Drowning pit

A drowning pit, drowning pool, murder-pool or murder hole (not to be confused with defensive murder holes) was a well or pond specifically for executing women and girls (for males the dule tree or gibbet was used) under Scottish feudal laws. Rivers or lochans were used if conveniently situated near to a moot hill, where the baronial court dempster would announce the death penalty. The term fossa was also used, as in the phrase furca and fossa.

Introduction

Drowning pits came into legal use after it was enacted, at the parliament assembled in Forfar in 1057 by King Malcolm Canmore, that every baron should sink a well or pit for the drowning of women. The term murder hole sometimes relates to these formal drowning sites. Bones have been found close to some of these sites, suggesting that the corpses were buried close by and not in hallowed ground.

Some drowning pits had ladders down which the condemned person had to climb; the ladder was then withdrawn. At other sites hurdles were used to hold the condemned woman below the water. Many moot hill sites are or were surrounded by water or were situated at the edge of a body of water, such as Mugdock, Mound Wood near Auchentiber, the Court Hill at the Hill of Beith, and Hutt Knowe at Bonshaw. Some accounts mention the victim having a stone tied around her neck, or being tied up in a sack and dropped into the pool.