{"id":5661,"date":"2018-10-22T14:12:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T13:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/?p=5661"},"modified":"2018-10-26T09:52:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T08:52:21","slug":"ducking-stools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/ducking-stools\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducking Stools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this term I gave a talk to two local History societies about witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Canterbury and Kent. While I was searching for some arresting images for the PowerPoint presentation, I came across a lot of references on the web to the Canterbury ducking stool being used\u00a0to detect witches in the 16th and 17th centuries. <!--more-->The\u00a0idea being that if the accused floated they were guilty and if they sank they were innocent. Since I have never come across a reference\u00a0in the historical sources to\u00a0a ducking stool being used\u00a0in Canterbury for &#8216;swimming&#8217; witches, I was rather dubious. So\u00a0I consulted the experts at Canterbury Archaeological Trust. I was pleased when they gave me the highly technical results of their evaluation and told me this was &#8216;nonsense&#8217;. <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5689 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/ducking-stool-1-300x237.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/ducking-stool-1-300x237.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/ducking-stool-1.jpg 574w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Swimming&#8217; accused witches was a custom that was more commonly used in the North of England rather than the South, although ducking stools were used across England in the Tudor and Stuart eras for punishing scolds and other unruly persons.\u00a0Sometimes the stool was simply put outside someone&#8217;s house to humiliate\u00a0them, without\u00a0any further action being taken.\u00a0This next\u00a0image from the 17th century shows a ducking stool on wheels that was clearly intended to be moved from site to site.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5674\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/SS2881480-300x218.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"218\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/SS2881480-300x218.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/SS2881480.jpg 622w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Canterbury&#8217;s ducking stool\u00a0is most likely a late Victorian or Edwardian\u00a0mock up and not the original item.\u00a0This also seems to be the case with the ducking stool on the river at Fordwich, which has been described as\u00a0part of\u00a0a crane used to unload barges.\u00a0Canterbury&#8217;s stool can be seen from the bridge over the Stour at the Old Weavers&#8217; House in Canterbury&#8217;s High Street and if there are any other examples of ducking stools in Kent, do let us know. Any authentic references to suspected witches being ducked in Canterbury are also welcome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this term I gave a talk to two local History societies about witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Canterbury and Kent. While I was searching for some arresting images for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7377,"featured_media":5681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1001,1581,5762,982,986],"tags":[9,381,5826,149,173,93,2233,1085],"class_list":["post-5661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canterbury","category-early-modern","category-heritage","category-kent","category-local-and-regional-history","tag-canterbury","tag-canterbury-archaeological-trust","tag-ducking-stool","tag-early-modern-history","tag-kent","tag-lectures","tag-witchcraft","tag-witches"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jackie Eales","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/10\/ducking-stool.jpg","postExcerpt":"Earlier this term I gave a talk to two local History societies about witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Canterbury and Kent. While I was searching for some arresting images for [&hellip;]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5661"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}