June 16, 2025
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant continues exploring a form of humiliation and punishment used by our colonial ancestors to chastise “public scolds.” James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
In my previous article, “The Ducking Stool: Colonial Cure for the Common Scold,” I wrote about the notorious centuries-old punishment for female fiendishness. As noted in the eighth volume of Ruling Case Law:
“At early common law a woman who used wicked, scandalous and infamous words in a public place and within the hearing of citizens was indictable as a common scold and subject to the penalty of the ducking or cucking stool.”
What about ducking male scolds?
That question was posed by a New York newspaper in 1824.
The following year, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania set aside a judgment from the Court of Common Pleas that had sentenced a common scolder to the ducking stool.
“This punishment is a remnant of barbarism, and deserves to be abolished,” opined a Connecticut newspaper reporting the case, adding that “there are as many scolding men as women.”
The Keystone State played “an outsized role” in prosecuting women as common scolds, even after the revised penal code repealed the ducking stool, this “relic of barbarism,” in 1860. However, commonwealth law declared that “every felony, misdemeanor or offense whatever, not specifically provided for by this act, may and shall be punished as to heretofore.”
In Northampton County on 30 August 1865, Elenora Mohn behaved as a common scold, according to an indictment. Elenora, “an evil-disposed person,” attempted to debauch and corrupt citizens, openly and publicly with a loud voice, by uttering “wicked, scandalous and infamous words.”
The Mohn case caught national attention, as shown by this Chicago newspaper article.
“The ducking stool is not the punishment of a common scold in Pennsylvania,” wrote attorney Solomon B. Boyer in 1891. “The offense, however, is indictable and to be punished by fine, or by fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court.”
Eventually, men would get into the act when the “common scold” term broadened to include a male menace.
In 1892, Philadelphian Robert McKeown was held on $600 bail for being a common scold, the accusation pressed by neighbor Carrie New, with 13 nearby residents joined as witnesses.
John Hartmann, another nagging neighbor in the City of Brotherly Love, was arrested for the same offense in 1898. This article, by the Philadelphia Record, was reprinted by a newspaper in Montana.
The article reports on this interesting exchange that occurred in the courtroom:
When the magistrate held Hartmann on the charge of being a common scold and demanded bail, the defendant’s lawyer cried: “You cannot hold my client on the charge. Who ever heard of a man being a common scold?” “I did, just now, and unless your client enters bail for $400, he will take a ride in the wagon waiting outside,” replied the court.
Yet another petulant Philadelphian, Herman Nitchy, was arrested in 1901 after his daughter filed a complaint against him as a common scold. “You never heard anything like him, I am certain,” said daughter Mamie. “He scolds from morning to night. He gets up scolding and he scolds the last thing at night.” A magistrate held nettling Nitchy on $600 bond. “If he waits until mother gets bail for him he will wait forever,” said Mamie.
A New Jersey woman made headlines in 1905 when she was named as a ducking candidate.
This article reports:
Because eternal warfare was waged, it is asserted, between Mrs. Charlotte P. Wood and sundry small boys in the vicinity of her home in Webster Street [Jersey City, New Jersey], Mrs. Wood has been indicted by the grand jury on the ground that “she was and is [a] common scold.”
Mrs. Wood objected to the youngsters batting balls through her windows and throwing mud on her sidewalk. On numerous occasions, it is alleged, she administered chastisement to them and quarreled with their parents.
Under the ancient law related to common scolds, Mrs. Wood may be ducked in “the nearest pond, creek, or river” if she is found guilty. It is more than a century since a scold has been ducked in New Jersey.
Philadelphian Anna Eppley was found guilty of being a common scold in 1918. “Over a score of Mrs. Eppley’s neighbors appeared in court to complain of her conduct,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They declared that from the time the defendant’s husband arrived at home in the evening about 6 o’clock until he left the following morning for work, Mrs. Eppley fought with him, calling him names and disturbing the peace and rest of her neighbors.” The court sentenced her to three months in the county prison.
Three Pittsburg sisters were charged under the old common law offense in 1947. Evidence introduced at the trial included a secret phonographic recording of the trio as they hurled abusive language across a fence at neighbors. Sitting red-faced as they heard the blue language, jurors returned a guilty verdict, sentencing one of the women to a three-month jail term, while her two sisters received 13 months to two years in a reformatory.
Incredibly, even in the 1970s, suburban Philadelphians faced indictment for the offense of being a “common scold”!
Mrs. Joanne Hauk was found not guilty. Her story, perhaps the last hurrah for common scold prosecutions, prompted humorist Dick West to quip that “congressional crime hearings have turned up evidence that organized common scolding rings are operating throughout the land, often under the cover of legitimate enterprises.”
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Note on the header image: replica ducking stool at Leominster, England; last used in 1809. Credit: John Phillips; Wikimedia Commons.
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