1734-5. To ye ducking-stool mending 0 0 6

1736. For mending ye ducking-stool 0 10 0

1737. John Ellot, for ye ducking-stool and sheep-fold door 0 14 6

Mr. W. H. Dawson, the historian of Skipton, has devoted considerable
attention to the old-time punishments of the town, and the first
reference he was able to discover amongst the old accounts of the
township is the following:

1734. October 2nd. To Wm. Bell, for ducking-stool making
and wood 8s. 6d.

"This must," says Mr. Dawson, "surely mean that the chair was changed,
for the amount is too small for the entire apparatus. In this case a
ducking-stool must have existed before 1734, which is very likely." In
the same Skipton township account-book is an entry as follows:

1743. October. Ben Smith for ducking-stool 4s. 6d.

Twenty-five years later we find a payment as follows:

1768. October 17th. Paid John Brown for new
ducking-stool L1 0s. 11-1/2d.

Mr. Dawson has not been able to discover the exact date when the
ducking-stool fell into disuse, but has good reason for believing that
it was about 1770. We gather from a note sent to us by Mr. Dawson that:
"A ducking-pond existed at Kirkby, although it had not been used within
the memory of any living person. Scolds of both sexes were punished by
being ducked; indeed, in the last observance of the custom, a tailor and
his wife were ducked together, in view of a large gathering of people.
The husband had applied for his wife to undergo the punishment on
account of her quarrelsome nature, but the magistrate decided that one
was not better than the other, and he ordered a joint punishment! Back
to back, therefore, husband and wife were chaired and dipped into the
cold water of the pond! Whether it was in remembrance of this old
observance or not cannot be definitely said, but it is nevertheless a
fact that in East Lancashire, in 1880, a man who had committed some
violation of morals was forcibly taken by a mob, and dragged several
times through a pond until he had expressed penitence for his act."

We have found several allusions to the Derby ducking-stool. Wooley,
writing in 1772, states that "over against the steeple [All Saint's] is
St. Mary's Gate, which leads down to the brook near the west side of St.
Werburgh's Church, over which there is a