by Walter Scott
NOTE N.--Doomster, or Dempster, of Court.
The name of this officer is equivalent to the pronouncer of doom orsentence. In this comprehensive sense, the Judges of the Isle of Man werecalled Dempsters. But in Scotland the word was long restricted to thedesignation of an official person, whose duty it was to recite thesentence after it had been pronounced by the Court, and recorded by theclerk; on which occasion the Dempster legalised it by the words of form,"_And this I pronounce for doom._" For a length of years, the office, asmentioned in the text, was held in commendam with that of theexecutioner; for when this odious but necessary officer of justicereceived his appointment, he petitioned the Court of Justiciary to bereceived as their Dempster, which was granted as a matter of course.
The production of the executioner in open court, and in presence of thewretched criminal, had something in it hideous and disgusting to the morerefined feelings of later times. But if an old tradition of theParliament House of Edinburgh may be trusted, it was the followinganecdote which occasioned the disuse of the Dempster's office.
It chanced at one time that the office of public executioner was vacant.There was occasion for some one to act as Dempster, and, considering theparty who generally held the office, it is not wonderful that a locumtenens was hard to be found. At length, one Hume, who had been sentencedto transportation, for an attempt to burn his own house, was induced toconsent that he would pronounce the doom on this occasion. But whenbrought forth to officiate, instead of repeating the doom to thecriminal, Mr. Hume addressed himself to their lordships in a bittercomplaint of the injustice of his own sentence. It was in vain that hewas interrupted, and reminded of the purpose for which he had comehither; "I ken what ye want of me weel eneugh," said the fellow, "ye wantme to be your Dempster; but I am come to be none of your Dempster, I amcome to summon you, Lord T, and you, Lord E, to answer at the bar ofanother world for the injustice you have done me in this." In short, Humehad only made a pretext of complying with the proposal, in order to havean opportunity of reviling the Judges to their faces, or giving them, inthe phrase of his country, "a sloan." He was hurried off amid thelaughter of the audience, but the indecorous scene which had taken placecontributed to the abolition of the office of Dempster. The sentence isnow read over by the clerk of court, and the formality of pronouncingdoom is altogether omitted.
[The usage of calling the Dempster into court by the ringing of ahand-bell, to repeat the sentence on a criminal, is said to have beenabrogated in March 1773.]
