“THE GOOD OLD DAYS”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 226, 20 June 1936, Page 22

“THE GOOD OLD DAYS”

When Wives Were Muzzled

Women. be thankful that you did not live in the good old days, writes John Hopton in a Londn journal It vou give a neighbour “a bit of your tongue” to-day you may ‘be fined or bouud over—or if you make a habit ot creating a disturbance you may be sent to prison. But 200 years ago husbands and magistrates were not so lenient! You would not think it now, but in bygone times Cheshire must either have l>een the champion county for shrews, or else the local magistrates were particularly harsh on women offenders. Thirty-two branks, or scolds'bridles, are preserved in England's museums, and eleven of them were- found in Cheshire. Cheshire.branks went all over th© country. At Wulton-on-Tbonies is a Gossip’s Bridle, dated 1033, on which is stamped

Chester presents Walton with a Bridle. To curb women’s tongues that talk too idle. 1

Congleton, Cheshire, used to be a village of stern husbands They were not content with having scandalmongering wives put into a bridle and led through the streets. Oh, no! They believed that chastisement, like charity, began at home. And they were allowed to buy a brank for use in the house.

So if a Congleton man's wife was troublesome, her man merely took the brank out of the cupboard and muzzled her. And woe betide any sharp-tongued woman friend who happened . to call when he had a headache. She was liable to be treated in‘the same way! The Congleton husband’s power did not end there, for he was allowed to chain his bad-tempered wife —or her friend —to a hook beside the fireplace They were convenient if a-woman began to scold when her husband came home, late. No creeping up the stairs, boots in hand, in those davs! In 1820 an old woman at Altrincham. Cheshire, was decorated with a brank and pushed round the village in a wheelbarrow-. The cruellest, of all English branks is preserved in the municipal museum at Stockport. Cheshire. The iron gag was so large that it filled the whole mouth, and it was furnished with eight sharp spikes. But all the branks were brutal affairs. The tongues of many of them were worse than the roughest file, and were jagged, too. History does not record the name of the misguided social reformer who first devised this means of muzzling women, but it was used in Scotland towards the end of the sixteenth century. Its first appearance in England was at Maccles-

field in 1623. and its last at Kendl m 1834. , , The ducking-chair, the slocks. Un. drunkard’s cloak—all these harsh weapons of punishment were used to chastise women whom officialdom considered troublesome. The “weaker sex” .was a mere figure of speech when it came to applying the law ' In Shakespeare’s day every town aim village was compelled to maintain stocks to deal with the rogues and vagabonds who infested the country. A vagabond “caught in the act was put in the stocks for three days and three nights on a diet of bread and water; if he repeated the offence in the same parish the time was doubled. It was up to the tramp to keep moving on. When this punishment proved insumcient the stocks fell into disuse and flogging and branding were substituted In a number of museums in Britain there are to-day iron masks with two. square holes cut in each, so that Lie felon could be branded prominently on either cheek. . If a vagabond was convicted a third time lie was sent to the gibbet. Death was held lightly in those days. Until sixty years ago an act was still in force whereby a man convicted of “the odious and loathsome synne el drunkenness” was ordered to pay a. fine of five shillings, or. in default spend six hours in the stocks. The last time the law sentenced an offender to the stocks was at Newbuij in 1872, when a hothhead had to sit in them for six hours for being drunk and for brawling in church. The stocks were not always reserved for lawbreakers, however. One Palm Sunday the Bishop of Chester’s chaplain preached a sermon, which made some women angry. After the service they dragged him to the stocks outside the church wall, and for half an hour pelted him with rotten eggs. The cruel old ' laws of England had many loopholes. The pretty Suffolk village of Ufford used to be a hotbed of poaching, but unless the offenders were actually caught with their plunder on the squire’s estate they could not be punished. So with great ceremony the poachers used to gather on the church knoll, and use the stocks as a counter on which to divide the spoils, while the baffled village constable stood by. Once they added insult to injury by compelling the squire to pass under an archway of their guns on his way into church. He was greeted with a volley! ' •