Bradford & District | Archive | 2004 | February | 6
From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Friday 6th Feb 2004.
Photographed outside the Keighley Museum while still occupying the Mansion House, in Victoria Park, this is no ordinary cradle but a vital relic of the Keighley Hen-Pecked Club.
A manifestation of local Victorian humour, the Hen-Pecked Club was founded by Henry Hargreaves Thompson, better known as Harry Tap, landlord of the Royal Oak Inn, at Damside. Its rules required members to "work from six o'clock in the morning till nine at night and fetch the various articles required for household management", get up early and "make everything ready for the reception of his wife", treat her to "pleasure trips to Morecambe Bay, or any other place", and generally "do whate'er thy wife shall tell thee."
If, however, despite fulfilling all these conditions, a member was unjustly scolded by his wife, he could apply to the club for the loan of this "wife-taming cradle", in which she could be given a sound rocking!
Of course, it was all in fun, for there is no record of anybody actually using it, though the cradle was displayed each summer on the day of the Keighley Agricultural Show -- in 1864 it appeared "in an elevated position" with "a man's effigy" so contrived as to keep it rocking.
By the time Harry Tap died in 1877, respectably married and owner of the White Horse Brewery, in Halifax Road, the Keighley Hen-Pecked Club had disbanded.
© Newsquest Media Group 2008