At Chesterfield a ducking stool existed until about sixty years since, when it was taken down by a joiner named Samuel Stocks, — a somewhat ominous name in con nection with obsolete punishments — re moved to his yard in Lord's-mill street, and rotted away in a couple of years. I am in debted for much information concerning this stool to Mr. Walton of Chesterfield, who informs me that his father, at the age of seventy-five, remembered its removal, and who also, on the authority of an old inhabi tant of the town, now living, tells me that it was last used about seventy years ago. Ordinarily one or two immersions of the poor victim was all that was inflicted, but the last woman who underwent the punish ment, having used very bad language, and sworn terribly on emerging from the water a second time, was again ducked, and this time came up again cooled and penitent. The ducking stool was placed at the Silk-mill dam, on the south side of the town, on the corner immediately underneath the wall of the " House of Correction," as then called, but now the county prison, and which is shortly to be done away with in consequence of a new lock-up being in course of erection. It consisted of a rough strong chair attached to one end of a beam, which worked on a pivot on a post bedded into the ground at the edge of the dam, in the same manner as that described later on at Broadwater. It was used on the authority of a magistrate, and the last person in charge of this muni cipal duty was Samuel Watts, ' master, or "keeper," as he was then called, of the Poor House, and he was assisted in his duties by the local constables. In the later part of its existence it was chiefly used to punish refractory paupers. The woman was placed in the chair, her arms drawn backwards, a bar placed across her back and in front of her elbows — so that she was literally "trussed," — another bar to hold her up right, and cords to tie her in, and she was then powerless, and obliged to submit to
whatever degree of punishment her tormen tors might think fit to inflict upon her. At Alfreton, in the reign of Edward the Third, Thomas dc Chaworth claimed a park, and right of free warren at Alfreton, with the privilege of having a gallows, tumbrell, and pillory, for the manor. The Chaworths were at that, and at subsequent periods down to the reign of Henry VII, a family of considerable importance in the county, and held several manors besides that of Alfreton. Doubtless at other places in Derbyshire, these terrible engines of punishment were used; but though I have reason to believe that at Ashborne, Belper, Melbourne, and Wirksworth, they were established, at pres ent I have been unable to meet with any re liable record. The following notes on some of the examples in other parts of the king dom will show the different forms of the engines, and explain the modes of inflicting punishment. Of the cucking stool — by which I mean the loose chair in which the culprit could be placed before her own door, or which could be attached to the tumbrell for the purpose of drawing her to the gates of the town, or to the pond to be ducked — there are still some examples in being. Of these, perhaps, two of the most interesting are those preserved in the museum at Leicester, and at Wooton Bassett in Wiltshire.
