And, rather than your patience lose,
Thrice and again repeat the dose.
No brawling wives, no furious wenches,
No fire so hot but water quenches.”
In Scotland “flyting queans” sat in ignominy in cucking-stools. Bessie Spens was admonished: “Gif she be found flyteing with any neighbour, man or wife, and specially gains Jonet Arthe, she shall be put on the cuck-stule and sit there twenty-four hours.” A worthless fellow, Sande Hay, “for troublance made upon Andro Watson, is discernit for his demerits to be put in the cuck-stule, there to remain till four hours after noon.” The length of time of punishment – usually twenty-four hours – would plainly show there was no attendant ducking; and this cuck-stool, or cucking-stool, must not be confounded with the ducking-stool, which dates to the days of Edward the Confessor. The cuck-stool was simply a strong chair in which an offender was fastened, thus to be hooted at or pelted at by the mob. Sometimes, when placed on a tumbrel, it was used for ducking.
At the time of the colonization of America the ducking-stool was at the height of its English reign; and apparently the amiability of the lower classes was equally at ebb. The colonists brought their tempers to the new land, and they brought their ducking-stools. Many minor and some great historians of this country have called the ducking-stool a Puritan punishment. I have never found in the hundreds of pages of court records that I have examined a single entry of an execution of ducking in any Puritan community; while in the “cavalier colonies,” so called, in Virginia and the Carolinas, and in Quaker Pennsylvania, many duckings took place, and in law survived as long as similar punishments in England.
In the Statute Books of Virginia from Dale’s time onward many laws may be found designed to silence idle tongues by ducking. One reads:
“Whereas oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize their neighbours, for which their poore husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages, be it enacted that all women found guilty be sentenced to ducking.”
Others dated 1662 are most explicit.
“The court in every county shall cause to be set up near a Court House a Pillory, a pair of Stocks, a Whipping Post and a Ducking-Stool in such place as they think convenient, which not being set up within six month after the date of this act the said Court shall be fined 5,000 lbs. of tobacco.
“In actions of slander caused by a man’s wife, after judgment past for damages, the woman shall be punished by Ducking, and if the slander be such as the damages shall be adjudged as above 500 lbs. of Tobacco, then the woman shall have ducking for every 500 lbs. of Tobacco adjudged against the husband if he refuse to pay the Tobacco.”
The fee of a sheriff or constable for ducking was twenty pounds of tobacco.
The American Historical Record, Vol. I, gives a letter said to have been written to Governor Endicott, of Massachusetts, in 1634, by one Thomas Hartley, from Hungars Parish, Virginia. It gives a graphic description of a ducking-stool, and an account of a ducking in Virginia. I quote from it:
“The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I saw this punishment given to one Betsey wife of John Tucker who by ye violence of her tongue has made his house and ye neighborhood uncomfortable. She was taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joined by ye Magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently admonished her and a large number of People. They had a machine for ye purpose yt belongs to ye Parish, and which I was so told had been so used three times this Summer. It is a platform with 4 small rollers or wheels and two upright posts between which works a Lever by a Rope fastened to its shorter or heavier end. At ye end of ye longer arm is fixed a stool upon which sd Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown tied fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved up to ye edge of ye pond, ye Rope was slackened by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go down under ye water for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout stomach, and would not yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked 5 several times. At length she cried piteously, Let me go Let me go, by God’s help I’ll sin no more. Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye Ropes and let her walk home in her wetted clothes a hopefully penitent woman.”
Bishop Meade, in his Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, tells of a “scolding quean” who was ordered to be ducked three times from the yard arm of a vessel lying in James River. A woman in Northampton County, Virginia, suffered a peculiarly degrading punishment for slander. In the lack of a ducking-stool she was “drawen ouer the Kings Creeke at the starne of a boate or Canoux, also the next Saboth day in the time of diuine seruise” was obliged to present herself before the minister and congregation, and acknowledge her fault and beg forgiveness. From the Decisions of Virginia General Court now being printed by the Virginia Historical Society, we learn of one Margaret Jones that at a court held at “James-Citty” on the 12th of October, 1626: “for ye severall offences aforenamed, of ye said Margaret Jones, yt Shee bee toughed or dragged at a boats Starne in ye River from ye shoare unto the Margaret & John and thence unto the shoare againe.”
Toughed would seem a truly appropriate word for this ordeal. The provost marshal’s fees decreed by this court at this time were ten shillings “for punishing any man by ducking.”
In 1634 two women were sentenced to be either drawn from King’s Creek “from one Cowpen to another at the starn of a boat or kanew,” or to present themselves before the congregation and ask public forgiveness of each other and God.
In 1633 it was ordered that a ducking-stool be built in every county in Maryland, but I have no proof that they were ever built or used, though it is probable they were. At a court-baron at St. Clements, the county was prosecuted for not having one of these “public conveniences.”
Half a century elapsed after the settlement of Massachusetts ere that commonwealth ordered a ducking-stool. On the 15th of May, 1672, while Richard Bellingham was Governor, the court at Massachusetts Bay passed this law:
“Whereas there is no expresse punishment by any law hitherto established affixed to the evill practise of sundry persons by exorbitancy of the tonge in rayling and scolding, it is therefore ordered, that all such persons convicted, before any Court or magistrate that hath propper cognizance of the cause for rayling or scolding, shalbe gagged or sett in a ducking stoole & dipt ouer head & eares three times in some convenient place of fresh or salt water as the Court or magistrate shall judge meete.”
Governor Bellingham’s sister was a notorious scold, who suffered death as a witch.
John Dunton, writing from Boston in 1686, does not note the presence of a ducking-stool, but says:
“Scolds they gag and set them at their own Doors for certain hours together, for all comers and goers to gaze at; were this a Law in England and well executed it wou’d in a little Time prove an Effectual Remedy to cure the Noise that is in many Women’s heads.”
This was a law well-executed at the time in Scotland, though Dunton was ignorant of it.
There are no entries to show that the law authorizing ducking ever was executed in Massachusetts nor in Maine, where a dozen towns – Kittery, York and others – were fined for “having no coucking-stool.” It was ordered on Long Island that every Court of Sessions should have a ducking-stool; but nothing exists in their records to prove that the order was ever executed, or any Long Island woman ducked; nor is there proof that there was in New York city a ducking-stool, though orders were issued for one; a Lutheran minister of that city excused himself for striking a woman who angered him by her “scholding” because she was not punished by law therefor.
Pennsylvania, mild with the thees and thous of non-belligerent Quakers, did not escape scolding women. In 1708 the Common Council of Philadelphia ordered a ducking-stool to be built. In 1718 it was still lacking, and still desired, and still necessary.
“Whereas it has been frequently and often presented by several former Grand Jurys for this City the Necessity of a Ducking-stool and house of Correction for the just punishment of scolding Drunken Women, as well as divers other profligate and