Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, Living or Dead, is Purely Coincidental

The small town of T counts just 2900 inhabitants. Actual it’s not more than a village, with a limited number of shops, one restaurant and two pubs. As always in such a small, close-knit community, everyone knows each other and this provides an excellent breeding ground for the gossip circuit, an activity that every woman engages in. This has always been, and certainly will ever be, despite efforts of officials to curb the spread of rumors and scandals, sometimes referring to moral principles, but more often with hard measures. For example, the small museum of T has a remarkable instrument on display with which in the past the local authorities used to combat the greatest excesses of spreading gossip and backbiting: a scold's bridle.

The device is an iron muzzle in an iron framework that encloses the head. Once the scold's bridle over the head, the woman who, according to the people's tribunal, had committed unacceptable behavior was led through the town to be humiliated and degraded.

The rare tourists who visit T (the history museum in the Guildhall, the mill and the parish church are the only and not very impressive local highlights) usually react with a mixture of fascination and horror when the metal artifact is shown to them. They are told the bridle-bit was slid into the mouth and explained it pressed down on top of the tongue as a compress. In this specific case the gag is pear-shaped at the end, a bulge that not only would fill the mouth of the scold completely, but also features sharp tips that protruded into the soft flesh of the tongue, throat, and palate in order to prevent speaking. Also this gag would result in many unpleasant side effects for the wearer, including excessive drooling. The pain and humiliation appropriately reminded the wearer of her violation of the standards imposed by morals and Christianity. It should be noted that those who were punished for gossip by use of the bridle were in particular those women who were also accused of promiscuous behavior, especially cheating wives or those who secretly or even openly engaged in prostitution. In short: those girls and women who were considered to be whores. Therefore in T it was common to refer to these women not only as “scold queens” but also “mouth whores”.