The Ducking Stool[51] consisted of a chair securely fastened upon a long plank balanced upon upright standards, and so arranged that the victim could be launched sixteen or eighteen feet into the pond or stream, while the executioner of the sentence stood upon dry ground. The back and arms of the chair were engraved with representations of devils torturing scolds. The culprit securely fastened in this chair, so confined as to be entirely helpless, was sometimes drowned; the chair being plunged once, twice, or thrice in some muddy stream or slimy pond. The suggestive and usual place of storing the Ducking Stool, when not in use, was the church-yard. Almost every English town of importance possessed one; their use was continued until the present century. The Leominster Ducking Stool, still preserved, was used in 1809, by order of the magistrates, upon a woman named Jane Corran, who received her punishment near Kenwater Bridge. As late as 1817 Sarah Leeke was wheeled around town in this chair, although the lowness of the stream prevented the ducking[52] she would otherwise have received. Railing and scolding or “answering back,” were deemed crimes on the part of the wife, who, “commanded to be under obedience,” was expected silently to submit to oppression of every kind. That she did not—that she dared revolt by words—that women in sufficient number to cause the invention of such an instrument, were rebellious in midst of the horrid oppression created by the church, speaks well for the womanly nature and thrills the heart with admiration the same as when old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, refused to lay her head on the block at the executioner’s mandate, declaring that as she was innocent, she would not voluntarily place herself in position for death. While England has the shame of originating the Ducking Stool, the “Pilgrim Fathers,” fleeing from religious persecution, failed not to take with them the implements of cruelty used in the domestic oppression of woman. The Ducking Stool, and the “Stool of Penitence” figure in the early annals of New England. Upon the latter, the Scarlet Letter of shame affixed upon her breast, the unmarried mother was forcibly seated beneath the pulpit, under public gaze, while her companion in sin protected by church and state, perchance held his place among the elders in the jury box, or upon the bench as the judge who had condemned her. Old Colonial legislation makes us acquainted with the various methods in use for punishing the free speech of women in this country two hundred years since.
“A Law to Punish Babbling Women” enacted by the General Assembly, of Virginia, 1662.
Whereas, many babbling women slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved in chargable and vexatious suits and cost in great damages. Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that in actions of slander caused by the wife, after judgment passed for damages, the wife shall be punished by ducking; and if the slander be so enormous as to be judged at greater damages than 500 lbs. of tobacco, then the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds of tobacco adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the tobacco.
As this was the state in which wives were bought in exchange for tobacco, it is not surprising to find the penalty of her free speech to be paid in tobacco, the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds penalty in excess of the first. Massachusetts was not long in following the example of Virginia, and in 1672 ten years later, passed A Law for the Punishment of Scolds in Massachusetts.
Whereas, there is no express punishment (by law hitherto established) affixed to the evil practice of sundry persons by exhorbitancy of tongue in reviling and scolding; it is therefore ordered that all such persons convicted before any court or magistrate that hath proper cognizance of the case, shall be gagged, set in a ducking stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in some convenient place of fresh or salt water, as the court or magistrate shall judge meet.[53]
Nor must we believe that the punishment of women for use of the tongue, is of past ages. Even in the United States, women are to this day sometimes arraigned for free speaking. Laws to punish “babbling women” enacted in colonial days are still in force. It is but a few years since a woman of St. Louis was arrested and brought before a magistrate as a common scold.[54] In the State of New Jersey, 1884, a woman was brought before the courts, convicted, on the old grounds of being a “common scold” and fined $25, and costs. Death not infrequently accompanied the use of the ducking stool, the poor gagged victim, her hands securely fastened, being utterly unable to help herself. But we do not learn that either the magistrate or the husband was held responsible to the law for such death. The sufferers, like those under the catholic inquisition of the fourteenth century, were deemed outside of the pale of sympathy or human rights, and the devils depicted upon the back of ducking stools as laying hold of their victims, were conceded to have but taken their rightful prey.
Such has been part of Christian legislation for women in America, and yet she is told to see how much Christianity has done for her. To such extent has this church doctrine of man’s superiority to woman, and the right of the husband to control of the wife proceeded, that many husbands believe they possess the right to sell their wives. Since the reformation her sale in the market-place as an animal, held by a halter about her waist, has been recognized by English law even as late as the present century. Although now forbidden, the practice of wife-sale is still occasionally found both in England and in America. But when the law takes cognizance of such a sale its penalty is visited upon the innocent wife and not upon the guilty husband. The English Women’s Suffrage Journal of December 1st, 1883, reported such a case.
November 13th, 1883, Betsy Wardle, was indicted for having on the 4th of September, 1882, married George Chusmall, her former husband being alive. The prisoner pleaded guilty, but said her former husband gave her no peace and sold her for a quart of beer. She imagined this was a legal transaction, and that she could marry again. The second husband was asked how he came to marry the prisoner. He answered “Well, I bout her.” The judge said, “You are not fool enough to suppose you can buy another man’s wife?” on which he replied, “I was.”
Mr. Swift asked his lordship not to pass a severe sentence. The prisoner imagined that because she had been sold for sixpence there was nothing criminal in marrying again. His lordship said it was absolutely necessary to pass some punishment on her to teach her that a man had no more right to sell his own wife than his neighbor’s wife, or cow, or ox, or ass, or anything that was his.
The reason given by the judge for punishing the woman, is extremely suggestive of woman’s condition under the law. The wife who had been sold, the innocent victim of this masculine transaction, was sentenced to a week’s imprisonment with hard labor, while the man who sold her and the man who bought her escaped without punishment or censure. The judge in quoting the tenth commandment, graded the wife with the ox and the ass in the belongings of a man; the decision thus ranking her with the cattle of the stable.[55] To add to the infamy of the trial, it was the occasion of much unseemly jesting and laughter. It took place at the Liverpool Assizes before Justice Denham. His judgement paralleled the decision of the “Seney Trial” in Ohio, 1879. The selling a wife as a cow[56] in the market place was by no means uncommon during the early part of the century in England. Ashton[57] give numerous instances of such sales.