ONE of the Victoria Park museum's prized acquisitions was photographed outside: the wife-taming cradle of the Keighley Hen-Pecked Club!

This had been founded in the 1860s by landlord Henry Hargreaves Thompson of the Royal Oak Inn at Damside, colloquially Harry Tap.

The club rules, couched in the language of the friendly societies of the time, instructed its members to "work from six o'clock in the morning till nine at night, and fetch the various articles required for household management", go to bed at ten o'clock and get up early to "make everything ready for the reception of his wife".

"All the money which the utmost efforts of our industry can realise," ran one edict, "shall be at our wives' disposal, for the purpose of pleasure trips to Morecambe Bay, or any other place".

Any member – fulfilling the rules but unfairly nagged – could apply for the loan of the cradle, six feet long by two feet wide on circular rockers, wherein his cross wife could be fastened and rocked.

It must be most emphatically stressed that this was all in fun, and there is no record of it ever being used.

The cradle can now be seen in Cliffe Castle.