DUCKING CHAIR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 September 1938, Page 7

DUCKING CHAIR

PUNISHMENT IN OLDEN DAYS. Stocks were the most common and best-known form of public punishment for those guilty of petty offences in olden times; but there were other and equally amusing devices for holding wrong-doers up to ridicule. A variation of the stocks was the finger pillory, which had holes of various diameters to fit the fingers of any offender, whatever the size of his or her hands. Another device was the penitent’s stool. This was located in a prominent part of many churches, and sinners were compelled to wrap themselves in a white sheet and sit on the stool for a suitable period. A contraption calculated to discourage petty offenders was the ducking chair, still found in many English villages, but never used for present-day punishments. Where the courthouse was built beside a river, a crane was fastened to the outside wall. Wrongdoers were tied in a chair and lowered up and down into the river the number of times decreed by the Judge. The ducking chair was most commonly used for punishing scolding women who-had nagged their husbands! In the cases where the courthouse was some distance from the river, a wheeled carriage was used to convey the ducking chair and its occupant to the water. A further relic of past years is the scold’s bridle. This was a type of headgear placed on those guilty of scolding and slandering. It was so fashioned that the wearer found it either impossible or very painful to move the tongue or lips. It is said, and can be well believed, that a period fastened in this device was quite sufficient to discourage any repetition of the offence!