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Cucking Stool Definition:
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A medieval form of punishment; a chair in which was restrained an offender.
Related Terms:
Ducking Stool
Also known as a cuck stool or cukkyng-stole or the Latin term, cathedra stercorsis.
Very similar to a stock except the cucking stool was in the form of a chair.
Used to punish scolding.
But Henry VIII, in a statute which was published in the third year of his reign, provided that upon conviction of fraud in the manufacture of wool products, the convicts were:
"… to be set upon the pillory or the cucking stool, man or woman, as the case shall require."1
Eventually, the cucking stool was displaced by the popularity of the ducking stool; a contraption by which a person was restrained in a chair and then repeatedly immersed into a body water.
Andrews, in his book Old Time Punishments, writes:
"In the course of time the terms cucking and ducking stools became synonymous and applied the machines for the ducking of scolds in water."
REFERENCES:
- Andrews, Williams, Old Time Punishments (New York: Dorset Press, 1990).
- Note 1: spellings adjusted to modern English. For example, pillorie changed to pillory and cukkyng-stole changed to cucking stool.
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