Stools

Ducking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for the punishment. They were both instruments for the social humiliation/censure primarily for offence of scolding or back biting, and less often for sexual offences like having an illegitimate child or prostitution. more...

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They were technological devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation. A common alternative was a court order to recite one’s crimes or sins after Mass or in the market place on market day or informal action such as a skimmington ride.

They were usually of local manufacture and there was no standard design. Most were simply chairs into which the victim could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence ducking stool. The equivalent for men was the stocks although these were not gender specific.

Cucking-stools

The cucking-stool or Stool of Repentance, is of very ancient date, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the scealding or scolding stool. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as in use at Chester, being called cathedra stercoris, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the footnote below. 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.

The term cucking-stool is known to have been in use from about 1215. It means literally "defecation chair", as its name is derived from the old verb cukken which means "to defecate", rather than, as popularly believed, from the word cuckold. Commodes or chamber pots were often used as cucking-stools, hence the name.

The cucking-stool could be used for both sexes - indeed, unruly married couples were occasionally bound back-to-back and ducked (dunked). The device was most commonly used for the punishment of dishonest brewers and bakers.

Both seem have to become more common in the second half of the sixteenth century. It has been suggested {Underdown link} this reflected developing strains in gender relations, but it may simply be a result of the differential survival of records. The cucking-stool appears to have still been in use as late as the mid-18th century, with Poor Robin's Almanack of 1746 observing:

Now, if one cucking-stool was for each scold,

Some towns, I fear, would not their numbers hold.

Ducking-stools

The ducking-stool was a strongly made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the culprit was seated, an iron band being placed around her so that she should not fall out during her immersion. The earliest record of the use of such is towards the beginning of the 17th century, with the term being first attested in English in 1597. It was used both in Europe and in the English colonies of North America.

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