#Medieval torture museum full

“They have their roots in fear of women's speech and fear that women will attack other people in their community, that they gossip too much, that their voices are dangerous, that they may, in extreme circumstances, also be witches.” “There were various rituals for silencing women,” says Marion Gibson, a scholar of Renaissance and magical literature at the University of Exeter. Largely forgotten today, the practice speaks to the lengthy history of policing women’s voices- a trend that continues today. And her public humiliation was far from unique: Between the mid-16th and early 19th centuries, an untold number of women in England (as well as Scotland and colonial America) underwent ducking as a punishment for speaking out of turn. What is known is that she was a woman of limited financial means who likely worked in the local wool-based industry. Records of Pipes’ ducking are few and far between, a mixture of local folk history and short passages in history books.

#Medieval torture museum full

Ducked in full view of her friends, family and neighbors, Pipes ended her ordeal by unleashing “oaths and curses on the magistrates,” according to one eyewitness.Īn anti-suffrage postcard featuring a ducking stool The punishment wasn’t designed to be fatal (though it sometimes was), but rather a humiliating spectacle aimed at discouraging whatever behavior precipitated it. Like other ducking victims, she was sentenced to be plunged as many times as needed to “cool her immoderate heat,” in the words of French writer Francois Misson. Pipes’ tormentors tied her chair to the end of a long, maneuverable wooden arm-the preferred mechanism for dipping troublesome women in water. Her crime was simple: She was a common scold, accused of speaking ill of her husband once too often. Though it probably would have been of little comfort to her, Pipes was about to make history by becoming the last woman in England to be “ ducked,” or immersed in water while tied to an apparatus known as a ducking stool. Strapped with irons to a wooden chair, she was held high above the crowd and wheeled toward Kenwater Bridge. If local legend is to be believed, these are the words that Jenny Pipes heard as she was paraded through the English town of Leominster in 1809.