Slave Tortures: The Mask, Scold's Bridle, or Brank

Scold's bridle, iron muzzle once used to punish women, for sale on eBay

Scold's Bridle Mask which partially covers face | Science Museum Group Collection

This #InternationalWomensDay we're highlighting the horrific treatment women have had to go through, and continue to go through, to have their voices heard. This video, put together by The Acorns Project and the brilliant Dr Catherine Gill, looks at a particularly grim item from our collection, the Scold's Bridle, a barbaric device used to literally silence 'unruly' women. If only the women subjected to this could know that centuries later a woman would be writing this and posting a female lectu

The scold’s bridle, also known as a brank, was a punitive device used primarily in Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries to publicly humiliate and silence women, accused of gossiping or speaking out of turn. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the offenses of being a scold, a whore, or a witch were considered equally severe. During this period, female speech was often disparaged as ‘yapping’ or ‘barking,’. The primary goal of the scold’s bridle was to suppress women’s speech and maintain societ