The Humiliating Punishment They Used on Women in the Freezing Cold
In 1678, a Scottish woman named Isabel Young spent 24 hours chained to a church wall in the middle of January. Her neck locked in iron, her body freezing, her bladder failing publicly as her neighbors watched. Her crime? She argued that feeding starving children was more important than observing the Sabbath.
The worst part is that the same priests who preached mercy on Sunday were the ones who locked the collar around her throat on Monday. She was just one of an estimated 10,000 Scottish women tortured this way. And these torture devices are still hanging in churches across Scotland today with the victims’ names still engraved on them.
By the end of this story, you’ll understand why historians tried to bury this story for 300 years. You’ll see the actual iron collars. You’ll learn the names of the women who wore them. This is the story of the joug, Scotland’s iron collar of shame.
Between 1500 and 1800, across every village and town in Scotland, churches became torture chambers. Not for criminals, not for traitors, but for women who talked too much. Kirk sessions, that’s what they called the church courts, had legal power to punish what they called moral crimes. And here’s the twisted reality.
90% of the people punished for scolding, for fighting, that’s what they called verbal arguments, for gossip, for having a loose tongue, 90% were women. When men argued in the street, the Kirk session called it passionate debate. When women did the exact same thing, they called it a crime.
The punishment was called the joug, an iron collar chained to the church wall or the town market cross. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, always public. Always humiliating. Merchants’ wives wore the joug, bakers, midwives, even wealthy women could end up in iron if they offended the wrong person. Your social class might buy you a shorter sentence, but no woman was truly safe.
The church was supposed to be sanctuary, but for Scottish women it became a prison where your own neighbors, people you’d known your entire life, gathered to watch you suffer. The joug wasn’t just about punishment, it was about making an example. It was about making sure every other woman in that village learned the same lesson.
Your voice is dangerous. Your opinions are crimes. Your silence is required. Let me describe exactly what the joug felt like. Imagine a circle of iron, 10 to 15 lb of solid metal hinged on one side, locked with a padlock on the other. The inside diameter is just wide enough to fit around your neck, but not comfortably, never comfortably.
That collar is attached to a chain 2 ft, maybe 4 if you’re lucky. That chain connects to an iron ring embedded directly into the church wall or the town market cross. You cannot sit. You cannot lie down. You cannot even lean properly because the weight of the collar pulls your head forward and the chain jerks you back.
Within the first hour, your neck starts screaming. Within 2 hours, your shoulders are on fire. By hour three, your legs are shaking because you’ve been standing this entire time. The Kirk session positioned these collars at eye level, so every single person walking past stares directly into your face.
Often they placed the joug right next to the church entrance. That means every Sunday, the entire congregation walks past you. Some churches added bells to the collar, bells that rang with every tiny movement you made. You haven’t eaten properly in hours because you can’t bend forward without the collar cutting into your throat. You’re desperately thirsty, but drinking is almost impossible, and there is no bathroom access.
You soil yourself publicly, in front of your neighbors, in front of your family. The humiliation is the point. The degradation is the goal. And if you were unlucky enough to be collared in winter, like Isabel Young, you’re not just standing in discomfort, you’re fighting hypothermia, frostbite, potential death.
The National Museum of Scotland preserves the Kirk session records. Listen to this actual entry from 1590 in Lanark: “Janet Murdoch, for scolding her neighbor, to stand at the joug 4 hours on market day.”
4 hours for scolding. Look at surviving collars. Those rust stains, that’s where moisture collected, sweat, tears, blood from where the metal cut into skin. Those scratch marks in the wood where the chain attaches. Forensic historians believe those are nail marks from women trying to grip something, anything, to relieve the pressure on their necks.
Let me read you the actual crimes that got women locked in iron. Aberdeen, 1611, Margaret Leslie, her offense, sharp words with her husband in the street. That’s it. She argued with her spouse publicly, 6 hours in the joug. When men argued in the street, the Kirk session called it vigorous debate and sent them home.
Stirling, 1590, Bessie Aitken, her crime, scolding the minister’s wife about poor relief. Let me translate that. Bessie criticized how the church was distributing charity to poor people. She thought they were doing it unfairly, so she said something. The church collared her.
Edinburgh, 1623, Christian Loury, her crime, and I’m reading directly from the record, saying the merchant’s wife bought cloth from traveling tinkers. That was true, by the way. The merchant’s wife had bought cloth from traveling salesmen, but it embarrassed the wealthy family. So Christian spent 3 days in the joug, 3 days. They only removed her for Sunday service, then chained her right back up.
Glasgow, 1634, two women got into a fight over well water access. Both of them were collared at the same time facing each other. For 8 hours they had to stand there locked in iron staring at each other’s humiliation.
You see the pattern. This isn’t about volume. It’s not about rudeness or disruption. Look at what these women actually did. They disagreed with husbands. They criticized authority. They embarrassed wealthy families. They fought over resources. The joug was about controlling what women said, to whom, and about what. Especially when they challenged men, authority figures, or people with power.
Professor Louise Yeoman analyzed hundreds of Kirk session records. Her research revealed that 70% of scold charges involved women criticizing church leaders or civic officials. This wasn’t about keeping the peace. This was about keeping women powerless.
But my favorite example, and by favorite I mean most absurd, happened in Perth in 1605. A woman was collared for 2 hours because she laughed too loudly during market day. The male witness who reported her testified, and this is a direct quote, “that her laughter disturbed the peace and dignity of godly commerce.”
Godly commerce. She laughed too loud while people were shopping, 2 hours in iron.
But one woman fought back against the joug. And what happened next actually changed Scottish law. Her name was Margaret, and her crime was so common that every woman has probably done it at some point. She defended herself. Let me tell you about the real women who wore these collars because they weren’t just statistics. They had names, lives, families.
Helen Guthrie, Forfar, 1661. Helen’s neighbor stole her hen. In a time when one chicken could mean the difference between eating and starving, that mattered. So Helen accused her neighbor publicly. The Kirk session collared Helen for 12 hours on market day. And here’s the gut punch. Later, the neighbor confessed. She had stolen the hen. The Kirk session’s response to Helen? Nothing. No apology. No compensation. Just this note in their records: “Better 10 honest women shamed than one guilty go free.”
Read that again. Better to torture 10 innocent women than risk one guilty person escaping. But Helen’s story is nothing compared to Isabel Young.
Dunfermline, 1678, January, Isabel got into an argument with another woman about Sabbath observance. The other woman insisted that no work could be done on Sunday ever for any reason. Isabel argued that feeding starving children was more important than strict Sabbath rules. The Kirk session sided with the strict interpretation. 24 hours in the joug, overnight, in January.
Think about that. Scotland in January, freezing temperatures. Isabel standing outside all day, all night, all the next day. The iron collar conducting cold directly into her body. No shelter, no warmth, no relief. She survived, barely. The Dunfermline Abbey records include medical notation: “Isabel Young lost three toes to frostbite.”
Permanent damage. For the rest of her life, every step reminded her of the price she paid for having an opinion about religion.
But wait, because I told you about a woman named Margaret who fought back. Here’s her story. Margaret Hutchison, Edinburgh, 1692. Margaret was a widow. She ran a small bakery, her only income. The local bailiff came to collect taxes she couldn’t afford. When she couldn’t pay, he seized her bread oven. Without that oven, she couldn’t work. Without work, she’d starve.
So Margaret did what any of us would do, she protested, loudly, publicly. She called the bailiff unfair. She called the tax collection corrupt. 3 days in the joug, removed only at night. But here’s where Margaret’s story becomes important. She refused to apologize.
“Apologize and we’ll release you,” they said on day one.
She refused.
“Just apologize,” they said on day two.
She refused.
Day three, the community started bringing her food, covering her with blankets at night, standing with her. The bailiff, facing public pressure for the first time, eventually reduced her debt. She got her oven back. Margaret Hutcheson’s resistance became the first documented case of community pressure actually working against the Kirk Session’s authority.
But the suffering she endured and the suffering of thousands like her left permanent scars. Physical scars, neck abrasions that never fully healed, permanent circulation damage, nerve problems from hours of compression, social scars. Once you’d been collared, you were marked, forever known as a troublemaker, your reputation destroyed. Economic scars, lost work days meant lost income. For women already living on the edge, that could mean starvation.
Today, the National Museum Scotland preserves 23 surviving jougs. Each one has provenance. Each one has a history. At Duddingston Kirk in Edinburgh, there’s an iron collar with scratches inside. Deep scratches. Forensic analysis suggests they’re fingernail marks. A woman, we don’t know her name, we don’t know her crime, we have no record of her fate, tried to pry that collar off her own neck with her bare hands. Clawing at solid iron, the desperation in those scratch marks is haunting.
Let me show you what those church records reveal when you actually analyze them. Same crime, same offense, wildly different sentences. Woman A scolds her neighbor, 2 hours. Woman B scolds her neighbor, 2 days. What’s the difference? Woman A’s complaint was against someone poor. Woman B’s complaint was against the minister’s cousin.
Selective enforcement, minister’s relatives never punished. Wealthy merchants’ wives, rarely collared, usually fined instead. Poor women. Punished repeatedly, harshly, publicly. And here’s the damning detail. Punishments increased dramatically during periods of social unrest. When communities were restless, when people were questioning authority, suddenly more women found themselves in jougs.
The joug wasn’t justice. It was terror. Think about the psychological warfare at play here. The entire community watches. Your humiliation is public. Your shame is shared. That creates a culture of silence more effective than any law ever could because it’s not just you being punished. Every woman watching learns the lesson. Speaking up has consequences. Challenging authority gets you chained. Silence keeps you safe.
Daughters watched their mothers collared. Imagine being a 10-year-old girl standing in that crowd watching your mother locked in iron for arguing about food prices. What does that teach you about your voice? About your worth? About your right to speak? Generational trauma passed down through fear. And women started policing each other because if you reported your neighbor first, maybe you’d stay safe. Maybe you’d avoid suspicion. The Kirk Session turned women against each other.
But there’s another dimension to this torture that historians rarely discuss because the original records censored it. The sexual dimension. Women in the joug couldn’t maintain modesty. They urinated publicly. They menstruated publicly. The heavy iron collar tore necklines causing exposure. And the records mention, always briefly, always vaguely, men tormenting collared women. The details were considered too disturbing to record fully, but we know it happened. The degradation was the point. The vulnerability was intentional. This was about stripping women of dignity along with voice.
So when did this finally end? The 1730s, Scottish Enlightenment thinkers started criticizing Kirk Session powers. Philosophers like David Hume argued that church courts had too much authority over civil matters. 1747, the Heritable Jurisdictions Act reduced church court authority after the Jacobite uprising. Political change started chipping away at religious control.
But here’s what’s shocking. The last documented uses of the joug happened in the early 1800s. Some churches kept them mounted until the 1860s as a warning. Why so long? Because the church resisted losing control over moral behavior. Because men in power benefited from silent, compliant women. And because every time someone tried to abolish the practice, defenders used the same argument: “But it’s tradition.”
Finally, in 1857, Scottish legal reforms abolished church courts’ punitive powers. The jougs were ordered removed from public display, but many churches kept them anyway. Today, right now, in 2026, at least 15 churches across Scotland still display jougs as historical artifacts. Some of them still have victim names engraved on plaques nearby. Tourism boards call them fascinating glimpses into medieval justice. Feminist historians call them what they are, evidence of systematic oppression.
And here’s the detail that haunts me. At Duddingston Kirk, the church with the scratched collar I mentioned earlier, they display the joug openly. Tourists take photos with it. Children touch it. No one knows the name of the woman who left those scratch marks. No records survives of her fate. She’s just gone, erased. Her suffering preserved in metal, but her identity lost forever.
The joug may be gone from active use, but the impulse to silence women’s voices never fully disappeared. It just found new forms. 10,000 women. That’s the conservative estimate based on surviving records from only 15% of Scottish parishes. The real number is likely much higher. Average duration, 6 to 8 hours, but some women endured days.
The effects lasted lifetimes. Physical scars, social stigma, economic ruin, psychological trauma passed down through generations. But here’s why this history matters right now, today, in 2026. When a woman speaks up in a meeting and gets told she’s too aggressive, that’s tone policing. When a woman posts an opinion online and receives threats, that’s digital silencing. When a woman reports harassment and gets labeled difficult, that’s professional punishment.
The methods change, the goal remains the same. Silence women, control women, punish women for having voices. We don’t chain women to church walls anymore. We’ve evolved past that barbarism. But we still tell women to smile more, to speak softer, to be less intimidating, to stay in their lane.
Her name was Helen. Her crime was speaking. Her punishment was silence.
Her name was Isobel. Her crime was compassion. Her punishment was frostbite.
Her name was Margaret. Her crime was resistance. Her punishment was 3 days in iron.
And thousands more whose names we’ll never know. The iron collar of shame doesn’t hang around women’s necks anymore, but the weight of it, the message of it, that’s still here. So let me ask you this. What would you have been collared for in 1600s Scotland? Disagreeing with your boss? Defending a friend? Speaking your mind? Laughing too loudly?
Their voices were silenced. Yours doesn’t have to be.
