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).”