Ducking stool - WikiHQ

thumb|Illustration from a [[Scott Foresman|Pearson Scott Foresman text book]]

thumb|right|Punishing a woman accused of excessive arguing in the ducking stoolDucking 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. The ducking-stool was a form of , or "women's punishment", as referred to in Langland's Piers Plowman (1378). They were instruments of public humiliation and censure both primarily for the offence of scolding or backbiting and less often for sexual offences like bearing an illegitimate child or prostitution.

The stools were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation. 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. They were usually of local manufacture with no standard design. Most were simply chairs into which the offender could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could be dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence "ducking" stool. Stocks or pillories were similarly used for the punishment of men or women by humiliation.

The term "cucking-stool" is older, with written records dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. 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". 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.

Cucking-stools

A 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":

The cucking-stool, or Stool of Repentance, has a long history, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the ' or scolding stool. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as being in use at Chester, being called ', 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.

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 and the subject died. The ducking stools were first used for this purpose but ducking was later inflicted without the chair. In this instance the subject's right thumb was bound to her left big toe. A rope was tied around the waist of the accused and she was thrown into a river or deep pond. If she floated, it was deemed that she was in league with the devil, rejecting the baptismal water. If she sank, she was "cleared. And dead".

Notable examples

Surviving examples

The tumbrel of a ducking stool is in the crypt of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick. There is also a ducking chair in Canterbury, where the High Street meets the River Stour.

A surviving ducking stool is on public display outside the Criminal Museum (Kriminalmuseum) in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a well-preserved medieval town in Bavaria, Germany.

thumb|17th Century ducking stool at [[Leominster, England; last used in 1809]]

A complete ducking stool is on public display in Leominster Priory, Herefordshire, with its most recent known use being the ducking of Jenny Pipes in 1809. A woman named Sarah Leeke was placed into it in 1817, but the river's water level was too low to duck her.

Early mentions

There is a reference from about 1378 to a ducking stool as ("women's punishment").

In film

A type of ducking stool can be seen briefly in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

In the 1944 Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, an American soldier stopping over at the town hall in fictional Chillingbourne (a village near Canterbury), is puzzled by an antique piece of furniture that he spots; the local magistrate informs him that it is a ducking stool.

In the Laurel and Hardy feature film Babes in Toyland, Laurel and Hardy are sentenced to the ducking stool, followed by banishment to Boogeyland, for burgling Barnaby's house.

Demise

The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); 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 offender was merely wheeled around the town in the chair.

References

</references>

de:Schandkorb