Bridle your tongue

Never passing up a chance to further my education, recently I have gone to find out what sort of punishment device a bridle was.

According to “Old Time Punishments” by W. Andrews, pub. 1890, a bridle is-

 …an iron framework which was placed on the head enclosing it in a kind of cage; it had in front a plate of iron, which, either sharpened or covered with spikes, was so situated as to be placed in the mouth of the victim.

In the old-fashioned, half-timbered houses in the borough [of Chester], there was generally fixed on one side of the large, open fireplaces a hook, so that, when a man’s wife indulged in her scolding propensities, the husband sent of the town jailor to bring the bridle, and had her chained to the hook until she promised to behave herself better for the future… I have often heard husbands say to their wives, “If you don’t rest with your tongue, I’ll send for the bridle and hook you up.”

Ouch. I suggest using soap instead: this dispenses with the need to have the wife chained to the wall, so that she is free to cook supper, clean the house, and do all the rest of her wifely duties, in silence.

That said, the idea of a punishment device being part of the interior in many houses, fixed at the side of a fire-place, as commonplace as the fireplace itself – I find this idea unbearably hot. I’d rather this was a peg on which there hangs a traditional strap, cut in a shape passed down through generations.

I also like the idea of summoning a town official to deliver a punishment.

If I were a young wife threatened with the shame of being handed over to such a man, I would be very, very good, giving in to quite a few of my husbands unusual demands…