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Illustration from a Pearson Scott Foresman text bookPunishing a woman accused of excessive arguing in the ducking stool
Ducking stools or cucking stools were chairs formerly used for punishment of disorderly women, scolds, and dishonest tradesmen in medieval Europe[1] and elsewhere at later times.[2] The ducking-stool was a form of wymen pine, or "women's punishment", as referred to in Langland's Piers Plowman (1378). 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. 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 with no standard design. Most were simply chairs into which the offender could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could be dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence "ducking" stool. Stocks or pillories were similarly used for the punishment of men or women by humiliation.
The term "cucking-stool" is older, with written records dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. 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".[3] Whereas a cucking-stool could be and was used for humiliation with or without dunking the person in water, the name "ducking-stool" came to be used more specifically for those cucking-stools on an oscillating plank which were used to duck the person into water.[4]
^Underdown, David (1985). "The Taming of the Scold: Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England". In Fletcher, A.; Stephenson, J. (eds.). Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 116–136. ISBN 0-521-25294-6. OCLC 17289313. Archived from the original on 2024-01-30. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
^Oxford English Dictionary includes dishonest tradesmen as well as disorderly women and scolds as people for whom the cucking-stool was used and cites its use in Vienna and that "The punishment of the ducking stool cannot be inflicted in Pennsylvania." which by implication suggests that it could be used in some other parts of the USA. http://oed.com/view/Entry/58195?redirectedFrom=ducking+stool Archived 2023-06-08 at the Wayback Machine accessed 27 Nov 2012.
^Oxford English Dictionary. "Cucking-stool" has references in 1215-70 and c.1308, including the use of the cucking-stool for immersion in water (c1308, 1534, 1633). http://oed.com/view/Entry/45498?redirectedFrom=cucking-stool#eid Archived 2018-10-27 at the Wayback Machine and ...ducking-stool accessed 27 Nov 2012.
^Oxford English Dictionary. http://oed.com/view/Entry/58195?redirectedFrom=ducking+stool Archived 2023-06-08 at the Wayback Machine accessed 27 Nov 2012.
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