A few Notes on Ducking Stools. town," which would be on a tumbrell. In 1555 itinerant singing women were ordered to be put on the cuck-stoles of the towns, by the Queen Regent of Scotland, and in the "Homily against Contention," 1562, it is said, " in all well-ordered cities, common brawlers and scolders be punished with a notable kind of paine, as to be set on the cucking-stole, pillory, or such like." In a MS. in the Bodleian Library occurs the following : — "Item — If an woman comme onto this lordshep an wold be kept privee withynne, and it be not the holders wil, thei shall doo the officers for to wite upon the peine of xl.s. and the same woman shal be take and made a fine of xx.s. and be sette thries upon the cokyngestoele, and than forswere the lordship." Borlase speaks of the cucking stool as a seat of infamy, wherein scolds and others were compelled to abide, with bare head and foot, the derision of passers-by. Allu sions to its use in this way, among the old writers, are not uncommon, and many pages might well be filled with curious notices from their works. In " Poor Robin," 1693, the writer says : — "This month we may safely predict, that the days will be short, and the weather cold; yet not so great a frost as that there will be a fair kept on the Thames. Should all women be like patient Grizel, then we might make Christmas-blocks of all the cucking-stools." And again in 1746: — "Since the excellent invention of cuckingstools, to cure women of their tongue, combates 999 years, "Now if one cucking-stool was fore each scold. Some towns, I fear, would not their number hold, But should all women patient Grizels be, Small use for cucking-stools they'd have, I see." In the " New Help to Discourse," we read : — "On a Ducking-stool. — Some gentlemen travelling, and coming near the town, saw an old woman spinning near a ducking-stool; one, to make the company merry, asked the good woman
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what that chair was made for? Said she, You know what it is. Indeed, said he, not I, unless it be the chair you use to spin in. No, no, said she, you know it to be otherwise; have you not heard that it is the cradle your good mother has often layn in?" In Derby the ducking stool, which was propably a suspended one, was fixed over the Markeaton Brook, at the bottom of St. Mary's Gate, by the mill now worked by the Derby Flour Society. It was in being,
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at all events, about a century ago, and the mill to which we have alluded is still known as " Cuckstool Mill," and the water adjoin ing as " Cuckstool Mill Dam." Wooley, who wrote in 1712, thus speaks of the ducking stool : "Over against the church steeple (All Saints), is St. Mary's Gate, which leads down to the brook near the west side of St. Werbugh's Church, over which there is a bridge to Mr. Osborne's mill, over the pool of which stands the Ducking Stool." In 1729 it was repaired, as will be seen from the following items in an account of one Thomas Timmins, a joiner: s. d. To ye Cuckstool, 1 stoop 010 2 Foot and J of Joyce for a Rayle .... 00 5 Ja. Ford, jun., £ day at Cuckstool ... 00 7 Of course there are no remains now ex isting of this stool, and even the exact spot where it stood, so many have been the alter ations of the premises, is difficult to deter mine.
