Ducking stool

They were instruments of public humiliation and censure both primarily for the offense of scolding or backbiting and less often for sexual offences like bearing an illegitimate child or prostitution.

The stools were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation.

Written records for the name "ducking stool" appear from 1597, and a statement in 1769 relates that "ducking-stool" is a corruption of the term "cucking-stool".

Tied to this stool the woman—her head and feet bare—was publicly exposed at her door or paraded through the streets amidst the jeers of the crowd.

It has been suggested this reflected developing strains in gender relations, but it may simply be a result of the differential survival of records.

The ducking-stool was a strongly-made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the offender was seated, an iron band being placed around them so that they should not fall out during their immersion.

[9][better source needed] The tumbrel of a ducking stool is in the crypt of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick.

[10] A surviving ducking stool is on public display outside the Criminal Museum (Kriminalmuseum)[11] in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a well-preserved medieval town in Bavaria, Germany.

[citation needed] Christchurch, Dorset, continues to house a replica ducking stool, at the site where punishments were once carried out.

[citation needed] The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); Jenny Pipes, a "notorious scold" (1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of Leominster.