A FEW NOTES ON DUCKING STOOLS.1 By Llewellyn Jewitt, F. S. A., Etc. I. BUT few people can have glanced into the corporation accounts of our old boroughs without seeing here and there an entry of the use of that formidable and dis graceful engine of punishment, the Ducking Stool; but few perhaps are aware how gen eral was its use, or how high its antiquity. A few notes, therefore, though hastily thrown together, may not be uninteresting to my readers, in continuation of the paper on Branks, which I gave in the last number. Corporations of towns, and lords of the manor, as well as others, had in the middle ages the right of inflicting punishment for various offences committed within their jurisdiction, and as they abrogated to them selves the power of inflieting punishment, so they took upon themselves the right of de vising the mode by which it was inflicted. Thus the Brank, which we have seen was pretty generally adopted by towns, was varied in its character according to the tastes — shall we say — of the authorities, or the requirements of the localities. So with the Cucking Stool — in- some places it was simply a chair in which the offender was placed and dragged round the town, while in others it was affixed to a pole, so that the poor woman's tormenters might play at "see-saw " with her over a pool of water, and give her a dip over the head each time she descended, while in others again it was hung at the end of a chair or rope, passed over pulleys, and drawn up and down again into the water at pleasure. The earliest mention of the " cuck-stool" is in Domesday Book, in which it is men tioned as being in use in Chester, where it is called " cathedra stercoris," a name which sufficiently implies that the origin of the punishment was as degrading an one as
could well be conceived. This was the "cuck (or cucking) stool"; not the duck ing stool, which was a later addition to the degradation, when the terms became synony mous. The " cucking stool," " ducking stool," and " tumbrell," have often been confounded one with the other, and most writers have considered them to be but dif ferent names for the same thing. A careful examination of the various records of their use remaining has, however, led me to the conclusion that they were all three distinct varieties of punishment. In the " cucking stool," the culprit was placed before her own door, or in some other public place, for a certain time, and subjected to the jeers of the passers by and of the viciously inclined. On the " tumbrell " she, or he, was drawn round the town, seated on the chair, and this was sometimes so constructed as to be used for "ducking" as well; but the "duck ing stool," par excellence, was the one fixed, or moveable, but made specially for the purpose of immersion. To be set on the cuck stool was formerly a punish ment for fraudulent bakers and brewers, as well as for common scolds and brawlers; but the tumbrell was still more commonly used for that purpose. In the " Regiam Majestatem," it is declared, if any alewife "makes evill ail, contrair to the use and consuetude of the burgh, and is convict thereof, shee sail pay ane unlaw of aucht shillinges, or shall suffer the justice of the burgh, that is, shee sail be put upon the cockstule." In the Common Hall accounts of the borough of Leicester, it was ordered in 1467, " that scolds be punished by the Mayor on a cuck-stool before their door, and then carried to the four gates of the 1 From the Reliquary.
