniper engagements, artillery spotting, and coordination of air support. The first instructors are the graduates of the Solnechnogorsk sniper training centre.


title: Sniper

text: The method of sniper deployment, according to the Ministry of Defence, is likely to be one three-platoon company at the brigade level, with one of the platoons acting independently and the other two supporting the battalions as needed.


title: Sniper

text: The range to the target is measured or estimated as precisely as conditions permit and correct range estimation becomes absolutely critical at long ranges, because a bullet travels with a curved trajectory and the sniper must compensate for this by aiming higher at longer distances. If the exact distance is not known the sniper may compensate incorrectly and the bullet path may be too high or low. As an example, for a typical military sniping cartridge such as 7.62×51mm NATO (.308 Winchester) M118 Special Ball round this difference (or "drop") from is . This means that if the sniper incorrectly estimated the distance as 700 meters when the target was in fact 800 meters away, the bullet will be 200 millimeters lower than expected by the time it reaches the target.


title: Sniper

text: Laser rangefinders may be used, and range estimation is often the job of both parties in a team. One useful method of range finding without a laser rangefinder is comparing the height of the target (or nearby objects) to their size on the mil dot scope, or taking a known distance and using some sort of measure (utility poles, fence posts) to determine the additional distance. The average human head is in width, average human shoulders are apart and the average distance from a person's pelvis to the top of their head is .


title: Sniper

text: To determine the range to a target without a laser rangefinder, the sniper may use the mil dot reticle on a scope to accurately find the range. Mil dots are used like a slide rule to measure the height of a target, and if the height is known, the range can be as well. The height of the target (in yards) ×1000, divided by the height of the target (in mils), gives the range in yards. This is only in general, however, as both scope magnification (7×, 40×) and mil dot spacing change. The USMC standard is that 1 mil (that is, 1 milliradian) equals 3.438 MOA (minute of arc, or, equivalently, minute of angle), while the US Army standard is 3.6 MOA, chosen so as to give a diameter of 1 yard at a distance of 1,000 yards (or equivalently, a diameter of 1 meter at a range of 1 kilometer.) Many commercial manufacturers use 3.5, splitting the difference, since it is easier to work with.


title: Sniper

text: It is important to note that angular mil ("mil") is only an approximation of a milliradian and different organizations use different approximations.


title: Sniper

text: At longer ranges, bullet drop plays a significant role in targeting. The effect can be estimated from a chart, which may be memorized or taped to the rifle, although some scopes come with Bullet Drop Compensator (BDC) systems that only require the range be dialed in. These are tuned to both a specific class of rifle and specific ammunition. Every bullet type and load will have different ballistics. .308 Federal 175 grain (11.3 g) BTHP match shoots at . Zeroed at , a 16.2 MOA adjustment would have to be made to hit a target at . If the same bullet was shot with 168 grain (10.9 g), a 17.1 MOA adjustment would be necessary.


title: Sniper

text: Shooting uphill or downhill is confusing for many because gravity does not act perpendicular to the direction the bullet is traveling. Thus, gravity must be divided into its component vectors. Only the fraction of gravity equal to the cosine of the angle of fire with respect to the horizon affects the rate of fall of the bullet, with the remainder adding or subtracting negligible velocity to the bullet along its trajectory. To find the correct zero, the sniper multiplies the actual distance to the range by this fraction and aims as if the target were that distance away. For example, a sniper who observes a target 500 meters away at a 45-degree angle downhill would multiply the range by the cosine of 45 degrees, which is 0.707. The resulting distance will be 353 meters. This number is equal to the horizontal distance to the target. All other values, such as windage, time-to-target, impact velocity, and energy will be calculated based on the actual range of 500 meters. Recently, a small device known as a cosine indicator has been developed. This device is clamped to the tubular body of the telescopic sight, and gives an indicative readout in numerical form as the rifle is aimed up or down at the target. This is translated into a figure used to compute the horizontal range to the target.


title: Sniper

text: Windage plays a significant role, with the effect increasing with wind speed or the distance of the shot. The slant of visible convections near the ground can be used to estimate crosswinds, and correct the point of aim. All adjustments for range, wind, and elevation can be performed by aiming off the target, called "holding over" or Kentucky windage. Alternatively, the scope can be adjusted so that the point of aim is changed to compensate for these factors, sometimes referred to as "dialing in". The shooter must remember to return the scope to zeroed position. Adjusting the scope allows for more accurate shots, because the cross-hairs can be aligned with the target more accurately, but the sniper must know exactly what differences the changes will have on the point-of-impact at each target range.


title: Sniper

text: For moving targets, the point-of-aim is ahead of the target in the direction of movement. Known as "leading" the target, the amount of "lead" depends on the speed and angle of the target's movement as well as the distance to the target. For this technique, holding over is the preferred method. Anticipating the behavior of the target is necessary to accurately place the shot.


title: Sniper

text: The term "hide site" refers to a covered and concealed position from which a sniper and his team can conduct surveillance or fire at targets. A good hide conceals and camouflages the sniper effectively, provides cover from enemy fire and allows a wide view of the surrounding area.


title: Sniper

text: The main purpose of ghillie suits and hide sites is to break up the outline of a person with a rifle.


title: Sniper

text: Many snipers use ghillie suits to hide and stay hidden. Ghillie suits vary according to the terrain into which the sniper wishes to blend. For example, in dry grassland the sniper will typically wear a ghillie suit covered in dead grass.


title: Sniper

text: Shot placement, which is where on the body the sniper is aiming, varies with the type of sniper. Military snipers, who generally do not shoot at targets at less than , usually attempt body shots, aiming at the chest. These shots depend on tissue damage, organ trauma, and blood loss to kill the target. Body shots are used because the chest is a larger target.


title: Sniper

text: Police snipers, who generally shoot at much shorter distances, may attempt a more precise shot at particular parts of body or particular devices: in one incident in 2007 in Marseille, a GIPN sniper took a shot from at the pistol of a police officer threatening to commit suicide, destroying the weapon and preventing the police officer from killing himself.


title: Sniper

text: In a high-risk or hostage-taking situation where a suspect is imminently threatening to kill a hostage, police snipers may take head shots to ensure an instant kill. The snipers aim for the medulla oblongata to sever the spine from the brain. While this is believed to prevent the target from reflexively firing their weapon, there is evidence that any brain-hit is sufficient.


title: Sniper

text: Snipers are trained for the detection, identification, and location of a targeted soldier in sufficient detail to permit the effective employment of lethal and non-lethal means. Since most kills in modern warfare are by other crew-served weapons, reconnaissance is one of the most effective uses of snipers. They use their aerobic conditioning, infiltration skills and excellent long-distance observation equipment (optical scopes) and tactics to approach and observe the enemy. In this role, their rules of engagement typically let them shoot at high-value targets of opportunity, such as enemy officers.


title: Sniper

text: The targets may be personnel or high-value materiel (military equipment and weapons) but most often they target the most important enemy personnel such as officers or specialists (e.g. communications operators) so as to cause maximum disruption to enemy operations. Other personnel they might target include those who pose an immediate threat to the sniper, like dog handlers, who are often employed in a search for snipers. A sniper identifies officers by their appearance and behavior such as symbols of rank, talking to radio operators, sitting as a passenger in a car, sitting in a car with a large radio antenna, having military servants, binoculars/map cases or talking and moving position more frequently. If possible, snipers shoot in descending order by rank, or if rank is unavailable, they shoot to disrupt communications.


title: Sniper

text: Some rifles, such as the Denel NTW-20 and Vidhwansak, are designed for a purely anti-materiel (AM) role, e.g. shooting turbine disks of parked aircraft, missile guidance packages, expensive optics, and the bearings, tubes or wave guides of radar sets. A sniper equipped with the correct rifle can target radar dishes, water containers, the engines of vehicles, and any number of other targets. Other rifles, such as the .50 caliber rifles produced by Barrett and McMillan, are not designed exclusively as AM rifles, but are often employed in such a way, providing the range and power needed for AM applications in a lightweight package compared to most traditional AM rifles. Other calibers, such as the .408 Cheyenne Tactical and the .338 Lapua Magnum, are designed to be capable of limited AM application, but are ideally suited as long range anti-personnel rounds.


title: Sniper

text: Often in situations with multiple targets, snipers use relocation. After firing a few shots from a certain position, snipers move unseen to another location before the enemy can determine where they are and mount a counter-attack. Snipers will frequently use this tactic to their advantage, creating an atmosphere of chaos and confusion. In other, rarer situations, relocation is used to eliminate the factor of wind.


title: Sniper

text: As sniper rifles are often extremely powerful and consequently loud, it is common for snipers to use a technique known as sound masking. When employed by a highly skilled marksman, this tactic can be used as a substitute for a noise suppressor. Very loud sounds in the environment, such as artillery shells air bursting or claps of thunder, can often mask the sound of the shot. This technique is frequently used in clandestine operations, infiltration tactics, and guerrilla warfare.


title: Sniper

text: Due to the surprise nature of sniper fire, high lethality of aimed shots and frustration at the inability to locate and counterattack snipers, sniper tactics have a significant negative effect on morale. Extensive use of sniper tactics can be used to induce constant stress and fear in opposing forces, making them afraid to move about or leave cover. In many ways, the psychological impact imposed by snipers is quite similar to those of landmines, booby-traps, and IEDs (constant threat, high "per event" lethality, inability to strike back).


title: Sniper

text: Historically, captured snipers are often summarily executed. This happened during World War I and World War II; for example the second Biscari Massacre when 36 suspected snipers were lined up and shot on 14 July 1943.


title: Sniper

text: As a result, if a sniper is in imminent danger of capture, he may discard any items (sniper rifle, laser rangefinder, etc.) which might indicate his status as a sniper. The risk of captured snipers being summarily executed is explicitly referred to in Chapter 6 of US Army doctrine document FM 3-060.11 entitled "SNIPER AND COUNTERSNIPER TACTICS, TECHNIQUES, AND PROCEDURES":


title: Sniper

text: The negative reputation and perception of snipers can be traced back to the American Revolution, when American "Marksmen" intentionally targeted British officers, an act considered uncivilized by the British Army at the time (this reputation was cemented during the Battle of Saratoga, when Benedict Arnold allegedly ordered his marksmen to target British General Simon Fraser, an act that won the battle and French support). The British side used specially selected sharpshooters as well, often German mercenaries.


title: Sniper

text: To demoralize enemy troops, snipers can follow predictable patterns. During the 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution, the revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro always killed the foremost man in a group of President Batista's soldiers. Realizing this, none of Batista's men would walk first, as it was suicidal. This effectively decreased the army's willingness to search for rebel bases in the forests and mountains. An alternative approach to this psychological process is to kill the second man in the row, leading to the psychological effect of nobody wanting to follow the "leader".


title: Sniper

text: The occurrence of sniper warfare has led to the evolution of many counter-sniper tactics in modern military strategies. These aim to reduce the damage caused by a sniper to an army, which can often be harmful to both combat capabilities and morale.


title: Sniper

text: The risk of damage to a chain of command can be reduced by removing or concealing features that would otherwise indicate an officer's rank. Modern armies tend to avoid saluting officers in the field, and eliminate rank insignia on battle dress uniforms (BDU). Officers can seek maximum cover before revealing themselves as good candidates for elimination through actions such as reading maps or using radios.


title: Sniper

text: Friendly snipers can be used to hunt the enemy sniper. Besides direct observation, defending forces can use other techniques. These include calculating the trajectory of a bullet by triangulation. Traditionally, triangulation of a sniper's position was done manually, though radar-based technology has recently become available. Once located, the defenders can attempt to approach the sniper from cover and overwhelm them. The United States military is funding a project known as RedOwl (Robot Enhanced Detection Outpost With Lasers), which uses laser and acoustic sensors to determine the exact direction from which a sniper round has been fired.


title: Sniper

text: The more rounds fired by a sniper, the greater the chance the target has of locating him. Thus, attempts to draw fire are often made, sometimes by offering a helmet slightly out of concealment, a tactic successfully employed in the Winter War by the Finns known as "Kylmä-Kalle" (Cold Charlie). They used a shop mannequin or other doll dressed as a tempting target, such as an officer. The doll was then presented as if it were a real man sloppily covering himself. Usually, Soviet snipers were unable to resist the temptation of an apparently easy kill. Once the angle where the bullet came from was determined, a large caliber gun, such as a Lahti L-39 "Norsupyssy" ("Elephant rifle") anti-tank rifle was fired at the sniper to kill him.


title: Sniper

text: Other tactics include directing artillery or mortar fire onto suspected sniper positions, the use of smoke screens, placing tripwire-operated munitions, mines, or other booby-traps near suspected sniper positions. Even dummy trip-wires can be placed to hamper sniper movement. If anti-personnel mines are unavailable, it is possible to improvise booby-traps by connecting trip-wires to hand grenades, smoke grenades or flares. Though these may not kill a sniper, they will reveal their location. Booby-trap devices can be placed near likely sniper hides, or along the probable routes to and from positions. Knowledge of sniper field-craft will assist in this task.


title: Sniper

text: The use of sniping (in the sense of shooting at relatively long range from a concealed position) to murder came to public attention in a number of sensational U.S. criminal cases, including the Austin sniper incident of 1966 (Charles Whitman), the John F. Kennedy assassination (Lee Harvey Oswald), and the Beltway sniper attacks of late 2002 (Lee Boyd Malvo). However, these incidents usually do not involve the range or skill of military snipers; in all three cases the perpetrators had U.S. military training, but in other specialties. News reports will often (inaccurately) use the term sniper to describe anyone shooting with a rifle at another person.


title: Sniper

text: Sniping has been used in asymmetric warfare situations, for example in the Northern Ireland Troubles, where in 1972, the bloodiest year of the conflict, the majority of the soldiers killed were shot by concealed IRA riflemen. There were some instances in the early 1990s of British soldiers and RUC personnel being shot with .50 caliber Barrett rifles by sniper teams collectively known as the South Armagh sniper.


title: Sniper

text: The sniper is particularly suited to combat environments where one side is at a disadvantage. A careful sniping strategy can use a few individuals and resources to thwart the movement or other progress of a much better equipped or larger force. Sniping enables a few persons to instil terror in a much larger regular force – regardless of the size of the force the snipers are attached to. It is widely accepted that sniping, while effective in specific instances, is much more effective as a broadly deployed psychological attack or as a force-multiplier.


title: Sniper

text: Snipers are less likely to be treated mercifully than non-snipers if captured by the enemy. The rationale for this is that ordinary soldiers shoot at each other at 'equal opportunity' whilst snipers take their time in tracking and killing individual targets in a methodical fashion with a relatively low risk of retaliation.


title: Sniper

text: In 2003, the U.S.-led multinational coalition composed of primarily U.S. and UK troops occupied Iraq and attempted to establish a new government in the country. However, shortly after the initial invasion, violence against coalition forces and among various sectarian groups led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency and civil war between many Sunni and Shia Iraqis.


title: Sniper

text: Through to November 2005 the Army had attributed 28 of 2,100 U.S. deaths to enemy snipers. In 2006, it was claimed that one insurgent sniper, "Juba", had shot up to 37 American soldiers.


title: Sniper

text: Training materials obtained by U.S. intelligence had among its tips for shooting U.S. troops, "Killing doctors and chaplains is suggested as a means of psychological warfare.", suggesting that those casualties would demoralize entire units.


title: Sniper

text: Sniper activity was reported during the Arab Spring civil unrest in Libya in 2011, both from anti-governmental and pro-governmental supporters, and in Syria at least from pro-government forces.


title: Sniper

text: Even before firearms were available, soldiers such as archers were specially trained as elite marksmen.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Coherence is a 2013 American surreal science fiction psychological thriller film directed by James Ward Byrkit in his directorial debut. The film had its world debut on September 19, 2013, at Fantastic Fest and stars Emily Foxler as a woman who must deal with strange occurrences following the close passing of a comet.


title: Coherence (film)

text: On the night of Miller's Comet's passing, eight friends in Northern California reunite for a dinner party at the home of spouses Mike and Lee. One of the guests, Emily, hesitates over whether to accompany her boyfriend Kevin on an extended business trip to Vietnam. To the party-goers' consternation, their friend Amir brings Laurie, Kevin's ex-girlfriend and an inappropriately flirtatious woman.


title: Coherence (film)

text: During dinner, the conversation becomes strained by the animosity between Emily's close friend Beth and Laurie, compounded when Laurie antagonizes Emily by bringing up a ballet role she lost by waiting too long to decide.


title: Coherence (film)

text: As a power outage occurs, Mike and Lee bring candles and several boxes of different colored glow sticks to use for light. The friends each take a blue glow stick, then venture outside where they see the comet passing overhead. The entire neighborhood has gone dark except for one house that still has power. When they go back inside, they notice a broken glass no-one remembers damaging. Beth's husband Hugh and Amir decide to go to the lit-up house and ask to use their phone, as Hugh's brother insisted Hugh call him if "anything strange" were to happen.


title: Coherence (film)

text: When Hugh and Amir return, both have face wounds and are carrying a box which turns out to contain a ping-pong paddle and photographs of everyone, including one of Amir that could only have been taken that night, with numbers written on the backs. Hugh, deeply upset, reveals that he looked into the other house and saw a table set for a dinner party with eight places. The group realize the other house is an alternate version of the one they are in. Emily writes down the numbers from the box on a notepad, looking for a pattern, but cannot find one.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Hugh decides to write a note to leave at the other house, only for a man to approach the house and pin an exact copy of the note to their door before Hugh can go and place it on theirs. Emily, Kevin, Mike, and Laurie decide to go to the other house together, carrying the glow sticks for light. On the way there, they encounter a wandering group of exact doubles of them, carrying red glow sticks rather than blue, causing each group to flee back to their houses.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Hugh goes to his car to retrieve his physicist brother's book, which explains the concept of quantum decoherence. They speculate that the comet has created two split realities, one of which will collapse once the comet has passed. They surmise that an area of dense darkness outside in the darkened neighborhood will send anyone who passes through it to a different reality's house. They discuss how to deal with the other house. An agitated Mike drinks heavily and considers killing their doubles before the doubles can kill them. He eventually decides to blackmail the other house's Mike into staying away from the book via a note.


title: Coherence (film)

text: The group realizes that Hugh and Amir, in their midst, came from the other house. When the two take the box and leave, they soon return carrying blue glow sticks. They also explain that they found two notes at the other house, leading everyone to realize that the split created far more alternate realities than just two. Beth sees Laurie kissing Kevin in the hallway. Someone outside smashes Hugh's car window. Emily goes to her car to retrieve the ring Kevin gave her. Kevin approaches her and they talk, but Emily quickly realizes she is talking to Kevin from a different reality.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Emily returns to the others and they decide to create their own unique box to make sure they are all from the same reality. They recreate the box of photographs with numbers on the back (taken from die rolls) and include a randomly chosen object. After surveying the group, Emily finds that only Lee and Beth, both of whom stayed inside the house the entire time, originate from that house; that herself, Kevin and Laurie are from a different house; that Hugh and Amir are from a third reality after going out to make the phone call; and that Mike is from a fourth house after going out alone to attempt to blackmail himself. The situation deteriorates further when a note meant to blackmail Mike into keeping the others away from the book arrives, revealing an adulterous liaison between him and Beth. Another Mike breaks in and attempts to kill his double, terrifying the group.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Seeing Kevin comforts Laurie, Emily leaves the house. She looks into several alternate houses, finding many where the situation is even worse than the house she came from. She eventually comes across a house in which no one seems aware of the split and where this Emily is happy and secure in her relationship with Kevin. Emily smashes Hugh's car window to lure everyone out of the house, then ambushes this house's Emily and injects her with Beth's ketamine when she goes to get her ring out of her car. Emily takes her former self's place while Miller's Comet breaks apart overhead, but must subdue this house's Emily again when she crawls back into the house's bathroom. She steals the ring from her defeated self after losing her own in the altercation, then faints when returning to the living room.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Emily wakes the following day on the sofa, unable to find her double but with the rest of the party seeming none the wiser. Outside, she and Kevin talk lovingly and he gives her back her ring, which he had found lying on the bathroom floor. Kevin's cell phone rings and he notes that the call is curiously coming from Emily's number. Emily looks mutely down at the two rings she now possesses, and she and Kevin look expressionlessly at one another as he answers the phone.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit came up with the idea for "Coherence" after deciding that he wanted to test the idea of shooting a film "without a crew and without a script". He chose to shoot in his own home and developed the film's science fiction aspect out of necessity, as he wanted to "make a living room feel bigger than just a living room". While Byrkit did have a specific idea for how the film would unfold, he selected improvisational actors and gave them the basic outline of their characters, motivations, and major plot points.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit told an interviewer, "For about a year, all I did was make charts and maps and drew diagrams of houses, arrows pointing where everyone was going, trying to keep track of different iterations. Months and months of tracking fractured realities, looking up what actual scientists believe about the nature of reality—Schrödinger's cat and all that. It was research, but despite all the graphs and charts, I think our whole idea was that it has to be character-based. We want the logic of our internal rules to be sound, and we wanted it to be something people could watch 12 times and still discover a new layer."


title: Coherence (film)

text: The movie cuts to black at 0:02, 0:03, 0:05, 0:05, 0:07, 0:09, 0:19, 0:27, 0:32, 0:34, 1:06, 1:18, 1:22, and 1:23. The movie's director has said those cuts signify something but hasn't said what they signify. There was no cut to black around 0:16, which was the point of divergence between realities, although the house was plunged into darkness due to an electricity cut. There was no cut to black at 0:17 when the characters all switched from a house without a broken glass to a house with broken glass, and there was no cut to black at 0:46, when only Mike switched to a different reality.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit intentionally chose actors who did not know each other. He told an interviewer that, after working on blockbuster films (such as ""), "I come from the theater where I was trained to really just concentrate on story and character on a stage with actors and so I was craving getting rid of everything, getting rid of the crew; getting rid of the script, no special effects, no support, no money, no nothing, and just getting back to the purity of that, of a camera in your hand and some actress (actors?) that you trust and an idea."


title: Coherence (film)

text: When asked whether the actors were people whom Byrkit knew pretty well, he answered, "Yeah exactly. They were just friends that I knew I could just call up and say, 'Show up at my house in a couple days. I can't really tell you what we're doing, trust me I'm not going to kill you. It should be fun!' And they didn't know each other before they got to my house and so I had to pick people that seemed to be like they could be couples, seemed like they could be best friends and that I just knew were up to the task of jumping into it."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Interviewer Nell Minow confessed her reaction to the actors' relationships: "I just assumed that they all knew each other very well because they fell into the kinds of rhythms that old friends have." Byrkit replied, "That's just casting great people that could do that. Just five minutes after they arrived at my house they had to pretend to be married and lovers and best friends."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Reviewer Matt Prigge praised the choice of casting and their actions: "Byrkit ... focuses not on brainiacs, as in "Primer", but on smart but mostly under-informed NPR types, who know enough to slowly piece all this together but not enough that they don't usually descend into blabbering, shouting and drinking. Indeed, "Coherence" is largely improvised, with a game cast first believably under-reacting to some weird business with laughter and disbelief, then always maintaining a degree of levity (read: jokes and occasional put-downs) even when stuff has gotten real."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Ryan Lattanzio wrote, "Byrkit brought eight unwitting actors to his Santa Monica home, threw them a few red herrings and set them loose for five days knowing that the film could evolve organically, like great jazz, if he kept his players in the dark. But he and co-storywriter Alex Manugian weren't just making it up as they went along." Byrkit told him that his desire was "to strip down a film set to the bare minimum: getting rid of the script, getting rid of the crew."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit added, "... instead of a script I had my own 12-page treatment that I spent about a year working on. It outlined all of the twists and reveals, and character arcs and pieces of the puzzle that needed to happen scene-by-scene. But each day, instead of getting a script, the actors would get a page of notes for their individual character, whether it was a backstory or information about their motivations. They would come prepared for their character only. They had no idea what the other characters received, so each night there were completely real reactions, and surprises and responses. This was all in the pursuit of naturalistic performances. The goal was to get them listening to each other, and engaged in the mystery of it all."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Nicholas Brendon, an actor in the film, discussed the improvisational style of the dialogue with Mandatory journalist Fred Topel, who asked: "I understand the way "Coherence" was done was that everyone got notecards about their characters and the scenes. What was on your notecards?" Brendon replied, "I can't remember now, but every day we had five different things that we had to convey... but I do know that Jim [Byrkit], and then Alex [Manugian], the other writer, had to make sure that we were all on point. So it was just a matter of getting that information out. ... Since there was no script, I had no idea how it ended. ... When I saw the movie, I'm like, 'Oh shit, this is awesome!' ... To be quite honest with you, I never really knew what was going on fully until I saw the movie done."


title: Coherence (film)

text: An interviewer asked Byrkit, "Did you run into any unexpected problems in filming?" Byrkit admitted, "... you're constantly dealing with unexpected things. One night we tried to shoot outside and we had to make the whole thing look completely desolate and the power being off; that was the one night that we had another movie shooting on our street. So the whole street is completely ablaze with lights and hundreds of extras." Another team was shooting a Snickers commercial. "We would be right in the middle of the dramatic scenes and there would be another knock on the door that would just scare the hell out of everybody ..."


title: Coherence (film)

text: The original score was composed by Kristin Øhrn Dyrud. The song in the closing credits is "Galaxies", from the album "Year of Meteors" by Laura Veirs.


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit told an interviewer for "Spinning Platters", "Well, we came up with the premise in my living room, where the movie is shot. A couple of years ago we were trying to think about what a good low budget, or no budget, movie would be. And, since we didn't have any resources, I had to think of what we actually had. We had a camera. We had some actors who were pretty good, and we had a living room. So we had to find out how to make a living room feel like more than just a living room. And, that led to a whole "Twilight Zone" type story ... I was craving a more naturalistic type of dialogue, where people overlap and it's very messy, where people talk more like real humans talk. And so, we planned the story for a year, including the twists and turns and reversals and betrayals so that we had a really tight puzzle – almost like a funhouse that we knew we could lead the actors through."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Some reviewers have suggested that Byrkit was influenced by the eeriness of "The Twilight Zone" and/or the mind-challenging complexities of the science fiction film "Primer".


title: Coherence (film)

text: Byrkit answered one interviewer: ""Twilight Zone", for sure. "Primer" wasn't really an influence so much as it was a sign to us that maybe there was an audience for this kind of movie. The actual movie itself is so different than ours that it wasn't as much of an influence as, say, "Carnage" by Roman Polanski, or other non-sci-fi movies."


title: Coherence (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 88% based on 91 reviews. The site consensus says "A case study in less-is-more filmmaking, "Coherence" serves as a compelling low-budget calling card for debuting writer-director James Ward Byrkit." On Metacritic it has a score of 65% based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Coherence (film)

text: Much of the film's praise centered upon its cast, which Bloody Disgusting and "Fangoria" cited as a highlight. Film School Rejects gave "Coherence" a positive review, stating that the film's cast was "remarkably grounded for how complicated and bizarre the story is."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Dread Central commented on the film's themes and wrote, "What's frightening about the story is how willing the characters are to abandon the reality they know in favor of one that may be a little more appealing. Whether that's a byproduct of the comet and the rift it creates or caused by the characters undermining everyone else around them to get the life they really want is the fundamental idea of "Coherence" and what makes it so unsettling."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Clark Collis of "Entertainment Weekly" praised the film, granting it a B+ rating: "In an impressive big-screen debut from James Ward Byrkit, eight friends discover metaphysics on their menu when a passing comet creates a set of doppelgängers down the road, enjoying their own identical soiree. Byrkit makes the most of the claustrophobic one-house setting, ratcheting up the dread and paranoia as his characters make a string of seemingly reasonable but ultimately wrongheaded decisions. The star-free cast is great too, with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" vet Nicholas Brendon poking fun at himself by playing an actor who used to be on a TV show ... "Coherence" is a satisfying and chilling addition to the ever-growing pal-ocalypse subgenre. And really, you have to love a film that not only explains the concept of Schrödinger's cat but also includes a joke about it ("I'm allergic!").


title: Coherence (film)

text: Stephen Dalton of "The Hollywood Reporter" also enjoyed the film: "An ingenious micro-budget science-fiction nerve-jangler which takes place entirely at a suburban dinner party, "Coherence" is a testament to the power of smart ideas and strong ensemble acting over expensive visual pyrotechnics ... A group of eight friends gather for dinner ... Marital tensions and sexual secrets sizzle just below the surface, but relationship drama is soon overshadowed by metaphysical weirdness when a comet passes close to Earth, shutting down power supplies and phone connections ... It slowly becomes clear that the fabric of reality has been radically remixed by the comet's arrival. We are definitely not in Kansas any more ... Byrkit only gave his cast limited information about the narrative loops and swerves ahead, encouraging a semi-improvised naturalism that feels authentically tense."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-in-chief of Roger Ebert's website, gives the movie three stars and writes that the film "is proof that inventive filmmakers can do a lot with a little ... [but] none of the movie's technical or artistic shortcomings prove to be deal-breakers. Once "Coherence" delves into its premise, the viewer is bound to come down with a bad case of the creeps. This is a less-is-more science fiction-horror tale ... And it's genuinely more of a horror film than a suspense or "terror" film because, while there's some violence, the source of unease is philosophical."


title: Coherence (film)

text: Ryan Lattanzio of Indiewire praised the film's originality: ""Coherence" is not just smart science fiction: it's a triumph of crafty independent filmmaking, made with few resources and big ambition. Gotham-nominated debut director James Ward Byrkit stripped his vision down to the barest of bones to achieve a mind-shifting, metaphysical freakout about a dinner party gone cosmically awry. This film explodes with ideas, and it has that thing we always hope for at the movies: the element of surprise."


title: Coherence (film)

text: The reviewer for "Salon" was ambivalent: "After the fundamental problem of "Coherence" has become clear, or clear-ish – there's another dinner party, at that other house, that looks an awful lot like this one – the movie becomes slightly too much like an unfolding mathematical puzzle, although an ingenious one that reaches a chilling conclusion. Notes appear before they are written, the significance of those numbered photographs comes into focus through a series of neat twists, and while the characters are half-aware that their actions are being shaped by a space-time continuum whose cause-and-effect relationship has gone awry, that's not enough to stop them."


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: Robert Hendy-Freegard (born Robert Freegard, 1 March 1971) is a British convicted conman and impostor who masqueraded as an MI5 agent while working as a barman and car salesman. He is also known as David Hendy and David Clifton.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: Hendy-Freegard was born in Dronfield and started his career as a barman and car salesman. Hendy-Freegard met his victims on social occasions or as customers in the pub or car dealership where he worked. Having met the victims, he claimed to be an undercover agent, working for MI5, the Special Branch or for Scotland Yard. He applied pressure and psychological stress to his victims, claiming they were threatened with assassination by the IRA, to coerce them into following his demands.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: Having won his victims over, he coerced money out of them and pressured them to do his bidding, including cutting off contact with their family and friends; performing "loyalty tests"; and living alone in poor conditions. He seduced five women, claiming that he wanted to marry them. Initially some of the victims refused to cooperate with the police because he had warned them that police would be double agents or MI5 agents performing another "loyalty test".


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 1992, while working in The Swan, a pub in Newport, Shropshire, Freegard befriended two women, Sarah Smith and Maria Hendy, and a man, John Atkinson. All three were agriculture students at Harper Adams University in Edgmond. He told Atkinson that he was an MI5 undercover agent who was investigating an IRA cell in the college. He forced Atkinson to let himself be beaten up to prove his loyalty and to show that he was "hard enough". He also persuaded him to behave in a bizarre manner in college to prove his loyalty and to alienate him from friends. Hendy-Freegard then told Atkinson his cover was blown and both of them had to go undercover. He persuaded Atkinson to tell Smith, who at the time was Atkinson's girlfriend, and Hendy that he had liver cancer and persuaded them to accompany them in a "farewell tour" all over England.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: Later he let them in on "the story". He told them to sever all contact with their families because they were in danger just through being associated with him. They moved to Sheffield and gave him all their money. Maria Hendy became his lover and gave birth to his two daughters; she was later beaten up by him losing one of her teeth. During their relationship he changed his surname by deed poll to Hendy-Freegard.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: Next, in 1995, Hendy-Freegard had an affair with a recently-married personal assistant, Elizabeth Bartholomew (née Richardson). He told her to take up loans, supposedly to settle her debts following her divorce, and then made her sleep on park benches.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 1996, Hendy-Freegard told a woman in Newcastle, Lesley Gardner, that he needed money to buy off IRA killers, who had been released after the Good Friday agreement. She gave him £16,000 over six years. He also sold her car and again kept the money.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 2000, Hendy-Freegard convinced a female company director, Renata Kister, that MI5 had told him to watch someone in the Sheffield car dealership where he was working and persuaded her to buy a better car. He sold her original car, kept the money and persuaded her to take out a £15,000 loan for him. He also asked Kister for a room for Sarah Smith because she was supposedly in a witness protection programme. He told her that Smith could not speak English, and told Smith that for security reasons she had to pretend that she could not understand anything said to her, so that the two women would not speak to each other.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 2000, Hendy-Freegard met a lawyer, Caroline Cowper, who was a customer in the car dealership in Chiswick, West London. He helped her change her car, pocketed the difference, asked for more, persuaded her to give more money for a leasing business they would run together and stole £14,000 from her building society account. They later became lovers and went on holidays all over the world. They then became engaged before her family intervened. When the leasing car did not materialize, he told her that the Polish mafia had taken it.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 2002, Hendy-Freegard seduced an American child psychologist, Kimberley Adams, with stories of how he had infiltrated a criminal network and killed a criminal who had threatened to expose him. He said he wanted to marry her, on condition that she would also become an agent and cut off the contact with her family.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 2002, Scotland Yard and the FBI organized a sting operation with the help of Kimberley Adams' parent. First, the FBI bugged the phone of the parents. Adams' mother told Hendy-Freegard she would give him $10,000 but only in person. Hendy-Freegard met the mother in Heathrow Airport where police apprehended him.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: On 23 June 2005, after an eight-month trial, Blackfriars Crown Court convicted Hendy-Freegard on two counts of kidnapping (John Atkinson and Sarah Smith), 10 of theft and eight of deception. On 6 September 2005, he was given a life sentence.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: On 25 April 2007, it was reported that Hendy-Freegard had appealed against his kidnapping convictions. The Court of Appeal judgment played an important role in defining the modern offence of kidnap, holding that inducing a person to go from one place to another by fraud does not constitute kidnapping. His life sentence was revoked but he still faced nine years for the other offences. He was released in May 2009.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: In 2011, using the name David Hendy, he met and seduced a British woman named Sandra Clifton through an online dating site. He claimed to work in the media industry selling advertising space to large companies, and often hinted at the amount of money he had, convincing Sandra of his wealth with expensive gifts and trips. It has been alleged that as their relationship developed over the course of the next few years, he gradually manipulated Sandra and her family members through deception, coercive control and mental abuse, progressively isolating Sandra from her family and friends. Hendy-Freegard has denied these claims. Sandra Clifton later ceased contact with her children Sophie and Jake, and with their father Mark Clifton.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: It has been reported that Hendy-Freegard and Sandra Clifton have been working in the beagle breeding and showing business, and that he uses the name David Clifton. According to the Netflix documentary he lived and worked in France where he traded luxury dogs; however, more recent media suggests he lived in Reading, Berkshire.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: On 26 August 2022, a British man, who the French media identified as Hendy-Freegard, caused severe injuries to two Gendarmes after a Veterinary Health inspection of his dog breeding activities in Vidaillat, France.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: On 2 September 2022, after being on the run for eight days, he was apprehended by the Police of Dilbeek in Groot-Bijgaarden (near Brussels) following the issuance of a European arrest warrant. He was travelling alone. On 3 September, he appeared before a Belgian magistrate and was detained pending his extradition to France. On 15 September, the Brussels council court authorised Hendy-Freegard's extradition to France. On 19 September, the prosecutor's office confirmed that he had appealed against the extradition. Hendy-Freegard was handed over to the French authorities on 17 October. He appeared before judges in Limoges on 20 October, when he was indicted for the alleged attempted murder of 'persons holding public authority' and held in pre-trial detention at the Limoges remand centre.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: "The Spy Who Stole My Life", a television documentary about Hendy-Freegard, was broadcast on Channel Five on 7 September 2005.


title: Robert Hendy-Freegard

text: He was the subject of the January 2022 Netflix documentary mini-series "". In July 2022, Netflix UK streamed the feature film "Rogue Agent", based on his life.


title: Allegory

text: As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.


title: Allegory

text: Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts.


title: Allegory

text: First attested in English in 1382, the word "allegory" comes from Latin "allegoria", the latinisation of the Greek ἀλληγορία ("allegoría"), "veiled language, figurative", which in turn comes from both ἄλλος ("allos"), "another, different" and ἀγορεύω ("agoreuo"), "to harangue, to speak in the assembly", which originates from ἀγορά ("agora"), "assembly".


title: Allegory

text: Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", a spectrum that ranges from what he termed the "naive allegory" of the likes of "The Faerie Queene", to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature.


title: Allegory

text: In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and of the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the author has selected the allegory first, and the details merely flesh it out.


title: Allegory

text: The origins of allegory can be traced at least back to Homer in his "quasi-allegorical" use of personifications of, e.g., Terror (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos) at Il. 115 f. The title of "first allegorist," however, is usually awarded to whoever was the earliest to put forth allegorical interpretations of Homer. This approach leads to two possible answers: Theagenes of Rhegium (whom Porphyry calls the "first allegorist," Porph. Quaest. Hom. 1.240.14-241.12 Schrad.) or Pherecydes of Syros, both of whom are presumed to be active in the 6th century B.C.E., though Pherecydes is earlier and as he is often presumed to be the first writer of prose. The debate is complex, since it demands we observe the distinction between two often conflated uses of the Greek verb "allēgoreīn," which can mean both "to speak allegorically" and "to interpret allegorically."


title: Allegory

text: In the case of "interpreting allegorically," Theagenes appears to be our earliest example. Presumably in response to proto-philosophical moral critiques of Homer (e.g. Xenophanes fr. 11 Diels-Kranz ), Theagenes proposed symbolic interpretations whereby the Gods of the Iliad actually stood for physical elements. So, Hephestus represents Fire, for instance (for which see fr. A2 in Diels-Kranz ). Some scholars, however, argue that Pherecydes cosmogonic writings anticipated Theagenes allegorical work, illustrated especially by his early placement of Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods, which is thought to be a reinterpretation of the titan Kronos, from more traditional genealogies.


title: Allegory

text: In classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Plato's "The Republic" (Book VII) and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa (Livy ii. 32).


title: Allegory

text: Among the best-known examples of allegory, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, forms a part of his larger work "The Republic." In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall (514a–b). The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world (514c–515a). According to the allegory, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality, until one of them finds his way into the outside world where he sees the actual objects that produced the shadows. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, but they do not believe him and vehemently resist his efforts to free them so they can see for themselves (516e–518a). This allegory is, on a basic level, about a philosopher who upon finding greater knowledge outside the cave of human understanding, seeks to share it as is his duty, and the foolishness of those who would ignore him because they think themselves educated enough.


title: Allegory

text: In Late Antiquity Martianus Capella organized all the information a fifth-century upper-class male needed to know into an allegory of the wedding of Mercury and "Philologia," with the seven liberal arts the young man needed to know as guests. Also the Neoplatonic philosophy developed a type of allegorical reading of Homer and Plato.


title: Allegory

text: Other early allegories are found in the Hebrew Bible, such as the extended metaphor in Psalm 80 of the Vine and its impressive spread and growth, representing Israel's conquest and peopling of the Promised Land. Also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israel's exile to Babylon.


title: Allegory

text: Allegorical interpretation of the Bible was a common early Christian practice and continues. For example, the recently re-discovered Fourth Commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia has a comment by its English translator: "The principal characteristic of Fortunatianus’ exegesis is a figurative approach, relying on a set of concepts associated with key terms in order to create an allegorical decoding of the text."


title: Allegory

text: Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, while infusing it with a spiritual context. Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a "reality" underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances. Thus, the Papal Bull "Unam Sanctam" (1302) presents themes of the unity of Christendom with the pope as its head in which the allegorical details of the metaphors are adduced as facts on which is based a demonstration with the vocabulary of logic: ""Therefore" of this one and only Church there is one body and one head—not two heads as if it were a monster... If, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they "necessarily" confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ." This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition and example of the Bible.


title: Allegory

text: In the late 15th century, the enigmatic "Hypnerotomachia", with its elaborate woodcut illustrations, shows the influence of themed pageants and masques on contemporary allegorical representation, as humanist dialectic conveyed them.


title: Allegory

text: The denial of medieval allegory as found in the 12th-century works of Hugh of St Victor and Edward Topsell's "Historie of Foure-footed Beastes" (London, 1607, 1653) and its replacement in the study of nature with methods of categorisation and mathematics by such figures as naturalist John Ray and the astronomer Galileo is thought to mark the beginnings of early modern science.


title: Allegory

text: Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. Examples of allegory in popular culture that may or may not have been intended include the works of Bertolt Brecht, and even some works of science fiction and fantasy, such as "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C. S. Lewis.


title: Allegory

text: The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newton's head is another famous allegory. It simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale.


title: Allegory

text: While allegoresis may make discovery of allegory in any work, not every resonant work of modern fiction is allegorical, and some are clearly not intended to be viewed this way. According to Henry Littlefield's 1964 article, L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", may be readily understood as a plot-driven fantasy narrative in an extended fable with talking animals and broadly sketched characters, intended to discuss the politics of the time. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that "A fairy tale is not an allegory."


title: Allegory

text: J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is another example of a well-known work mistakenly perceived as allegorical, as the author himself once stated, "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."


title: Allegory

text: Tolkien specifically resented the suggestion that the book's One Ring, which gives overwhelming power to those possessing it, was intended as an allegory of nuclear weapons. He noted that, had that been his intention, the book would not have ended with the Ring being destroyed but rather with an arms race in which various powers would try to obtain such a Ring for themselves. Then Tolkien went on to outline an alternative plot for "Lord of The Rings", as it would have been written had such an allegory been intended, and which would have made the book into a dystopia. While all this does not mean Tolkien's works may not be treated as having allegorical themes, especially when reinterpreted through postmodern sensibilities, it at least suggests that none were conscious in his writings. This further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention.


title: Allegory

text: Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.


title: Allegory

text: Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximate chronological order:


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main local political machine of the Democratic Party, and played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It typically controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan after the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854, and used its patronage resources to build a loyal, well-rewarded core of district and precinct leaders; after 1850 the vast majority were Irish Catholics due to mass immigration from Ireland during and after the Irish Famine.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The Tammany Society emerged as the center of Democratic-Republican Party politics in the city in the early 19th century. After 1854, the Society expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city's rapidly expanding immigrant community, which functioned as its base of political capital. The business community appreciated its readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through regulatory and legislative mazes to facilitate rapid economic growth.


title: Tammany Hall

text: By 1872, Tammany had an Irish Catholic "boss", and in 1928 a Tammany hero, New York Governor Al Smith, won the Democratic presidential nomination. However, Tammany Hall also served as an engine for graft and political corruption, perhaps most infamously under William M. "Boss" Tweed in the mid-19th century. The Tammany Hall ward boss or ward heeler, as wards were the city's smallest political units from 1786 to 1938, served as the local vote gatherer and provider of patronage.


title: Tammany Hall

text: By the 1880s, Tammany was building local clubs that appealed to social activists from the ethnic middle class. In quiet times the machine had the advantage of a core of solid supporters and usually exercised control of politics and policymaking in Manhattan; it also played a major role in the state legislature in Albany.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Charles Murphy was the quiet but highly effective boss of Tammany from 1902 to 1924. "Big Tim" Sullivan was the Tammany leader in the Bowery, and the machine's spokesman in the state legislature. In the early twentieth century Murphy and Sullivan promoted Tammany as a reformed agency dedicated to the interests of the working class. The new image deflected attacks and built up a following among the emerging ethnic middle class. In the process Robert F. Wagner became a powerful United States Senator, and Al Smith served four terms as governor and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall's influence waned from 1930 to 1945 when it engaged in a losing battle with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the state's governor (1929–1932) and later U.S. President (1933–1945). In 1932, Mayor Jimmy Walker was forced from office when his bribery was exposed. Roosevelt stripped Tammany of federal patronage. Republican Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor on a Fusion ticket and became the first anti-Tammany mayor to be re-elected. A brief resurgence in Tammany power in the 1950s under the leadership of Carmine DeSapio was met with Democratic Party opposition led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and the New York Committee for Democratic Voters. By the mid-1960s Tammany Hall ceased to exist.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The Tammany Society was founded in New York on May 12, 1789, originally as a branch of a wider network of Tammany Societies, the first of which had been formed in Philadelphia in 1772. The society was originally developed as a club for "pure Americans". The name "Tammany" comes from Tamanend, a Native American leader of the Lenape. The society adopted many Native American words and also their customs, going so far as to call their meeting hall a wigwam.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The first Grand Sachem, as the leader was titled, was William Mooney, an upholsterer of Nassau Street. Although Mooney claimed the top role in the early organization, it was a wealthy merchant and philanthropist named John Pintard who created the society's constitution and declared its mission as "[a] political institution founded on a strong republican basis whose democratic principles will serve in some measure to correct the aristocracy of our city." Pintard also established the various Native American titles of the society.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The Society had the political backing of the Clinton family in this era, whereas the Schuyler family backed the Hamiltonian Federalists, and the Livingstons eventually sided with the anti-federalists and the Society. The Society assisted the federal government in procuring a peace treaty with the Creek Indians of Georgia and Florida at the request of George Washington in 1790 and also hosted Edmond-Charles Genêt, representative of the New French Republic after the French Revolution toppled the old regime, in 1793.


title: Tammany Hall

text: By 1798, the society's activities had grown increasingly political. High-ranking Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr saw Tammany Hall as an opportunity to counter Alexander Hamilton's Society of the Cincinnati. Eventually Tammany emerged as the center of Democratic-Republican Party politics in the city. Burr used Tammany Hall as a campaign asset during the election of 1800, in which he acted as Democratic-Republican campaign manager. Some historians believe that without Tammany, President John Adams might have won New York State's electoral votes and won reelection.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Early cases of political corruption involving Tammany Hall came to light during the group's feud with local politician Dewitt Clinton. The feud began in 1802 after Clinton accused Aaron Burr of being a traitor to the Democratic-Republican Party. Clinton's uncle, George Clinton, was jealous of Burr's achievements and positions. However, George was too old to compete with young Aaron Burr, and so he left it to his nephew. One of Burr's political cohorts and the author of Burr's biography was a businessman, a newspaper editor, and a sachem of the Society named Matthew L. Davis. Other Burr operatives included William P. Van Ness and John Swartwout, the latter of whom dueled with De Witt Clinton in 1802 in New Jersey.


title: Tammany Hall

text: In 1803, Clinton left the United States Senate and became Mayor of New York City. As mayor, Clinton enforced a spoils system and appointed his family and partisans to positions in the city's local government. Tammany Hall soon realized its influence over the local political scene was no match for that of Clinton, in part because Burr's support among New York City's residents greatly faded after he shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Tammany continued to support him for a time, but eventually pressure from the public persuaded the organization to no longer affiliate themselves with Burr.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Matthew Davis would go on to refine the Society as a political machine, beginning in 1805. The Society, with Davis's guidance, received a state charter as a charitable organization, organized the General Committee of Tammany Hall, and used the General Committee to decide leadership within the Democratic-Republican party in New York City from that point forward. In December 1805, Dewitt Clinton reached out to Burr's supporters to gain enough support to resist the influence of the powerful Livingston family. The Livingstons, led by former New York City mayor Edward Livingston, backed New York Governor Morgan Lewis, who presented a significant challenge to Clinton. The Tammany Hall sachems agreed to meet with Clinton in secret, on February 20, 1806, and agreed to back him, on the condition that the Clintons would once again acknowledge Aaron Burr as a Democratic-Republican and stop using "Burrism" as a reason to object to their ideas. The Clintons readily agreed to these conditions, but did not intend to honor them. When the Sachems caught wind of this, the feud between Tammany Hall and Clinton resumed.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall became a locally organized machine dedicated to stopping Clinton and Federalists from rising to power in New York. However, local Democratic-Republicans began to turn against Tammany Hall. From 1806 to 1809 public opinion forced the local Common Council to crack down on Tammany Hall.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The resulting investigations found that a number of Tammany officials were guilty of embezzlement and illegal activity. For example, one official, Benjamin Romaine was found guilty of using his power to acquire land without payment and was ultimately removed from his office as City Comptroller despite the Council being controlled by Democratic-Republicans.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Following the disclosures, the Federalists won control of the state legislature and the Democratic-Republican Party maintained a slim majority of the local government in New York City. Matthew Davis convinced other sachems to join him in a public relations stunt that provided income for the Society. The shallow graves of some Revolutionary War soldiers who died in British prison ships were located in Wallabout Bay (near the Brooklyn Navy Yard). Davis announced that the Society was going to provide proper burials for these soldiers with a monument dedicated to their memory on nearby land owned by a fellow sachem.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The remains were, in fact, reburied. The Society led a flotilla, on April 13, 1808, in thirteen boats, to Brooklyn, with each boat carrying a symbolic coffin. A dedication ceremony was held at Wallabout Bay and the state voted to provide the Society $1,000 to build a monument. The Society pocketed the money and the monument was never built. However, Tammany Hall did not learn their lesson, and instead of fixing the problem of corruption, Wortman, one of the chief powers at the time, created a committee, consisting of one member from each ward, that would investigate and report in general meetings who were friends or enemies.


title: Tammany Hall

text: During 1809–1810, the feud between Tammany Hall and the Clintonites intensified, as each party continued attacking each other. One of the Clintonites, James Cheetham, wrote extensively about Tammany and its corrupt activities, using his position as State Printer and publishing his work in the "American Citizen" newspaper"." Tammany Hall did not take lightly to these activities and managed to remove Cheetham from his position as State Printer. At the same time, Clinton attempted to cooperate with Tammany Hall in order to create a state dominated by Democratic-Republicans. In an attempt to persuade Tammany sachems, he pulled his support for Cheetham, who was his protégé at the time. Cheetham's loss of Clinton's support angered him, and he responded by releasing details of Tammany and Clinton's attempts at cooperating to control the state. On September 18, 1810, James Cheetham died after an attack that was possibly Tammany-related.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Between the years 1809 and 1815, Tammany Hall slowly revived itself by accepting immigrants and by secretly building a new wigwam to hold meetings whenever new Sachems were named. The Democratic-Republican Committee, a new committee which consisted of the most influential local Democratic-Republicans, would now name the new Sachems as well.


title: Tammany Hall

text: When Dewitt Clinton decided to run for president in 1811, Tammany Hall immediately accused Clinton of treason to his party, as well as attempting to create a family aristocracy. Even though New York State voted for Clinton the following year, Democratic-Republicans could not help but see Clinton's actions as being exactly what Tammany had accused them of. With this, most Democratic-Republicans in New York City turned away from Clinton.


title: Tammany Hall

text: When Tammany Hall positioned itself to support the War of 1812 and to support the Embargo Act, many others who supported the war joined Tammany Hall. In fact, during this time, because of its success in establishing political opinion, Tammany Hall was able to grow stronger and even gained support from Federalist members who supported the war.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The Native American titles of the Society were disused during and after the War of 1812 in response to attacks from Native Americans on White Americans. During this time we see Tammany Hall's earliest application of its most notable technique--turning support away from opposing parties and rewarding newly joined members. This was the case for Federalists who joined the Society.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall managed to gain power, as well as reduce Clinton and his followers to just a small fraction. In 1815, Tammany Hall grand sachem John Ferguson defeated Dewitt Clinton and was elected mayor. However, in 1817, Clinton, with his success on the Erie Canal project, gained so much popularity that, despite his weak position after the War and Tammany's immense efforts, he once again became Governor of New York and Tammany Hall fell again.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Another factor leading to Clinton's popularity was his patronage of immigrants. The origins of Tammany Hall were based on representing "pure" or "native" Americans. This meant that the Hall dismissed immigrants such as the Irish and Germans, although the Germans were more politically averse. In April 24, 1817 discontent with this treatment led to a huge riot during a Tammany general committee session. Until his death in 1828, Clinton would remain Governor of New York, with the exception of the two-year period of 1823–1824, and Tammany Hall's influence waned.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Martin Van Buren and his Albany Regency soon began controlling the policy of Tammany Hall. This included pushing for the state referendum that eventually granted the right to vote in New York State to all free white men in 1821. After voting rights were expanded, Tammany Hall could further increase its political power. Tammany Hall soon began to accept Irish immigrants as members and eventually became dependent on them to maintain viability as a political force.


title: Tammany Hall

text: During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Tammany Hall leaders met with Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson and agreed to endorse him after he promised to give them control over the allocation of some federal jobs. After he was elected president, Jackson fulfilled his promise. After 1829, Tammany Hall became the city affiliate of the Democratic Party, controlling most of the New York City elections afterwards.


title: Tammany Hall

text: In the 1830s the Loco-Focos, an anti-monopoly and pro-labor faction of the Democratic Party, became Tammany's main rival for votes by appealing to workingmen. However, Tammany's political opponent remained the Whigs. During the 1834 New York City mayoral governor election, the first city election in which the popular vote elected the mayor, both Tammany Hall and the Whig party, from their headquarters at the Masonic Hall, battled in the streets for votes and protected polling locations in their respective regions from known opposition voters. During the 1838 state election for governor, the rival Whig party imported voters from Philadelphia, paying $22 a head for votes in addition to paying for votes at their polling places. Tammany Hall operatives continued their practice of paying prisoners of the almshouses for votes and also paying for votes at their polling places.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The Tammany Hall "ward boss" served as the local vote gatherer and provider of patronage. New York City used the designation "ward" for its smallest political units from 1686–1938. The 1686 Dongan Charter divided the city into six wards and created a Common Council which consisted of an alderman and an assistant alderman elected from each ward. In 1821, the Common Council's authority was expanded so it would also elect the city's mayor, who had previously been appointed by the state government. In 1834, the state constitution was amended to require the city's mayor to be elected by direct popular vote.


title: Tammany Hall

text: In 1834 Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence, a pro-Tammany Democrat, would become the first mayor ever elected by popular vote in the city's history.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, the Society expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city's ever-expanding immigrant community, which functioned as a base of political capital. During the 1840s, hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine and Tammany saw its power grow greatly.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall's electoral base lay predominantly with New York's burgeoning immigrant constituency, which often exchanged political support for Tammany Hall's patronage. In pre-New Deal America, the extralegal services that Tammany and other urban political machines provided often served as a rudimentary public welfare system. At first, in the latter 1810s, immigrants were not allowed membership in Tammany Hall. However, after protests by Irish militants in 1817, and the invasion of several of their offices, Tammany Hall realized the potential influence Irish immigrants would have in the city. By the 1820s, Tammany Hall was accepting Irish immigrants as members of the group. German immigrants were also present in large numbers in the city at this time, but did not actively seek to participate in city politics.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Irish immigrants became even more influential during the mid 1840s to early 1850s. With the Great Famine in Ireland, by 1850, more than 130,000 immigrants from Ireland lived in New York City. Since the newly arrived immigrants were in deep poverty, Tammany Hall provided them with employment, shelter, and even citizenship sometimes. For example, the group gave referrals to men looking for work and legal aid to those who needed it. Tammany Hall would also provide food and financial aid to families with sick or injured breadwinners. In an example of their involvement in the lives of citizens, in the course of one day, Tammany figure George Washington Plunkitt assisted the victims of a house fire; secured the release of six drunks by speaking on their behalf to a judge; paid the rent of a poor family to prevent their eviction and gave them money for food; secured employment for four individuals; attended the funerals of two of his constituents (one Italian, the other Jewish); attended a Bar Mitzvah; and attended the wedding of a Jewish couple from his ward.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall took full advantage of the burgeoning numbers of Irish immigrants to gather more votes. By 1855, 34 percent of New York City's voter population was composed of Irish immigrants, and many Irish men came to dominate Tammany Hall.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Tammany Hall also served as a social integrator for immigrants by familiarizing them with American society and its political institutions and by helping them become naturalized citizens. One example was the naturalization process organized by William M. Tweed. Under Tweed's regime, "naturalization committees" were established. These committees were made up primarily of Tammany politicians and employees, and their duties consisted of filling out paperwork, providing witnesses, and lending immigrants money for the fees required to become citizens. Judges and other city officials were bribed and otherwise compelled to go along with the workings of these committees. In exchange for all these benefits, immigrants assured Tammany Hall they would vote for their candidates. By 1854, the support Tammany Hall received from immigrants would firmly establish the organization as the leader of New York City's political scene. With the election of Fernando Wood, the first person to be supported by the Tammany Hall machine, as mayor in 1854, Tammany Hall would proceed to dominate the New York City political arena until Fiorello La Guardia's mayoralty after the election of 1933.


title: Tammany Hall

text: After Fernando Wood's losing reelection run for U.S. Congress in 1842, he left politics for a while to work on his shipping business. A power vacuum of sorts existed through the 1840s for Tammany Hall, which became preoccupied with fights between political gangs fighting over turf. These gangs included the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys, Mike Walsh's Spartan Association, the Roach Guards, the Plug Uglies, the Wide-Awakes, and Captain Isaiah Rynders' Empire Club. Rynders was the leader of Tammany's Sixth Ward and a member of the General Committee who was also said to have been responsible for coordinating all political-related gang activity. Many of these leaders coordinated their activities from saloons, which became a target of prohibitionists and reformers.


title: Tammany Hall

text: At the start of the 1850s, the city economy began to pick up and Tammany members would profit. The City Council of New York during these years would be known as the most corrupt up to this time. The new City Council of 1852 swept in Tammany politicians to replace the outgoing Whig ones, who did little with their power.


title: Tammany Hall

text: The new council was made up of two sets of 20 members, a twenty-member Board of Aldermen and a twenty-member Board of Assistant Aldermen. This new council would be known as the Forty Thieves. Each Alderman had the power to appoint police (including precinct officers) and license saloons within his district. Together, the Aldermen possessed the power to grant franchises for streetcar lines and ferries. Each Alderman also sat as judge in criminal courts, determining who sat for juries and choosing which cases came to trial. On paper, these aldermen received no pay. A number of real estate deals followed with suspicious transaction amounts, including a purchase of a pauper's burial ground on Ward's Island and the sale of city property occupying Gansevoort Market near the western end of 14th Street to Reuben Lovejoy, an associate of James B. Taylor, a friend of many of the Aldermen. Other deals included expensive fireworks displays and bribes for ferry and railroad operations (Jacob Sharp for the Wall Street Ferry and various applicants for the Third Avenue railroad). Aldermen would also resort to creating strike legislation to obtain quick cash: a spurious bill would be introduced that would obviously financially harm someone, who would then complain to legislators. These legislators would then kill the bill in committee for a fee. As the press became aware of the Forty Thieves tactics, a reform movement instigated for a change in the city charter in June 1853 so that city work and supply contracts were awarded to the lowest bidder, franchises were awarded to the highest bidder, and bribery was punished harshly.


title: Tammany Hall

text: Fernando Wood attempted several small business ventures in the city during the 1830s while simultaneously increasing his involvement with Tammany Hall. These early business attempts failed, but by 1836, at the age of 24, he became a member of the Society and became known for resolving the dispute between the Loco-Focos and the conservatives of the Hall. At the age of 28, in 1840, Wood was put up by Tammany Hall for a U.S. congressional seat, which he won.