EASTER MONDAY · APRIL 18 MMXXII · PRINTED IN LENDERT · THREEPENCE
„Why insist on Court Suits at Court?” — A. C. Percive, Kt.
OUTSIDE the courthouses of every county when the Eyre comes around, there appear forth a familiar cluster of signs and posters advertising one thing—court suits. A man seeking to further the cause of justice is forced to procure himself a suit of breeches and tailcoat cut in the regulated court style. Of course, he must also dress up in the arcane white stockings and buckled court shoes and put on the stiff shirt and waistcoat before he is admitted into the courtroom to discharge his duties, whether as a juryman or witness, or to plead his case or defend himself.
Indeed, every person attending Court is forced to participate in this rigmarole in the shaky justification that it affords a necessary level of ceremony and dignity to the King’s courts of law. We may, however, ask why ceremony and dignity need be uncomfortable and impractical. Gentlemen may cut fine figures in court suits attending the King’s lever, or Parliament, or an opera or the races, but no doubt many would wish it were not always necessary on every occasion of little ceremony. It is still the more worse for the ordinary man who must contend with the unfamiliar items of dress while discharging his legal duties and obligations.
The cost is itself also an absurdity. I have heard stories of hire shops charging country peasants seeking the King’s right over 10 shillings for an old, ill-fitting court suit. Witnesses are routinely lured to attend through „court dress allowances” as a way of skirting around the rule against rewarding witnesses for testimony. Instead, such „allowances” are inflated beyond reason, far above the actual cost of hire, supposedly to compensate for being forced to sit for hours in the notoriously uncomfortable costume. Is this justice?
Indeed, every person attending Court is forced to participate in this rigmarole in the shaky justification that it affords a necessary level of ceremony and dignity to the King’s courts of law. We may, however, ask why ceremony and dignity need be uncomfortable and impractical. Gentlemen may cut fine figures in court suits attending the King’s lever, or Parliament, or an opera or the races, but no doubt many would wish it were not always necessary on every occasion of little ceremony. It is still the more worse for the ordinary man who must contend with the unfamiliar items of dress while discharging his legal duties and obligations.
The cost is itself also an absurdity. I have heard stories of hire shops charging country peasants seeking the King’s right over 10 shillings for an old, ill-fitting court suit. Witnesses are routinely lured to attend through „court dress allowances” as a way of skirting around the rule against rewarding witnesses for testimony. Instead, such „allowances” are inflated beyond reason, far above the actual cost of hire, supposedly to compensate for being forced to sit for hours in the notoriously uncomfortable costume. Is this justice?