a river or deep pond. If she floated, it was deemed that she was in league with the devil, rejecting the baptismal water. If she sank, she was "cleared. And dead". Notable examples Surviving examples The tumbrel of a ducking stool is in the crypt of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick. There is also a ducking chair in Canterbury, where the High Street meets the River Stour. A surviving ducking stool is on public display outside the Criminal Museum (Kriminalmuseum) in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a well-preserved medieval town in Bavaria, Germany. Replicas A complete ducking stool is on public display in Leominster Priory, Herefordshire. The town clock, commissioned for the Millennium, features a moving ducking stool depiction. Christchurch, Dorset, continues to house a replica ducking stool, at the site where punishments were once carried out. Early mentions There is a reference from about 1378 to a ducking stool as ("women's punishment") In film A type of ducking stool can be seen briefly in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). In the Laurel and Hardy feature film Babes in Toyland, Laurel and Hardy are sentenced to the ducking stool, followed by banishment to Boogeyland, for burgling Barnaby's house. Demise The last recorded cases are those of a Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); Jenny Pipes, a "notorious scold" (1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of Leominster. In the last case, the water in the pond was so low that the offender was merely wheeled around the town in the chair. The common law offence of common scold was extant in New Jersey until struck down in 1972 by Circuit Judge McCann who found it had been subsumed in the provisions of the Disorderly Conduct Act of 1898, was bad for vagueness and offended the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution for sex discrimination. Long before this decision, the punishment of ducking, together with all other forms of corporal punishment, had become unlawful under the provisions of the New Jersey Constitution of 1844 or even as early as 1776. See also Dunk tank Village stocks Waterboarding References Further reading Corporal punishments Early Modern witch hunts European instruments of torture Water torture Imprisonment and detention of women Medieval instruments of torture Chairs de:Schandkorb