Cucking stool
From Free net encyclopedia
Ducking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for the punishment of scolds, witches, prostitutes and dishonest tradesmen.
Contents |
Cucking-stools
The cucking-stool or Stool of Repentance, is of very ancient date, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the scealding or scolding stool. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as in use at Chester, being called cathedra stercoris, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the footnote below. Tied to this stool the woman, her head and feet bare, was publicly exposed at her door or paraded through the streets amidst the jeers of the crowd.
The term cucking-stool is known to have been in use from about 1215. It means literally "defecation chair", as it is derived from the old verb cukken, "to defecate", rather than, as popularly believed, from the word cuckold. Commodes or chamber pots were often used as cucking-stools, hence the name.
The cucking-stool could be used for both sexes - indeed, unruly married couples were occasionally bound back-to-back and ducked; it was especially the punishment for dishonest brewers and bakers. Its use in the case of scolding women declined on the introduction in the middle of the 16th century of the Scold's Bridle. It appears to have still been in use as late as the mid-18th century, with Poor Robin's Almanack of 1746 observing:
- Now, if one cucking-stool was for each scold,
- Some towns, I fear, would not their numbers hold.
Ducking-stools
The ducking-stool was a strongly made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the culprit was seated, an iron band being placed around her so that she should not fall out during her immersion. The earliest record of the use of such is towards the beginning of the 17th century, with the term being first attested in English in 1597. It was used both in Europe and in the English colonies of North America.
Usually the chair was fastened to a long wooden beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a pond or river. Sometimes, however, the ducking-stool was not 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 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 shock. Ducking-stools were used in England as late as the beginning of the 19th century.
The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); of Jenny Pipes, a notorious scold (1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of Leominster. In the last case the water in the pond was so low that the victim was merely wheeled round the town in the chair.
Fiction
Ducking stools have appeared occasionally in film and television, such as in Babes in Toyland, and Doctor Who (The Highlanders, Episode 3).
References
- W. Andrews, Old Time Punishments (Hull, 1890)
- A. M. Earle, Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (Chicago, 1896)
- W. C. Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore (London, 1905)
- Llewellynn Jewitt in The Reliquary, vols. i. and ii. (1860-1862)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain.