Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-12-25
FURNISHING SCOLDs.
Row Very IE+tempers in Women wer
Formerly Sweetened.

1t does not appear that the Drank" or
g gossip's bridle'' was ever used as pun
ishment in America, but ill-tempered wo-
men were tried and convicted as common
scolds, and punished by ducking, and some
times by having the tongue pinched by a
split stick of green wood, and sometimes
by other singular and uncomfortable ap-
planes. In 1874 Mary, wife of Thomas
Oliver, was sentenced to be publicly
whipped for reproaching the magistrates,
and two years later for slandering the ED
ers she had cleft stick put on her tongue
for half an hour. In 1872 the General Court
of Massachusetts ordered that scolds and
railers should be gagged or set in ducking
stool and dipped over head and ears three
times.
John Dutton, the London bookseller,
who visited Boston in 1888, wrote home to
his friends: Scolds they gag and set them
at their own Doors for certain hours to-
gether for all corners and goers to gaze at.
Were this the Law in England, and were
il executed, it would in little Time prove
an Effectual Remedy TO cure the Noise that
in many Women's heads"
A good deal later than that the people of
Georgia appear to have given heroic treat
ment to ladies who talked too much for
the account says that in the year 1911, in
the Superior Court at Milledgeville, one
Mrs. Palmer, who seems to have been
rather glib of tongue, YVES indicted. tried,
convicted, and, in pursuance of the sent
ence OF the Court. punished by being pub
licly ducked in the Oconee river for scold-
ing"
Thomas Hartley writing from Virginia
10 Governor Endicott of Massachusetts, in
1884, gives an account of the Furnishing of
g woman who, by the violence of her
tongue, had made her house and neighbor-
hood uncomfortable. He says she was
ducked five times before she repented, but
that then she cried piteously, Let me go!
let ne go By Gods help I will sin no
more Then they drew back ye machine"
Mr.. Hartley goes on to say, united ye
ropes and let her walk home in her wetted
clothes, hopefully penitent woman
Bishop Meade, in his Old Churches of
Virginia" says there was a law of that
commonwealth against scolds, and gives an
instance of a woman who was ordered to
be ducked three times from vessel in the
James river.
In 1919 there was another prosecution of
q shrew in Georgia, on which occasion the
Augusta Chronicle remarked as follows
" The Grand Jury of Burke having pre-
scented Mary CANNED as common scold
and disturber of the peace of the inhabi-
tants of that county. g The late
lamented and distinguished Judge Early
decided some years since, when modern
Xantippe was brought before him, that she
should undergo the punishment by lustra-
tion-by immersion three several times in
the Oconee Accordingly she was confined
in the tail of cart and. accompanied by
the hooting of the mob, conducted to the
river, where she was publicly ducked, in
conformity with the sentence Of the Court.
Should this punishment be awarded Mary
Cammell, we hope however, it may be at
tended with a more salutary effect than in
the case we have just alluded to, the I'M
ruly subject of which, each time as she
arose from the watery element, impiously
exclaimed, with a ludjcrous gravity of
couAtenance, Glory be to God = F."