New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1880-12-15
OF restraining evil-stocks for the men.
ducking stool for tho women, and a
pound for beasts" And Gay, in his
"Pastorals,' is very decisive on this

OF restraining evil-stocks for the men.
q ducking stool for tho women, and
a pound for beasts" And Gay, in his
''Pastorals," is very decisive on this
point:
I'll speed me to the pond, where the high
On the long plank hangs DER the muddy
That stool, the dread Of every scoldlng
luean.
The popularity, too, of the punish
ment is further shown by the fact that
corporate bodies were required to fur
nish themselves with q ducking-stool,
just as they are now forced to provide
and maintain fire engines. Thus, in
the parish accounts of Mortlake, f3 7
shillings appears to have been paid in
1862 ''tor erecting ndpainting duck
ing-stool for scolds;' and among the
Corporation Records of Shrewsbury,
1869, we read of ga ducking- stool to be
erected for the punishment of all
scolds." Various specimens of these in
struments of correction are still in ex-
istence, preserved in local museums
One, which for many years was in the
CustomHouse at Ipswich, is now in the
museum of that town; and another,
which was formerly used in Leicester,
is still preserved in the Town Museum
there. The term cucking-stool is
sometimes applied to the ducking- stool
the resemblance of the names having
apparently led to an idea that they
meant the same thing. A learned writ
or on the subject, however, has pointed
out that the cucking-stool was specially
used for the exposure of flagitious
women cat their own doors or in some
other public place. as a means of put
ting upon them the last degree of igno-
miny." In the year 1857 we are told
of scold who was put upon the "cuch-
stool at Leicester, before her own
door, and then carried to the four gates
of the town; and Blomcield in his
History of Norfolk tells US OF one
Margaret Grove, common scold, who
in the year 1897 was ordered to be car
ried, with basin rung before her, to
the cucke-stool at Eye Bridge, and there
to be three times ducked.' Again, in
days gone by, the "duckins pond
was common adjunct to any place
where a number of habitations were
collected together, and was in general
use for the summary punishment of pet
ty offenders Of various descriptions.
The ducking-pond for the western part
of London occupied the site of part of
Trafalgar Square, and was very ccle-
bratcd in the annals of the London mob.
Another mode of punishment, which
was formerly carried to Il cruel extent,
was the whipping of Migrants and those
guilty of slight offenscs. BY an act
passed in 90 Henry VIII, beggars found
wandering about seeking their subsist-
ence from the aims of the benevolent
were to be "carriod to some market
town or other place, and there tied to
the end of q cart naked, and beaten
with whips throughout such market
town or other place till the body should
be bloody by reason of such whipping'
In the thirty-ninth year Of Elizabeth,
however, this act was slightly mti-
gated, and Migrants were only to be
stripped naked from the middle up
ward, and whipped till the body should
BIZ bloody.' Entries in some OF our old
church registers remain as witnesses of
the operation of this law. About the
year 1896 whipping posts came into
use, and at the time the writings of
John Taylor, "the water poet" were
published, they appear to have been
very plentiful, for he narratcs how
IN London, and within mile, wccn,
There are Of jas or prisons full eighteen,
And sixty whipping-posts, and stocks and
1t is also on record that on May 5,
1913. the corporation of Doncaster gave
orders for a whipping post to be set up
at the stocks ut Butcher Cross for pun
ishing Migrants and sturdy bcggars.
Then, too, there were the parish stocks,
which were either put close to the
churchyard Or in more solitary places.
This was an arrangement for exposing
a culprit on a bench, confined by hay
! ing his ankles made fast in holes under
Il movable board. In many country
places these may still be seen, although
frequently little more than a stump of
them is left. Even women were pun
ished in this way; and, rs an illustra-
ton, we may quote the sabjoined ex-
tract from the parish register of Croft,
Yorkshire: "Jane Buttrcy, of Darling
ton, was sect in the stoke at Crofte,
and was whiptc out Of the townc the 3
day of Jan, 1922 The whipping of
female Migrants, however, was abol-
ished by statute so recently as the year
1891.
Among other modes of punishment
formerly in use may be mentioned the
Drank, or scold's bride, of which one of
the earliest notices is that preserved in
the church of Walton on Thames, Sur
rey, dated 1888, to which is affixed tne
following rhyme:
N,It ~, I.;,f
10 curb wo1ncn's tongues that talk so idle.
According to tradition this instrument
OF chastsement was presented to the
parish by person named Chester, who,
it appears, had. lost an estate through
the indiscreet language of a mischiev-
Gus woman to an uncle from whom he
had considerable expectations. The
apparatus was made, says correspond
emit of Chambers Book of Days" of
thin iron, and SO contrived as to pass
over and round the head, where the
whole clasped together and was fasten-
ed at the~back Of the neck by a small
paddock. The bride bit, as it was
called, was a small piece OF iron, about
two inches long and one inch broad
which went into the mouth and kept
down the tongue by its pressure; while
an aperture in front admitted the nose
Various specimens are still to be seen
here and there in local museums. 1t
was much in request in Scotland, and
is mentioned by Pennant in his "Tour
in Scotland'' in 1772. In st. Mary
Church, St. Andrews, famous speci-
men still exists, known as the Bishop s
Brank," of which a representation is
given in the Abbotsford edition of the
Monastery" In the time of the
Commonwealth the Magistrates Of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne punished drunk
ards by making them carry a tub, with
holes in the sides for the arms to pass
through, along the streets of that town
"a punishment popularity called the
drunkards cloak.'' / must not omit
to mention the "pillory,'' that jgno,
minious and barbarous means of pun
ishment which was finally done away
with only in 1897. In early times in