The latest recorded instance of the ducking-stool being used in England occurred at Leominster. In 1809, says Mr. Townsend, a woman, Jenny Pipes, alias Jane Corran, was paraded through the town on the ducking-stool, and actually ducked in the water near Kenwater Bridge, by order of the magistrates. An eye witness gave his testimony to the desert of the punishment inflicted on this occasion, in the fact that the first words of the culprit on being unfastened from the chair were oaths and curses on the magistrates. In 1817, a woman named Sarah Leeke was wheeled round the town in the chair, but not ducked, as the water was too low. Since this time, the use of the chair has been laid aside, and it is an object of curiosity, rather than of fear, to any of the spectators. During the recent restoration of Leominster Church, the ducking-stool was removed, repaired, and renovated by Mr. John Hungerford Arkwright, and is now kept at the[274] borough gaol of the historically interesting town of Leominster.
The early English settlers in the United States introduced many of the manners and customs of their native land. The ducking-stool was soon brought into use. Mr. Henry M. Brooks, in his carefully written work, called "Strange and Curious Punishments," published in 1886, by Ticknor & Co., of Boston, gives many important details respecting punishing scolds. At the present time, in some parts of America, scolding females are liable to be punished by means of the ducking-stool. We gather from a newspaper report that in 1889, the grand jury of Jersey City—across the Hudson River from New York—caused a sensation by indicting Mrs. Mary Brady as a "common scold." Astonished lawyers hunted up their old books, and discovered that scolding is still an indictable offence in New Jersey, and that the ducking-stool is still available as a punishment for it, not having been specifically abolished when the revised statutes were adopted. In Delaware, the State next to the south of New Jersey, the whipping-post is an institution, and prisoners are sentenced to suffer at it every week. The Common Scold Law was brought from[275] England to Connecticut by the Puritans and settlers, and from Connecticut they carried it with them into New Jersey, which is incorrectly considered a Dutch state. In closing this chapter, we may state that a Dalziel telegram from Ottawa, published in the London newspapers of August 8th, 1890, says that Miss Annie Pope was yesterday charged before a police magistrate, under the provisions of an antiquated statute, for being a "common scold." She was committed for trial at the assizes, as the magistrate had no ducking-stool.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Boyle's "Hedon," 1895.
The Brank, or Scold's Bridle.
The brank was an instrument employed by our forefathers for punishing scolds. It is also sometimes called the gossip's bridle, and in the Macclesfield town records it is designated "a brydle for a curste queane." In the term "queane" we have the old English synonym for a woman; now the chief woman, the Queen. The brank is not of such great antiquity as the ducking-stool, for the earliest mention of it we have been able to find in this country is in the Corporation records of Macclesfield, of the year 1623. At an earlier period, we have traces of it in Scotland. In Glasgow burgh records, it is stated that in 1574 two scolds were condemned to be "branket." The Kirk-session[277] records of Stirling for 1600 mention the "brankes" as a punishment for the shrew. It is generally believed that the punishment is of Continental origin.
The brank may be described simply as an iron framework which was placed on the head, enclosing it in a kind of cage; it had in front a plate of iron, which, either sharpened or covered with spikes, was so situated as to be placed in the mouth of the victim, and if she attempted to move her tongue in any way whatever, it was certain to be shockingly injured. With a brank on her head she was conducted through the streets, led by a chain, held by one of the town's officials, an object of contempt, and subjected to the jeers of the crowd and often left to their mercy. In some towns it was the custom to chain the culprit to the pillory, whipping-post, or market-cross. She thus suffered for telling her mind to some petty tyrant in office, or speaking plainly to a wrong-doer, or for taking to task a lazy, and perhaps a drunken husband.