The Newtown bee., 1880-11-10
OLD.FAsHIONED ADJUSTMENTS.
How Offenders wore Served in Former
 Days.


 From the many references to the duck ing-stool in the ancient records ot many horoughs, we have ample proof that at punishment was tue common instru- ment of justice for. scolds and incorrigi- | ble women 8 practice, indeed, which continued till within the last century. | One ot the last cases on record in which it was resorted to is recorded in the London EUeni7sg Post. of April p, 1745, | where we read: "Last week woman that keeps the Queens Head ale-house at Kingston, in Surrey, was ordered by | the court to be ducked for scolding, and
 was accordingly placed in tue chair, and ducked in the river Thames, under | Kingston bri lge, in tlie presence of two or three thousand people," That this cold-water cure had a wholesome effect upon unruly women is agreed by most of the old writers who mention 1t. Doctor Johnson, in conversation with Mrs. Knowles, said: "M adam, we have different modes of restraining evil stocks for the men, ducking-stool for women and pound for beasts" And Gay, in his Pastorals," is very decisive on this point:
 III speed me to the pond, where the high stool
 On the long plank hangs OCT the muddy pool That stool, the dread of every scolding queen The popularity, too, of the punishment is further shown by the fact that cor porate bodies were required to furnish themselves with ducking-stool, just as they are now forced to provide and maintain fire-engines. Thus. in the parish accounts of Mortlake. E3 E. ap- pears to have been paid in 1862 ' foI erecting and painting a ducking-stool for scolds;" and among the corporation records of Shrewsbury, 1869. we read ol "a ducking.stool to be erected for the punishment of all scolds." Various specimens of these instruments of cor. rection are still i1 existence, preserved in local museums. One. which for many years was in the custom house al 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 che ducking- stool-the emblance oi the names having apparently led to an idea that they meant the same thing. A learned writer on the subject, how ever, has pointed out that the cucking- stool was specially used for the expos ure of fagitious women sat their own doors, or in some other public place, as a means of putting upon them the last degree of ignominy." In the year l457 we are told of a scold who was put upon the "cuck-stool" at Leicester, be- fore her own door, and then carried to the four gates of the town; and Blome- field, in his History of Norfolk, tells us of une Margaret Grove, 8 common scold, who in the year 1897 was ordered to be carried, with a basin 'rung before her, to the cucke stool at Eye bridge, and there to be three times ducked." Aga n, in days gone by the "ducking- pond" was common adjunct to any pla .e where number of habitations were collected together, and was in general use for the summary punishment of petty offenders of various descriptions. The ducking-pond for the western part of London occupied the site of part of Trafalgar square, and was very cele- brated in the annals of the London mob.
 Another mode of punishment, which was formerly carried to cruel extent. was the whipping of vagrants and those guilty of slight offenses. By an act passed in 22 Henry VIII, beggars found wandering about seeking their subsist- ence from the aims ot the benevolent were to be "carried to some market town, or other place, and there tied to the end of 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 mitigated, and ''vagrants were only to be stripped naked from the middle upward, and whipped till the body should be bloody" Entries in some of our old church registers re- main as witnesses of the operation of this law. About the year 1896 whip ping-posts came into use, and at the time the writings of John Taylor. the water poet,n were published, they ap- pear to have been very plentiful, tor he narrates how
 In London, and within mile, ween,
 There are oi jails or prisons full eighteen, And sixty whipping posts, and stocks and
 cages.
 Ii is also on record that on May 5, 17l3. the corporation of Doncaster gave orders for 8 whipping-post to be set up at the stocks at Butcher Cross for pun ishing yagrants and sturdy beggars. 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 8 bench, confined by having his ankles made fast in holes under a movable board. lnmany country laces these may still be seen, although fre- quently little more than stump of them is left. Even women were punished in this way; and, as an illustration, we may quote the subjoined extract fir, m the parish register ot Croft, Yorkshire: :: "Jane Buttrey, of Darlington, was sect in the stoxe at Crotte, and was whipte out of the towne the 3 day of Jan., 1672.' The whipping of female vagrants, how ever, was abolished by statute so recently as the year l79I.
 Among other modes of punishment formerly in use may be mentioned the prank, or scold's bride, of which one of the earliest notices is that preserved in the church of Walton On Thames, Sur rey, dated l633, to which is affixed the following rhyme:
 Chester presents Walton with bridle
 To curb women's tongues that talk so id. According to tradition this instrument of reinstatement was presented to the parish by person named Chester, who, 1t appears, had lost an estate through the indiscreet language of mischievous woman to an uncle from whom he hal considerable expectations. The ap- paratus was made, says correspondent of Chambers Book of Days," of thin iron. and so contrived as to pass over round the head, where the whole clasped together and was fastened at the back of the neck by small paddock. The bridie bit, as it was called, was 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 ad- mitted the nose. Various specimens are still to be seen here and there in local museums It was much in re- quest in Scotland, and is mentioned by