WHY LAWYERS WEAR WIGS
Charles II spent much of his time in exile in the French Court where King Louis and his courtiers wore wigs. When he returned wearing a wig the aristocracy and middle classes quickly followed. [1] They didn’t come cheap. Samuel Pepys paid £3 for his first periwig in November 1663, about what it cost to buy a whole new outfit of clothes. [2]
Nowadays phone theft is rife, but in the early 18th century the wealthy risked having their wigs stolen in the street. A boy would hide in a basket carried on a man’s head or shoulders and snatch a wig as they passed. The poet John Gay warned of exactly this in Trivia (1716):
High on the shoulders in a basket borne
Lurks the sly boy, whose hand, to rapine bred,
Plucks off the curling honours of thy head. [3]
Lawyers took some convincing. Portraits of judges from the early 1680s still show them with their own hair, and wigs were not adopted wholesale until around 1685, some 25 years after Charles II’s return. [4]
Wigs fell out of fashion in 1795 when the government required anyone using hair powder to buy an annual certificate costing one guinea. [5] [6] The lawyers kept their wigs regardless.
“Licenc’d to wear hair powder!!”, a hand-coloured etching mocking the hair powder tax, published by S. W. Fores, 1 June 1795. British Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
Since 2008, judges in England and Wales have worn wigs only in criminal cases. [7] Whether barristers wear wigs depends on the court, under guidance agreed between the Bar Council and the judges, though the judge in each case has the final say. [8]
The tradition has defenders well beyond Britain. In 2017, the German Federal Bar voted by 70 to 2 to keep the rule that lawyers must wear robes in court. [9] When British barristers were surveyed in 2007, two-thirds wanted to keep their wigs, arguing that court dress lends authority and helps keep lawyers anonymous. [10] In 2020 the Lord Chief Justice made the same point about judges passing sentence. [11]
Hear more stories like this on our Legal London walking tour of the Royal Courts of Justice and the Inns of Court.
Sources
[1] Pepys Diary encyclopedia, “Periwig”
[2] Royal Collection Trust, James II
[3] John Gay, Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716); see also Atlas Obscura
[4] Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, “History of Court Dress”
[5] Our Warwickshire, hair powder certificates
[6] Samuel Marknäs, “Casting Off Powder: The Death of the Powdered Wig and Birth of British Sartorial Modernity, 1795–1812”, MA thesis, Uppsala University, 2021 – diva-portal.org
[7] Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, “Modern Court Dress”
[8] Bar Council, “Update on court dress and wigs guidance”
[9] Dispute Resolution in Germany
[10] Missouri Lawyers Media, December 2007
[11] Legal Cheek, November 2020