Common scold

In the common law of crime in England and Wales, a common scold was a type of public nuisance—a troublesome and angry person who broke the public peace by habitually chastising, arguing, and quarrelling with their neighbours. Most punished for scolding were women, though men could be found to be scolds.

The offence, which carried across in the English colonisation of the Americas, was punished by fines and public humiliation: dunking (being arm-fastened into a chair and dunked into a river or pond); parading through the street; being put in the scold's bridle (branks) or the stocks. Selling bad bread or bad ale was also punished in these ways in some parts of England in medieval centuries.

None of the physical punishments is known to have been administered (such as by magistrates) since an instance in 1817 that involved a wheeling through the streets. Washington D.C. authorities imposed a fine against a writer against clerics, declared a common scold, in 1829. The offence and punishment were abolished in England and Wales in 1967, and formally in New Jersey in 1972.