A weigh house or weighing house is a public building at or within which goods, and the like, are weighed. Most of these buildings were built before 1800, prior to the establishment of international standards for weights. As public control of the weight of goods was very important, they were run by local authorities who would also use them for the levying of taxes on goods transported through or sold within the city. Therefore, weigh houses would often be near a market square or town centre.
Between 1550 and about 1690 people accused of witchcraft were at times brought to a weigh house in order to be subjected to a "witch test". If a person was found to be lighter than a set weight, he or she was deemed guilty. This is similar to the use of a ducking stool.
Weigh houses were especially common in the Netherlands, Germany, where they are called waag and waage respectively (both meaning "scale") and Poland (smatruz, in Krakow and Poznan). Outside the Netherlands and Germany the public weighing usually didn't take place in a special building, but in a town hall, guild hall, courthouse, or the like.
Read more about Weigh House: Weigh Houses in Belgium, Weigh Houses in Germany
Famous quotes containing the words weigh and/or house:
“O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)