![]() ![]() Sometimes the punishment proved fatal and the subject died. This was pushed into the pond and then the shafts released, thus tipping the chair up backwards. It was a chair on two wheels with two long shafts fixed to the axles. Yet another type of ducking-stool was called a tumbrel. In sentencing a woman the magistrates ordered the number of duckings she should have. 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. Usually, the chair was fastened to a long wooden beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a pond or river. ![]() It was used both in Europe and in the English colonies of North America. 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. The ducking-stool was a strongly-made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the offender was seated, an iron band being placed around them so that they should not fall out during their immersion. Some towns, I fear, would not their numbers hold.ĭucking-stools Ducking or cucking stool, a historical punishment for the common scold, 1896 Now, if one cucking-stool was for each scold, The cucking-stool appears to have still been in use as late as the mid-18th century, with Poor Robin's Almanack of 1746 observing: It has been suggested this reflected developing strains in gender relations, but it may simply be a result of the differential survival of records. īoth seem to have become more common in the second half of the sixteenth century. Greek κακός/κακή ), rather than, as popularly believed, from the word cuckold. It means literally "defecation chair", as its name is derived from the old verb cukken and has not quite been rid of in many parts of the English speaking world as "to cack" (defecate) (akin to Dutch kakken and Latin cacāre cf. The term cucking-stool is known to have been in use from about 1215. ![]() 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. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as being in use at Chester, being called cathedra stercoris, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the footnote below. The cucking-stool, or Stool of Repentance, has a long history, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the scealding or scolding stool. Cucking-stools Ī ballad, dating from about 1615, called "The Cucking of a Scold", illustrates the punishment inflicted to women whose behaviour made them be identified as "a Scold": Whereas a cucking-stool could be and was used for humiliation with or without dunking the person in water, the name "ducking-stool" came to be used more specifically for those cucking-stools on an oscillating plank which were used to duck the person into water. Written records for the name "ducking stool" appear from 1597, and a statement in 1769 relates that "ducking-stool" is a corruption of the term "cucking-stool". The term "cucking-stool" is older, with written records dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Stocks or pillories were similarly used for the punishment of men or women by humiliation. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence "ducking" stool. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could be dragged around the parish. Most were simply chairs into which the offender could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. They were usually of local manufacture with no standard design. A common alternative was a court order to recite one’s crimes or sins after Mass or in the market place on market day or informal action such as a Skimmington ride. The stools were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation. They were instruments of public humiliation and censure both primarily for the offense of scolding or backbiting and less often for sexual offences like bearing an illegitimate child or prostitution. The cucking-stool was a form of wymen pine, or "women's punishment", as referred to in Langland's Piers Plowman (1378). Illustration from a Pearson Scott Foresman text book Punishing a woman accused of excessive arguing in the ducking stoolĭucking stools or cucking stools were chairs formerly used for punishment of disorderly women, scolds, and dishonest tradesmen in medieval Europe and elsewhere at later times.
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