256 HI G HIV AYS AND HORSES. 



at the present time, is the pound for beasts ; for as 

 human beings no longer treat one another like beasts, 

 the stocks and the ducking-stool have disappeared. 

 But the ducking-stool was a little out of fashion in Dr. 

 Johnson's time, and more so still one hundred years 

 ago. 



It is mentioned in the London Evenino; Post of 

 April 27th, 1745. "Last week," says that journal, 

 " a woman that keeps the Queen's Head Ale House 

 at Kingston in Surrey, was ordered by the court to be 

 ducked for scolding, and was accordingly placed in 

 the chair and ducked in the River Thames under 

 Kingston Bridge, in the presence of 2000 or 3000 

 people." 



According to verbal tradition, this punishment 

 was inflicted at Kingston and other places up to 

 the beginning of the present century. 



Mr. Cole, the antiquary, writing about 1780, 

 says : "In my time, when I was a boy, and lived 

 with my grandfather in a great corner house at the 

 bridge foot next to Magdalen College, Cambridge, 

 I remember to have seen a woman ducked for 

 scoldinof." 



On most village greens there were stocks, and in 

 some villages a whipping-post. On May 5th, 171 3, 

 the Corporation of Doncaster ordered a whipping-post 

 to be set up at the stocks, at Butcher's Cross, for 

 punishing vagrants and sturdy beggars.* The stocks 

 were often so constructed as to serve both for stocks 

 and whipping-post : and the posts which supported 

 the stocks, being made sufficiently high, were fur- 

 nished near the top with iron clasps to fasten round 

 the wrists of the offender and hold him securely 

 * Notes and Queries, vol. xvii., 327. 



