Scold's bridle

[3] This prevented speaking and resulted in many unpleasant side effects for the wearer, including excessive salivation and fatigue in the mouth.

The kirk-sessions and barony courts in Scotland inflicted the contraption mostly on female transgressors and women considered to be rude, nags, common scolds, or drunken.

[3][4] Branking (in Scotland and the North of England)[5][6][7][1] was designed as a mirror punishment for shrews or scolds—women of the lower classes whose speech was deemed riotous or troublesome[8]—by preventing them from speaking.

[citation needed] The Lanark Burgh Records record a typical example of the punishment being used: "Iff evir the said Elizabeth salbe fund [shall be found] scolding or railling ... scho salbe sett [she shall be set] upone the trone in the brankis and be banishit [banished of] the toun thaireftir [thereafter]" (1653 Lanark B. Rec.

[9] Other branks included an adjustable gag with a sharp edge, causing any movement of the mouth to result in laceration of the tongue.

Scotland In 1567, Bessie Tailiefeir (pronounced Telfer) allegedly slandered the baillie Thomas Hunter in Edinburgh, saying that he was using false measures.

Oral tradition is this Chester lost a fortune due to a woman's gossip, and presented the instrument of restraint or torture out of anger and spite.

Mediæval London (1906) named six instances "of branks preserved, I believe, to this day ... at Worcester, Ludlow, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Oxford, Shrewsbury ... Lichfield ... and many other places".

A branked scold in Colonial New England , from a lithograph in A Brief History of the United States by Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele from 1885
18th century scold's bridle in the Märkisches Museum Berlin
16th-century Scottish branks, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum , Glasgow, Scotland
A scold's bridle, having a hinged iron framework to enclose the head and a bit or gag to fit into the mouth and compress the tongue
The "Bishop's branks" of St. Andrews
17th century Dunfermline branks