Women Beware The Ducking Chair!

As many of you may know I am a wealth of completely useless knowledge! I have more to add to the vault! I LOVE the Discovery Channel(s)! A smorgasbord of useless knowledge! So tonight I watch a fun one about torture! Wow, people in the early times really loved to make people behave or suffer! They covered quite a few I have never even heard of and now wish I still hadn't! They also covered the well known methods, ie, Iron Maiden, The Rack, Guillotine, Pendulum (which they proved is something that was probably never used due to the fact that as soon as it hit dense flesh or bone it would loose all momentum and become stuck!). one that I have never heard of but was commonly used until the 1900s (yes the 1900s!)was a punishment called The Ducking (Dunking) Chair!
The Ducking chair was set up in most towns (there was a point in the early American colonies when it was law to HAVE one in town) near a natural or man made body of water. It was easily made using a see saw like structure with a "chair" on one end and a rope on the other. Because of the advantages of a pulley, a single person could easily "punish" someone for hours without ever tiring. Very good design.
This punishment, however, was reserved for women. For wives who dared talk back or hen peck their husbands. Also women who may gossip too much.
The naughty wife/woman would be strapped into the chair in front of the whole town and be repeatedly dunked into freezing cold water (yes the water that everyone threw their bodily waste into, the water the animals bathed in, the water where carcasses were cleaned, and so on and so forth)over their heads for the duration of the whole day!
Needless to say lots of husbands no longer had to worry about their wives because they would be widowers by the end of the day due to hypothermia, shock, drowning, or a combination of the three. It's safe to say that God was wise in choosing to have me be born now and not then because I can be a bit sassy!
I have included a drawing of a typical Ducking Chair and a narrative poem of the time about it! And on this note I leave you!


"There stands, my friend, in yonder pool
An engine called the ducking-stool;
By legal power commanded down
The joy and terror of the town.
If jarring females kindle strife,
Give language foul, or lug the coif,
If noisy dames should o­nce begin
To drive the house with horrid din,
Away, you cry, you'll grace the stool;
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.
The fair offender fills the seat
In sullen pomp, profoundly great;
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 but burn up the higher.
If so, my friend, pray let her take
A second turn into the lake,
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."

Yours, K.