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DUCKING
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DUCKING and CUCKING STOOLS, chairs used for the See also:punishment of scolds, witches and prostitutes in bygone days. The two have been generally confused, but are quite distinct. The earlier, the Cucking-stool2 or See also:Stool of Repentance, is of very See also:ancient date, and was used by the See also:Saxons, who called it the Scealding or Scolding Stool. It is mentioned in Domesday See also:Book as in use at See also:Chester, being called cathedra stercoris, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the See also:foot-See also:note below. Seated on this stool the woman, her See also:head and feet See also:bare, was publicly exposed- at her See also:door or paraded through the streets amidst the jeers of the See also:crowd. The Cucking-stool was used for both sexes, and was specially the punishment for dishonest brewers and bakers. Its use in the See also:case of scolding See also:women declined on the introduction in the See also:middle of the 16th See also:century of the See also:Scold's Bridle (see See also:BRANKS), and it disappears on the introduction a little later of the Ducking-stool. The earliest See also:record of the use of this latter is towards the beginning of the 17th century. It was a-strongly made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of See also:oak) in which the See also:culprit was seated, an See also:iron See also:band being placed around her so that she should not fall out during her See also:immersion. Usually the See also:chair was fastened to a See also:long wooden See also:beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a See also:pond or See also:river. Sometimes, however, the Ducking-stool wasnot a fixture but was mounted on a pair of wooden wheels so that it could be wheeled through the streets, and at the river-edge was hung by a See also:chain from the end of a beam. In sentencing a woman the magistrates ordered the number of duckings she should have. Yet another type of Ducking-stool was called a tumbrel. It was a chair on two wheels with two long shafts fixed to the axles. This was pushed into the pond and then the shafts released, thus tipping the chair up backwards. Sometimes the punishment proved fatal, the unfortunate woman dying of See also:shock. Ducking-stools were used in See also:England as See also:late as the beginning of the 19th century. The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at See also:Plymouth (1808); of Jenny Pipes, " a notorious scold " (1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of See also:Leominster. In the last case the See also:water in the pond was so See also:low that the victim was merely wheeled See also:round the See also:town in the chair. See W. See also:Andrews, Old See also:Time Punishments (See also:Hull, 1890) ; A. M. See also:Earle, Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (See also:Chicago, 1896) ; W. C. See also:Hazlitt, Faiths and See also:Folklore (See also:London, 1905) ; Llewellynn Jewitt in The Reliquary, vols. i. and ii. (186o–1862) ; See also:Gentleman's See also:Magazine for 1732. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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