Reply #28: Scold's bridle [View All]

[Tsiyu]

My summer read this year is Edward Rutherfurd's London.


An excerpt:

" It was not a pretty thing, the scold's bridle. Foul-mouthed women were sometimes sentenced to wear the little iron cage that fitted over the head, with a cruel iron bit to immobilize the tongue."


This in late Thirteenth century London, where the brothels were owned by the Bishop. When the whorehouses became a mess, regulations were drawn up for the brothels, preserved in Latin and English in the diocesan library, those regulations ending with the phrase: "To the Honor of God and according to the laudable customs and regulations of the land."


So, if your wife bitched you out, you could put her head in a metal cage and go hang with the prostitutes.

Modern-day British men can only wish to have it so good, huh?