impossible now to fix the date when the chair of correction was first introduced into Liverpool, or to say when, by the improvement in female manners, it was no longer found to be necessary; but that it was in request as late as the year 1695 may be inferred from an item in the parochial expenditure of that year, which runs thus :— "Paid Edward Accres for mending the cuck-stool, fifteen shillings." For many ages the ducking-stool stood at the south end of the town of Ormskirk; but from the improvement in female manners, or the refinement in modern taste, it was removed in 1780. According to Blount, this cooling apparatus was in use in the Saxon era, when it was named the scealfing-stole, and described to be a chair in which quarrelsome women were placed, and plunged under water. The poet Gay celebrates this correctional chair, which was evidently in use in his time, in the following terms (Pastorals, iii. v. 105):— “I'll speed me to the pond where the high stool DUCKING-PITS, &c., AT BURNLEY. THIS mode of punishing female offenders has long been disused in Burnley and the neighbourhood. The places, however, can still be identified. The pit for Burnley was formed on what is now termed Brown Hill. When the present genteel residences were erected there, the pond was filled up. The ducking-pits for the Pendle district were formed by the side of the northern branch of the river Calder, here locally termed "Pendle Water." The ford across the river at that point is well known as the "Duck-Pit Hippings." Cucking or Ducking-Stool, Liverpool. 169 CUCKING OR DUCKING-STOOL, LIVERPOOL. In the "Moore Rental" (1667-8), its editor, Thomas Heywood, Esq., F.S.A., observes that "the ducking (properly cucking) stool, at this period, with the pillory and stocks, ornamented every English market-town. Misson gives an elaborate account of the machinery for ducking scolding women, the trebuchet and the stool; and the punishment he describes as "pleasant enough." Bakers and brewers "who offended the statute were subject to immersion, as also cuck-queans, which Lord Coke (3d inst. 219) and Mr William Gifford held to mean scolds, though other etymologists will have the word to signify the female of cuckold; and on reading this last critic's two notes upon the subject (Johnson's Works, ii. 482, iv. 424), we were almost led to believe that a woman was sometimes ducked because her husband was unfaithful. In the last edition of Burns (v. 246), Hawkins is quoted to show that after conviction for scolding, on indictment, the ducking must be inflicted. The last trace of the cucking-stool in Liverpool is the order for its repair, 1695, still remaining on the parish books. In Manchester, Barritt saw one standing in the pit-since the Infirmary Pool-now the Flags-half a century later. The ducking-stool, according to Mr Richard Brookes' "Liverpool from 1775 to 1800," was in use in 1779, by the authority of the magistrates, in the House of Correction, which formerly stood upon Mount Pleasant, in that town. Its use there is noticed in Howard's "Appendix to the State of Prisons in England and Wales" (p. 258), and it is also alluded to by Mr James Nield, the philanthropist, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1803. THE DUCKING-STOOL IN THE FYLDE. DIFFERENT persons now living, says Rev. W. Thomber in 1837, well remember that formidable machine the cuck-stool, once the dread of scolds, standing in Great Carlton. The stool or chair was placed at the end of a long pole, balanced on a pivot, and suspended over a pond of water, in which the offender was ducked. At Poulton, he adds, a few are still living who remember the remains of the chair fixed over the cuck-stool at the Breck, for the punishment of scolds. Poulton must surely have been infested with these scourges of domestic happiness, for no less than three ponds there all bear the name of cuck-stool. It was in use even to a late period; for the last female doomed to undergo this punishment, escaped by the interference of Madame Hornby, who became surety for her future good behaviour. PENANCE STOOL. IN the belfry of Bispham [Bishop Ham] parish church was formerly deposited a simple-looking wooden frame, formed of four pieces of wood with cross - bars, &c. This was described by old people as having been formerly used as a penance-stool. The offending parties were fastened to the stool by means of cross pieces of wood. The frame has recently been removed; but to what place is not known. KIRKHAM DUCKING-STOOL. THE ancient borough of Kirkham, in Amounderness, formerly possessed a bridle, or brank, for scolds, as well as a ducking-stool. A pool near the old workhouse long bore the name of the Cuckstool Pit, but it is now filled up. MANCHESTER GALLOWS AND TUMBREL. AN inquisition at Preston in 1359, found that Manchester had been held by its lords time out of mind, not as a borough, but as a market-town, with the privileges to market-towns belonging, including the right to punish all breakers of the assise of bread and ale, as well as butchers, tanners, regulators, &c., with right also of gallows and tumbrel. Where the gallows stood in Manchester is not known. Those for the Hundred of Salford were fixed at a little distance from the town of Salford, in a field still called the Gallows Field, on the banks of the Irwell, leading from Boat-house Lane to the lock, and opposite the great Hulme Meadow. The pillory, or neck-stocks, stood in the market-place till 1812, when it was removed with the common stocks, which stood beneath it. tumbrel (says Baines) was the same instrument of correction as the cuck-stool, which is described by our Saxon ancestors as "a chair in which scolding women were plunged into water." In Domesday it is called Cathedra Stercoris, and was anciently used for the punishment of brewers and bakers who transgressed the laws. "Some (says Blount) think it is a corruption from ducking-stool, others from choking-stool, because women plunged in water by this means were commonly suffocated." In The Saxon times the fosse, over which the correctional stool was suspended, was used for the ordeal of plunging. In the ancient collection of laws entitled "Regia Majestas Scotiarum," it is stated that criminal pleas belonged to those barons who held their courts with " Sac et soc furca et fossa [gallows and pit], toll et theam, infangtheof et utfangtheof." On the words "furca et fossa," Sir Henry Spelman remarks, that they express the right of hanging male and drowning female criminals; and adduces an instance in which the latter punishment was used in the reign of Richard II. "The Manchester stool (says Rev. John Whitaker) remained within these few years (1775) an open-bottomed chair of wood, placed on the end of a long pole (balanced upon a pivot), and suspended over the large collection of water called Poolhouse, or Pool Fold, which continued open until about the middle of the seventeenth century. It was afterwards suspended over the water of Daub Holes (afterwards the Infirmary Pond), and was used to punish scolds and common prostitutes." BEHEADING A THIEF. DR Whitaker remarks that from an old perambulation record of the township of Wiswall, near Whalley, it appears that one of the meres, or landmarks, was called "Jeppe knave grave," for one Jeppe, says the record, "ki fust decolle come laron" (who was beheaded as a thief). Jeppe (pronounced Yep) is a monosyllabic Saxon name; but this punishment could not have been prior to the Conquest, for the Saxon laws imposed either a money fine or banishment for theft, which they did not punish capitally. It is said that Earl Waltheof was the first person upon whom the |