- Dunking
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For other uses, see Dunking (disambiguation).
A common scold gets her comeuppance in the ducking stool.
Dunking is a form of torture and punishment that was applied to scolds and supposed witches.
Contents
As torture
In a trial by ordeal, supposed witches were immersed into a vat of water or pond, and taken out after some time, thus and given the opportunity to confess. This process was usually repeated until the victim drowned or gave up and confessed, leading to them being executed in another way, usually hanging or, more rarely, burning. Also, if they had their hands/feet tied, they would be left under water. If they floated they were guilty of witchcraft, if they sank they were innocent but would have usually drowned anyway.
As punishments for scolds
Main article: Cucking stoolFrancois Maximilian Misson, a French traveller and writer, recorded the method used in England in the early 18th century:[1]
"The way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an armchair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends embrace the chair, which hangs between them by a sort of axle, by which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal position in which a chair should be, that a person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a post on the bank of a pond or river, and over this post they lay, almost in equilibrio, the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs just over the water. They place the woman in this chair and so plunge her into the water as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat."
The dunking stool, rather than being fixed in position by the river or pond, could be mounted on wheels to allow the convicted woman to be paraded through the streets before punishment was carried out. Another method of dunking was to use the tumbrel, which consisted of a chair on two wheels with two long shafts fixed to the axles. This would be pushed into the dunking pond and the shafts would be released, tipping the chair up backwards and dunking the occupant.[2]
Modern use
In 2004, a soldier from the Singapore Guards died from a dunking incident during a Combat Survival Training course.[3]
In its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. Department of State formally recognizes "submersion of the head in water" as torture in its examination of Tunisia's poor human rights record.[4]
In Popular Culture
- In the 1997 Ridley Scott film G.I. Jane, Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore) is dunked by the Master Chief (Viggo Mortensen), not to coerce her, but in an attempt to coerce submission from her caged comrades who are watching.
- In the 1998 Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski, Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is dunked in his toilet by thugs who have mistaken him for someone else with the same name.
- In the 1999 comedy Blackadder: Back & Forth, Lord Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) subjects Baldrick (Tony Robinson) to dunking in a toilet so that he can experience a near-death life review to recover details neither of them can remember.
- In a 2005 episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, "Flesh and Bone", Kara "Starbuck" Thrace repeatedly dunks Cylon Leoben Conoy as part of interrogation torture.
See also
References
- ^ Alice Morse Earle (1896). "The Dunking Stool". Curious Punishments of Bygone Days. http://www.getchwood.com/punishments/curious/chapter-2.html. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
- ^ "Dunking". Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.). London: Cambridge University Press. 1911. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Dunking. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
- ^ Channelnewsasia.com
- ^ U.S. Department of State (2005). "Tunisia". Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61700.htm.
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