The Ducking Stool at Leominster - geograph

The Ducking-Stool from Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (1896)

Cucking stools or ducking stools were chairs formerly used for punishment of disorderly women, scolds, and dishonest tradesmen in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. The cucking-stool was a form of or "women's punishment," as referred to in Langland's '' Piers Plowman'' (1378). They were instruments of

public humiliation Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned puni ...

and

censure A censure is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism. In parliamentary procedure, it is a debatable main motion that could be adopted by a majority vote. Among the forms that it can take are a stern rebuke by a legislature, a spi ...

both primarily for the offense of scolding or

backbiting Backbiting or tale-bearing is to slander someone in their absence — to bite them behind their back. Originally, backbiting referred to an unsporting attack from the rear in the blood sport of bearbaiting. Causes Backbiting may occur as a form ...

and less often for

sexual offences Sex and the law deals with the regulation by law of human sexual activity. Sex laws vary from one place or jurisdiction to another, and have varied over time. Unlawful sexual acts are called sex crimes. Some laws regarding sexual activity are ...

like bearing an

illegitimate child Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...

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 Charivari (, , , alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called a skimmington) was a European and North American folk custom in which a mock parade was staged through a community accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the cro ...

. 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 A tumbrel (alternatively tumbril) is a two-wheeled cart or wagon typically designed to be hauled by a single horse or ox. Their original use was for agricultural work; in particular they were associated with carrying manure. Their most infamous ...

that could be dragged around the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

. 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 The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

, who called it the ' or ''scolding stool''. It is mentioned in ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

'' 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. The term ''cucking-stool'' is known to have been in use from about 1215. It means literally "defecation chair", as its name is derived from the old verb ' 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 Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as (obscene, lewd, unfit for public use), or (improper, in poor taste, undignified). Documented obscenities occurred ra ...

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Ducking-stools

with the term being first attested in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

in 1597. It was used both in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

and in the

English colonies The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Ac ...

of North America. 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.

Use in identifying witches

In medieval times until the early 18th century, ducking was a way used to establish whether a suspect was a witch. 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

of a ducking stool is in the crypt of the

Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick The Collegiate Church of St Mary is a Church of England parish church in Warwick, Warwickshire, England. It is in the centre of the town just east of the market place. It is grade I listed, and a member of the Major Churches Network. The church ...

. 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.

Replicas

A complete ducking stool is on public display in Priory Church, Leominster, Leominster Priory, Herefordshire. The town clock, commissioned for the Millennium, features a moving ducking stool depiction. Christchurch, Dorset, continues to house a replica ducking stool, at the site where punishments were once carried out.

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 Laurel and Hardy feature film ''Babes in Toyland (1934 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. The common law offence of common scold was extant in New Jersey until struck down in 1972 by Circuit Judge McCann who found it had been subsumed in the provisions of the Disorderly Conduct Act of 1898, was bad for vagueness and offended the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution for sex discrimination. Long before this decision, the punishment of ducking, together with all other forms of corporal punishment, had become unlawful under the provisions of the New Jersey Constitution of 1844 or even as early as 1776.