Origin of the Judge’s Black Cap
The practice of our Judges in putting on a Black Cap when they condemn a criminal to death will be found, on consideration, to have a deep and sad significance. Covering the head was in ancient days a sign of mourning. “Haman hastened to his house, mourning and having his head covered.” (Esther vi. 12). In like manner Demosthenes, when insulted by the populace, went home with his head covered. “And David... wept as he went up, and had his head covered;... and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” (2 Samuel xv. 20.) Darius, too, covered his head on learning the death of his Queen. But among ourselves we find traces of a similar mode of expressing grief at funerals. The mourners had the hood “drawn forward over the head.” (Fosbroke, Encyc. of Antiq., p. 951). Indeed, the hood drawn forward thus over the head is still part of the mourning habiliment of women when they follow the corpse. And with this it should be borne in mind that, as far back as the time of Chaucer, the most usual colour of mourning was black. Atropos also, who held the fatal scissors which cut short the life of man, was clothed in black. When, therefore, the Judge puts on the black cap, it is a very significant as well as solemn procedure. He puts on mourning, for he is about to pronounce the forfeit of a life. And, accordingly, the act itself, the putting on of the black cap, is generally understood to be significant. It intimates that the Judge is about to pronounce no merely registered or suppositious sentence; in the very formula of condemnation he has put himself in mourning for the convicted culprit, as for a dead man. The criminal is then left for execution, and, unless mercy exerts its sovereign prerogative, suffers the sentence of the law. The mourning cap expressly indicates his doom.—Notes and Queries.