1. A threatening demand made without justification; EXTORTION. Cf. FEEMAIL; GRAYMAIL; GREENMAIL(1), (2). [Cases: Extortion and Threats 25.
1. C.J.S. Threats and Unlawful Communications §§ 2–20.] — blackmail, vb.
“[Blackmail is] a certain rate of Money, Corn, Cattle, or other consideration, paid to some inhabiting upon, or near the borders, being persons of name and power, allied with … known Robbers … to be thereby by them freed and protected from the danger of those Spoil-takers.” Thomas Blount, Nomo-Lexicon: A Law-Dictionary (1670).
“ ‘Black-mail’ (black rent) was anciently used to indicate ‘rents reserved in work, grain or baser money’ (i.e. baser than silver). It was also employed at one time to refer to ‘a tribute formerly exacted in the north of England and in Scotland by freebooting chiefs for protection from pillage.’ [Quoting American College Dictionary (1948).] Such practice was extortion, in the literal sense, and hence ‘blackmail’ is frequently used to indicate statutory extortion or sometimes an extorsive threat. And the federal statute forbidding the sending of an extorsive threat by mail has been referred to as the ‘blackmail statute.’ ” Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law 451 (3d ed. 1982).
