It’s the late Middle Ages in that green
and often not so pleasant land known as England. In a small rural village next to
the River Wensum in the East of the country a woman has been accused of a reprehensible crime,
well, she has a litany of accusations against her. Following continuous bickering with her neighbor
over the disappearance of a buxom Greylag goose, under the common law, the accused has
been indicted for excessive arguing and of being a public nuisance. If that wasn’t
bad enough, another blemish on her character are allegations made by a local woman that she’s an
incorrigible strumpet! As a threat to public peace and the general decency of the village the menfolk
deliberate on a punishment befitting the crimes. Will it be forced silence through the iron muzzle
or the dreaded and sometimes deadly cucking stool? Her male judges opt for the second choice, a
popular punishment that provides a morning’s entertainment for mostly downtrodden
people whose happiness is sometimes derived from another person’s humiliation and pain.
Is that a true story? Well, not exactly - we might have embellished a bit with the vanishing
goose. Still, it’s based on centuries of recorded history. Quite extreme versions of this
punishment even happened in the U.S., something we’ll discuss at the end. But first let’s talk
about England, where the punishment was born. In the Middle Ages when people lived in very
small towns and villages the authorities had some strange laws regarding maintaining public
peace. After the Norman Conquest of 1066 when the English were forced to bow to their
new French rulers, a common-law was set up. Basically, if you committed a serious crime, the
punishment might be death or at the very least losing your property. But there were also what
you might call medieval misdemeanors, crimes today that might only lose you a few friends, or get
you doxxed or ghosted or deleted on social media. Yep, in the Middle Ages, it was a crime to speak
out, to argue a lot, to troll, and certainly to fly a flag of justice. The laws mostly applied to
peasants of course, so if a poor person spoke up and announced “Poor Lives Matter” their existence
would no doubt have been hard going from thereon. Not only people fighting for justice were
punished, though. Merely talking too much about a subject, especially if you were a woman, could
result in an arrest by the village mob. These people were a kind of police called “Watchmen.”
Someone accused of quarreling about a missing goose could be arrested for being a “common
scold.” Someone who gossiped about someone else could also be called a scold. The meaning of
that word back then was defined as, “A clamorous, rude, mean, low, foul-mouthed woman.”
It depended on the nature of the perceived crime, but as you’ll see in today’s show, the guilty
person might get away with some cuts and bruises and a red face, but they might also die as a
result of their punishment. Merely speaking one’s mind could get someone in serious trouble.
Before we talk about the creative device of the cucking stool, you might want to know what
other kinds of crimes could lead to a person being called a common scold. The punishment
by the way would be handed down in something called the manorial courts, which were courts
for peasants. It was kind of comparable to the justice system now, whereby you could say
poor folks get a manorial public defender... In the 14th century, you could be accused of being
a scold for a number of things, but mostly there were four reasons, at the time written in the
law in the language of Latin. In those days in England Old English was considered crude. French
was the language of the moneyed and educated and Latin was reserved for laws and other serious
matters. Ok, so the four terms were, “objurgator”, “garulator”, “rixator” and “litigator.” That
basically translates as “talking negatively”, “talking too much”, “having arguments” and
“criticizing people or things too much”. You’re now thinking, well, that’s about every
person I know who posts on social media, but if you think Facebook’s community standards
relating to certain types of speech are strict, non-virtual community standards in Middle
Ages England were downright despotic. The punishments were dished out a lot
when conditions for the poor were bad. That’s because they were apt to complain
and argue when they were literally starving. If a peasant was found walking around his village
moaning about hard times and abject inequality, he or she wasn’t applauded for talking about the
oppressive landowner and his flagrant neglect of human rights. That peasant was punished for
his views, even though that opinion was humane and relatable to other peasants. The common law
was partly designed to keep the poor in line. The wealthy feared rebellion, for good reason.
Throughout history, women were the victims of this law many more times than men. That doesn’t
mean only women fought for human rights, far from it, it was because society was incredibly,
unbelievably, sexist. If the rich kept the poor in line, everybody kept women in line. If peasant
women actually reached the age of 25, their life expectancy during much of the late Middle
Ages due to the mortal hazards of childbirth, they rarely learned a craft and as one historian
put it, “had little control over their own lives.” Cheating on a spouse was a sure way to
end up in the local courts. The crime of adultery usually resulted in the husband being
paid some compensation from the cuckolder, although semi-lawful revenge-killing
wasn’t unheard of, especially if the couple was caught in the act, a term called “in
flagrante delicto”. The courts would often rule that the murder took place under mitigating
circumstances. Still, for the most part, it was the woman who took the blame and she’d
more often than not be accused of being a scold. Even walking around at night
could get a woman in trouble, and if she was found eavesdropping on
someone or God forbid talking to another guy, she would likely find herself
on the wrong end of the law. The first instances of these punishments were
written about in the Domesday Book, a manuscript finished in 1086 which was ordered by King William
the Conqueror. He basically wanted to know what was going on in the land he had conquered and
so asked for a survey of the entire country. It is in this book that we first hear about
the cucking stool, or something close to it. The book talks about “cathedra stercoris” which
can loosely be translated as a punishment chair. A small crime, such as talking out of line,
could result in a man or a woman being strapped to a chair with their bare buttocks
showing. They would then be paraded through the village or town while locals jeered them.
The whole process was intended to embarrass the accused. This might also happen to brewers and
bakers who’d sold poor quality beer or bread. That doesn’t sound too bad really compared to
some of the punishments we’ve talked about before, but that was perhaps the least
extreme version of the cucking stool. This went on for centuries and was the go-to
punishment for people who talked or acted out of line, especially women. As we said, it was
employed more frequently during tough times when folks complained about work, life, lack
of food, etc. According to historians, speech considered bad was especially prevalent during
the Black Death, which isn’t really surprising given that around half the population of England
was wiped out – mostly in the poorer, rural areas, where the vast majority of people lived.
In the 16th century, something else was added to the mix in the world punishing scolds, and that
was called the “branks” or the “Scold's bridle.” This was the iron muzzle we talked about,
something today you might associate with sadomasochism or the “Saw” movie franchise.
It was almost always reserved for women of the poorer classes. It seems for a while it
superseded the cucking stool, but the latter would be back with a vengeance soon enough.
As for the Scold's bridle, it served the same purpose more or less than the cucking
stool had in the earlier centuries, only due to it having a plate that held down
the wearer’s tongue, the condemned woman could not speak. It was also very uncomfortable.
Can you imagine sleeping while wearing an iron muzzle that continuously makes you drool?
Again, arguing or criticizing might get a woman in trouble, but even excessive nagging at her husband
could end up with her being fastened inside one of those horrid contraptions. To add to the
discomfort, a spike was added to the bridle so if the woman did try and mutter something her tongue
might get pierced. This kind of punishment didn’t really make it over the pond to the New World,
although there is some evidence of it being used on slaves who had been accused of being unruly.
It was in England and Scotland, though, were the Scold’s Bridle was popular with local authorities.
Some of the bridles have been preserved, with one having an inscription on it dedicated to a man
named Chester. The inscription goes like this, “Chester presents Walton with a bridle, to
curb women's tongues that talk too idle.” As the tale goes, a woman’s gossip
led to Chester losing a lot of money. There’s some evidence the Scold's Bridle was
still used from the 16th to the 19th century, but the cucking stool made a comeback, only this
time with some fearsome technological advances. This time water was involved. Thus, the
cucking stool became the ducking stool. A French writer in the 18th century
named Francois Maximilian Misson wrote that the punishment was “pleasant enough”,
although we’re guessing he never tried it himself, especially on a day in freezing cold January.
His explanation of the contraption was basically a chair fastened to two long poles, which
were both connected to an axle. The person was strapped to the chair so they wouldn’t
fall out into the water and then the chair was ducked in the water. How many times that
person was ducked depended on the crime, or in Misson’s words, as long as it took to cool
down her “immoderate heat.” His example featured a woman because as you know it almost always
happened to women. If men were charged with a breach of the peace, they were likely put in
the stocks and pelted with garbage or beaten. The cucking victim didn’t escape
the jeers of the madding crowd, either. The chair would often be connected to some
wheels so prior to her being ducked in the water she was wheeled through town in front of people
calling her out for being a gossip, a flirt, a back-biter, or something else. The water was
supposed to tame the woman, or even purify her. You might now be thinking that the
ducking stool doesn’t sound so bad and in more clement weather you might actually
pay for a go on a ducking stool, but hold your tongue for a while because it gets worse.
You only need to hear this poem written in 1780 to know this punishment wasn’t exactly a
barrel of laughs. Part of it went like this: “There stands, my friend, in yonder pool
An engine called the ducking-stool; By legal power commanded down
The joy and terror of the town. If noisy dames should once begin
To drive the house with horrid din, Away, you cry, you'll grace the stool.
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.” This brings us to another kind of ducking stool,
one which didn’t exactly ensure the women didn’t drown. It was similar to what we’ve already
discussed, except the shafts that held the chair could be released. According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica, once the chair and its occupant fell into the water she might not
make it out again. Since the chair always faced the punishers, the woman fell into the water
backward. It was quite the shock of course. You have to remember that in those days people
were terrified of water and not many folks knew how to swim. That was one reason why
people feared being ducked so much. Ducking also happened in what would one
day become the United States of America. We found this text that was taken
from the Statute Books of Virginia: “Whereas oftentimes many brabbling women
often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often
brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages, be it enacted that
all women found guilty be sentenced to ducking.” If you’re wondering what “brabbling” means,
it’s to stubbornly argue about trifling matters. We found another case in the New World dated
1634, in which Betsey, the wife of John Tucker, is accused of employing the “violence of
her tongue” to make his house as well as her neighborhood “uncomfortable.” She was at first
ducked for half a minute, but according to the text, she didn’t repent. She was subsequently
ducked for thirty seconds another five times, after which she cried out, “Let me go Let
me go, by God's help I'll sin no more.” A man writing from Boston in 1686 said
the ducking stool was an “effectual remedy to cure the noise that is in many
women's heads”. In case you’re wondering, there’s no evidence that the ducking stool was
ever used to kill a woman accused of witchcraft. Accused witches, men, and women, usually
received far more cruel and unusual punishments. In Philadelphia, in 1708, the Common Council
asked that a ducking stool be built not just for argumentative women, but for women accused of
being drunk and disorderly. Fast-forward to 1824 and a court in Philadelphia said it wouldn’t
duck a woman due to the fact the practice was obsolete and not in the “spirit of the time.”
Nonetheless, around that time a Miss Palmer from Georgia was ducked three times in the Oconee River
for nothing more than being “glib of the tongue.” More than one ducking could indeed kill a person.
According to the historian Geoffrey Abbott, repeated duckings “routinely proved fatal,
the victim dying of shock or drowning.” It was in the early 19th century that
the ducking stool was outlawed in the UK and in the U.S., replaced by general sex
discrimination of a more modern kind. Now you need to watch this, “Skinned Alive -
Worst Ways to Die.” Or, have a look at this, “The Brazen Bull (Worst Punishment
in the History of Mankind).”
