1808; King's Lynn, Norfolk, in the museum; Ipswich, Scarborough,
Sandwich, Fordwich, and possibly some other places of which we have no
record.

We find in museums, but not in common use, another terrible implement
for the curbing of the rebellious tongues of scolding women. It was
called the brank or scold's bridle, and probably came to us from
Scotland with the Solomon of the North, whither the idea of it had
been conveyed through the intercourse of that region with France. It
is a sort of iron cage or framework helmet, which was fastened on the
head, having a flat tongue of iron that was placed on the tongue of
the victim and effectually restrained her from using it. Sometimes the
iron tongue was embellished with spikes so as to make the movement of
the human tongue impossible except with the greatest agony. Imagine
the poor wretch with her head so encaged, her mouth cut and bleeding
by this sharp iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough
torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the
populace, or chained to the pillory in the market-place, an object of
ridicule and contempt. Happily this scene has vanished from vanishing
England. Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the
ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or
the daring teller of home truths to some jack-in-office, who thus
revenged himself. We have shrews and scolds still; happily they are
restrained in a less barbarous fashion. You may still see some
fearsome branks in museums. Reading, Leeds, York, Walton-on-Thames,
Congleton, Stockport, Macclesfield, Warrington, Morpeth, Hamstall
Ridware, in Staffordshire, Lichfield, Chesterfield (now in possession
of the Walsham family), Leicester, Doddington Park, Lincolnshire (a
very grotesque example), the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, Ludlow,
Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Whitchurch, Market Drayton, are some of the