The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

NOTE N.—Doomster, or Dempster, of Court.
The name of this officer is equivalent to the pronouncer
of doom or sentence. In this comprehensive sense, the
Judges of the Isle of Man were called Dempsters. But
in Scotland the word was long restricted to the designation
of an official person, whose duty it was to recite
the sentence after it had been pronounced by the Court,
and recorded by the clerk; 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, as
mentioned in the text, was held in commendam with
that of the executioner; for when this odious but necessary
officer of justice received his appointment, he petitioned
the Court of Justiciary to be received as their
Dempster, which was granted as a matter of course.
The production of the executioner in open court, and
in presence of the wretched criminal, had something in
it hideous and disgusting to the more refined feelings of
later times. But if an old tradition of the Parliament
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House of Edinburgh may be trusted, it was the following
anecdote 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 the party who generally
held the office, it is not wonderful that a locum tenens
was hard to be found. At length, one Hume, who
had been sentenced to transportation, for an attempt
to burn his own house, was induced to consent that he
would pronounce the doom on this occasion. But when
brought forth to officiate, instead of repeating the doom
to the criminal, Mr. Hume addressed himself to their
lordships in a bitter complaint of the injustice of his
own sentence. It was in vain that he was interrupted,
and reminded of the purpose for which he had come
hither; “I ken what ye want of me weel eneugh,” said
the fellow, “ye want me to be your Dempster; but I am
come to be none of your Dempster, I am come to summon
you, Lord T, and you, Lord E, to answer at the bar
of another world for the injustice you have done me in