Ducking stool cucking chair punishment women social humiliation sexual offense illegitimate child prostitution prostitute pond
Ducking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for punishment of women in England and Scotland (see reference, 1985). The term cucking-stool derives from wyuen pine ("women's punishment") as referred in Langland's Piers Plowman(1378). They were both instruments of social humiliation and censure, primarily for the offense of scolding or back biting and less often for sexual offenses 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 victim 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. The equivalents for men were the stocks, although these were not gender specific so that they were also used for women. There does seem to have been a difference in usage between a ducking stool and a cucking stool. Although both were primarily forms of public exposure and humiliation, the cucking stool seems to have involved no water, with the victim raised up in the air on show.
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