A scold’s bridle was a particularly unpleasant form of punishment. A woman would have been forced to sit in full view of the other in mates wearing the bridle which prevented her from speaking. Pupils would have to stand at the back of the class wearing a hat saying ‘dunce’ as a punishment. Teachers nowadays are nicer than the ones them days they used to beat their pupils to tell them that they had to behave. Children who didn’t want to be caned on their hands got caned on their back instead and out of all the school them days a girl called Sarah got over 80 a day.
Sometimes the punishments never got to them they just kept talking and talking the teacher warned then if they said a word without their teacher telling them to they would get 4 canes. A punishment for teachers was that they had to wear scolds in front of their class and their children would be forced to laugh at them to make them feel bad! Men and sometimes women would have to reel a wooden stick 1050 times non –stop. People were hung for either stealing assault. Children were put in a stock or a table learning their spellings as they had being learning them for a certain year and at the end of the school they should have known them.
In their cells they had a rusty bed and a mattress about a pinkie thick a thin blanket and a bowl underneath the bed.
