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 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 this." In short, Hume
had only made a pretext of complying with the proposal, in order to have
an opportunity of reviling the Judges to their faces, or giving them, in
the phrase of his country, "a sloan." He was hurried off amid the
laughter of the audience, but the indecorous scene which had taken place
contributed to the abolition of the office of Dempster. The sentence is
now read over by the clerk of court