A few Notes on Ducking Stools. "The town had the usual appendages to a manor, a pillory, ducking stool, cage, and stocks, and which are noticed in the following items : — £ s. d. 1 7 14. May 24. Paid Wm. Ladbrook for mending ye pillory ... .0510 Spent with the third-burrow ye same time the man stood in it . o o 6 1 72 1. June 5. Paid for a lock for ye ducking stool, and spent in towne business 01 2 1725. Aprii 30. Paid for paving round the pillory o 1 o 1739. Sept. 25. Ducking stool repaired. And Dec. 21, 1741. A chain for the ducking stool ...024 1741. For oyle and colours for the cage and pillory .014 2 "The ducking stool was placed on the west side of the horse-pool, near the foot-path lead ing from the Clifton road towards the new church-yard. Part of the posts to which it was affixed were visible until very lately, and the National School is now erected on its site. The last person who underwent the punishment was a man, for beating his wife, about forty years since : but although the ducking stool has been long re moved, the ceremony of immersion in the horsepond was recently inflicted on an inhabitant for brutality towards his wife." It was most probably in allusion to this example that Benjamin West, the North amptonshire poet, thus wrote in 1780: — "There stands, my friend, in yonder pool, An engine call'd a ducking stool : By legal pow'r condemned down, The joy and terror of the town. If jarring females kindle strife, Give language foul, or lug the coif; 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. The fair offender fills the seat In suiien pomp, profoundly great. Down in the deep the stool descends, But here at first we miss our ends; She mounts again, and rages more Than ever vixen did before. So, throwing water on the fire Will make it but burn up the higher. If so, my friend, pray let her take A second turn into the lake, And, rather than your patience lose,
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Thrice and again repeat the dose. No brawling wives, no furious wenches, No fire so hot but water quenches." At Coventry, at the gate of the Grey Friars, was also one, and in the Leet Book the following entry occurs, under the date of October 11, 1597: — "Whereas there are divers and sundrie dis ordered persons (women within this citie) that be scolds, brawlers, disturbers, and disquieters of theire neighbors ... it is ordered and enacted at this Leet, that if any such ... do from henceforth scold or brawle . . . upon complaint thereof to the Alderman of the Ward made, or the Mayor for the time being, they shall be com mitted to the cook stoole lately appointed for the punishment of such offenders. An entry for the ' making the cooke stoole at Greyfrier gate iiijs. iiijd.' occurs in the same vol. as late as the year 1623." In the reign of Elizabeth there was a ducking stool at Marlborough, probably of the trebucket form, and many entries re specting it occur in the corporation ac counts. In 1580 and 1582 it was repaired. In 1584 a new one was procured, and in 1625 a man received for his help at the cucking of John Neal, 46. At Devizes the tumbrell was kept in the church tower. At Beaminster, in 1629, Peter Hoskins, farmer of the manor, was ordered to pro cure stocks, ducking stool, and pillory, within three months, under pain of forfei ture of five pounds. At Honiton, Baretti, the lexicographer, relates that in his journey from London to Exeter in 1760, he saw the ducking stool over the water by Honiton, " where they dipped old women supposed to be witches." At Stoke Abbot, one Edith Copleyn had a feud with another laborer's wife. If she demeaned herself she was to be taken be fore a magistrate, who was by the court desired to give her the punishment of the duek1ng stool, or some other like punish ment.
