BRANK AT STOCKPORT.
In Cheshire, at the present time, there are traces of thirteen branks, and at Stockport is the most brutal example of the English branks. "It will be observed," says the local historian, Dr. Henry Heginbotham, J.P., "that the special characteristic of this brank is the peculiar construction of the tongue-plate or gag. It is about two inches long, having at the end, as may be seen in the engraving, a ball, into which is inserted a number of sharp iron pins, three on the upper surface, three on the lower, and two pointing backwards. These could not fail to pin the tongue, and effectually silence the noisiest brawler. At the fore part of the collar, there is an iron chain, with a leathern thong attached,[283] by which the offender was led for public gaze through the market-place." It was formerly on market days exhibited in front of the house of the person who had charge of it, as a warning to scolding or swearing women. Dr. Heginbotham states that: "There is no evidence of its having been actually used for many years, but there is testimony to the fact, that within the last forty years the brank was brought to a termagant market woman, who was effectually silenced by its threatened application."
We are indebted to Mr. Alfred Burton for a drawing of the Macclesfield brank. Dr. Brushfield describes this as "a respectable-looking brank." He tells us that "the gag is plain, and the end of it is turned down; there is only one band which passes over the head, and is hinged to the hoops; a temporary joint exists at the upper part, and ample provision is made for readily adjusting it to any description of head. The chain still remains attached to the hoop. About the year 1858, Mr. Swinnerton informed Dr. Brushfield that he had never seen it used, but that at the petty sessions it had often been produced in terrorem, to stay the volubility of a woman's tongue; and that a threat by a magistrate to order its appliance[284] had always proved sufficient to abate the garrulity of the most determined scold."
BRANK AT MACCLESFIELD.
Towards the close of the first quarter of the present century, the brank was last used at Altrincham. A virago, who caused her neighbours great trouble, was frequently cautioned in vain respecting her conduct, and as a last resource she was condemned to walk through the town wearing the brank. She refused to move, and it was finally decided to wheel her in a[285] barrow through the principal streets of the town, round the market-place, and to her own home. The punishment had the desired effect, and for the remainder of her life she kept a quiet tongue.
There are many traces of the brank in Lancashire. Mr. W. E. A. Axon informs us that his father remembers the brank being used at Manchester at the commencement of the present century. Kirkham had its brank for scolds, in addition to a ducking-stool. We find, in the same county, traces of the brank at Holme, in the Forest of Rossendale. In the accounts of the Greave for the Forest of Rossendale for 1691-2 is an entry of the true antiquarian cast:
| Item, for a Bridle for scouldinge women, | 2s. | 6d. |
In "Some Obsolete Peculiarities of English Law," by William Beamont, the author gives particulars respecting the Warrington brank. "Hanging up in our museum," says Mr. Beamont, "may be seen a representation of a withered female face wearing the brank or scold's bridle; one of which instruments, as inflexible as iron and ingenuity can make it, for keeping an unruly tongue quiet by mechanical means, hangs up beside it; and almost within the time of living memory, Cicily Pewsill, an inmate of the workhouse,[286] and a notorious scold, was seen wearing this disagreeable head-gear in the streets of Warrington for half-an-hour or more.... Cicily Pewsill's case still lingers in tradition, as the last occasion of its application in Warrington, and it will soon pass into history."
