Evening Post. TUESDAY, OCTOBER, 30, 1923. "A COMMON SCOLD"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1923, Page 4

Evening Post. TUESDAY, OCTOBER, 30, 1923. "A COMMON SCOLD"

America is constantly surprising us with new things, but the most interesting point about the latest of her novelties is, if we may be allowed to say so, its venerable antiquity. . This youngest and rawest of great countries may indeed be said to resemble the householder "which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old," but her proportion of old things is so small that they are doubly welcome when they come. Who would have thought it possible that an offence which even in Old England ceased to be the subject of prosecution two or three generations ago, and a form of punishment which has become a theme for the antiquarian and the humorist, are still recognised by the law of at least one American State, and that, well on in the twentieth century, a Court would be called upon to enforce it? At Belvedere, in New Jersey, a woman has been charged under an old colonial-law with being a common scold, and the charge was of sufficient gravity to require the attention of a jury. The neighbours who brought the charge were reported in a New York message on Saturday to have given " such eloquent and speedy proof of the vitriolic qualities of her tongue and the endless disquiet which living near her means that the jury brought in a /.verdict of guilty within twenty minutes." Such celerity would have been remarkable in any country, but it is particularly astonishing in America, ■where on© of the most dangerous defects of the criminal administration is its, slow pace. What was counsel for the accused doing that he could not prolong the trial for more than twenty minutes? Perhaps the accused conducted her own defence, and. showed less prolixity in cross-examining the -witnesses than in slanging them over the fence.

But though the jury made short work of their part of the business, the Judge's task was not ao simple. He appears to have had no diffloulty in deciding thai/ the old colonial law of New Jersey had survived the Bevolution and nearly a century and a half of restless activity on the part of the Legislature, but to enforce the law in the manner which it prescribed was far too serious a responsibility for a modern 00111* to take.

The Judge,^ we are told, on consulting the Statutes,'found that tho designated punishment was the ducking-stool, but after twenty-four hours' meditation imposed a fine of 300 dollars, and suspended a sentence. of sis months' imprisonment,

ft may safely be, assumed that there is no duoking-stool in existence in the United States, if there ever was one. But to construot one should not have overtaxed the Resources of Mr. Edison's native ptate. The Judge, however, made no attempt to make the punishment fit the crime in the manner designed by the eighteenth century legislators, and a fine of 300 dollars with a suspended sentence of six months makes a tame and drab conclusion to the highly pictius esque proceedings.

" Other times, other manners." Twentieth century America may be glad to invoke for the protection of her dtißsac a Statute vfaish, hftd bwa buried aad fergattea wader

the dust of a hundred years, but to revive the ancient punishment would be to convert fare© into outra£j"t Writin S of England in the middle of the eighteenth century, Blackstone classes the. offence of being a common scold among the nuisaDces recognised by the common law, and speaks of the punishment as follows:—

For which offence the communii lixatnx (for our law confines it to the feminine gender) may be indicted (b); and, if convicted, she shall be sentenced to be fi j Ul ay certain engine of correction called the trebucket, castigatorv, or cucking-stool; which, in the Saxon kn§uaSe) is said to signify the scolding stool; though now it is frequently corrupted into ducking-stool; because the residue of the judgment is that, when she is so placed therein, she shall be plunged in the water for her punishment. Though Blaokstone does not say so, the judgment seems also to have prescribed the number of duckings that the prisoner was to have. The ordeal was always a severe one, and under one type of ducking-stool, which on the release of the shafts tipped the chair up backwards into the pond, the shock was sometimes fatal. s

Though Blackstone is still an object of veneration to the legal profession, it is interesting to find that even he sometimes nods. There appears to be no foundation for his suggestion that " ducking-stool" is merely a corruption of " cuokingstool." "Ducking and oucking stools " are defined by the Encyclopoedia Britannica as " s chairs used for the- punishment of scolds, witches, and prostitutes in bygone days," and the remark follows that "the two have been generally confused, but are quite distinqt." The cucking-stool or stool of repentance was an invention of the Saxons, and it is satisfactory to learn that it was not monopolised by the female sex. "The cucking-stool," says our authority, "was used for both sexes, and was speoially the punishment'for dishonest brewers and bakers." The ancient Saxons were not so one-sided in their application of this invention as those who afterwards confined the operations of the ducking-stool, which took its place towards the close of the sixteenth century, to women. As Blackstone points out, the common law confined the offence of being, a common scold to women. The reasons for this partiality are fortunately beyond our province to discuss. vThe insulting tenderness of the common law which, at revealed in the t"eel case last year, held a woman incapable of crime in the< presenoe of her husband, has its set-off in this still more insulting distinction.