The Cucking Stool. 73 
though not inflicted weekly. The prison is kept very clean by the 
matron, Jane Widdowes ; salary £63.” 
To this passage Mr. Neild has appended the following note :— 
“What I have called a Ducking Stool, is in Cheshire called a 
Choaking Stool. It is a standard fixed at the entrance of a pond, 
to this is attached a long pole, at the extremity of which is fastened 
a chair. In this the woman is placed, and undergoes a thorough 
ducking thrice repeated. Such an one, within the memory of per- 
sons now living, was in the great reservoir in the Green Park.” 
That the scold was, at least in some instances, subjected to three 
immersions, further appears from the following passage in the Poems 
of Benjamin West, of Weedon Beck, printed in 1780, (p. 84.)— 
‘Down in the deep the stool descends, 
But here at first we miss our ends ; 
She mounts again, and rages more 
Than ever vixen did before. 
So throwing water on the fire 
Will make it burn up still the higher ; 
If so, my friends, pray let her take 
A second turn into the lake ; 
And rather than your patient lose, 
Thrice, and again, repeat the dose. 
No brawling wives, no furious wenches, 
No fire so hot, but water quenches.” 
Mr. Beesley, in his History of Banbury, published in 1841, 
(p. 223, n. 21.) says—“< The Cucking Stool existed till within these 
fifty years at a horse-pool, at the lower end of the Market-place 
(at Banbury.) The pillory stood near it.” 
Mr. Curwood, the eminent barrister, who died at an advanced 
age, in the year 1847, recollected to have seen a Cucking Stool of 
the trebuchet kind, in a perfect state, at the edge of a pond, in a 
village green, near Worthing. He said, that a short post was let 
into the ground at the edge of the pond, and that a transverse 
beam at the top of it, had a rude seat at one end. He stated, that 
this beam could be moved horizontally, so as to bring the seat to 
the edge of the pond; and that when the beam was moved back, 
so as to place the seat, and the person in it, over the pond, the 
L, 
