Wigless Canadians

Occasionally we get questions about the history of judicial attire in the common law tradition, including the curious topic of the wig. We came across the following post in the blog archives, written by a former staff member on this very subject. Happy reading!

*Post originally published circa 2015*

One of the most enduring myths of the legal profession in Canada is that our lawyers and judges once wore wigs. After all, we are indebted to England for our legal system, many of our legal institutions and traditions and most of our legal wear. So why not the wig?

I boldly set out to find out why, only to realise that there is plenty out there about why people wear wigs but not so much about why they don’t. I hate to throw out perfectly good research so I’ll share what I have. The conclusions will be yours. Let’s call it interactive history.

Wigs and the English courts

Despite its association to the English bench and bar, wigs were not always part of legal dress in the cradle of common law. In fact, if forgetting your wig can land you in hot water in some courtrooms today, wearing one would have had similar results in the early 1600s. Barristers and judges were wearing a variety of head coverings but long or curled hair was considered extravagant and frivolous. Several of the Inns of Court prohibited the fashion on pain of heavy fines.

When Louis XIII of France decided to adopt long hair, he sparked a movement that quickly spread to his court and the fashion-conscious. The wave crossed the Channel to be picked up by trendsetting barristers. The fines were unable to contain the tide. Not only were wigs fashionable, they addressed some of the deficiencies of the time: the lack of heat and running water. They were warm and as wearers shaved their head to wear them, they simplified grooming. Wigs also hid many faults such as baldness, scalp conditions and, horror of horrors, red hair. Such was the fad that some used the hair cut off to wear a wig to make a second wig! Despite some residual resistance, they became mandatory professionally and socially. From kings to valets, everyone wore wigs. By the late 1600s they were generally worn in the courts of justice.

By the late 1700s wigs were getting smaller or were dropped altogether. Two events sealed their fate: the French Revolution in 1789 and a tax on hair powder in 1795. The first led to major changes to the political order but also to fashion. Dress became more distinctly gendered and sumptuous signs of rank such as precious fabrics, lace and wigs for men were replaced by dark suits and short natural hair. Early wigs were made of human hair in natural colours. But by the 1700s they became more stylised and a bleached look was obtained by applying pomatum, a perfumed mixture based on animal fat, dusted with powder. This was murder on clothes (the QC rosette is a remnant of hair bags used to protect clothes from pomatum and powder), but it was very attractive for a government looking for revenues.

In 1824, an author in The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository stated that the days of glory of those “illustrious envelopes of the mental faculties” and “hirsute cataracts” were over. Wigs disappeared from fashionable circles and were eventually abandoned by most of the professions that had hung on to them: the clergy, physicians, and the military. Some jurists tried to drop the wig but it was frowned upon unless one had powerful friends.

The Canadian story

So why didn’t Canadian lawyers and judges wear wigs? Actually, I should qualify that. Early Nova Scotia judges appear on portraits with wigs, although the last such portrait dates from 1833. The Admiralty Court in British Columbia, under Justice Archer Martin, featured wigs until 1940. Ontario lawyers who appeared at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England also had to wear wigs, even though the members of the Committee didn’t. The sister of Margaret Hyndman, the first woman to appear before the Council, recalls that her sister, who had very long hair, had managed to stuff it all under her wig, only to be told that wigs would be optional that day because of the heat. She kept it on.

Hot and humid Ontario summers are in fact one of the popular hypothesis for the wigless status of our lawyers and judges. Are Ontario lawyers less rugged than their bewigged colleagues in Barbados, Nigeria and Hong Kong? US courts dropped the wig after the Revolution but we understand that they’d want to do away with such blatant British symbols. We had no such excuse. What then?

Perhaps it was mostly a question of timing. The Ontario legal system started to differentiate itself from Quebec’s British-French hybrid in the late 1700s. You’ll remember that these were the dying days of wigs in the general population. Most of the courts in those days were headed by lay judges and officers not entitled to wigs of office. When the Law Society was created in 1797, its founders and early members were all quite young (read hip) and had generally not been trained in England if they had legal training at all. None of these people were likely to be wearing wigs in public or in court. Add to that the cost of importing wigs, the daily care required to maintain them and the fact that judges, staff and lawyers had to travel across wild territories to hold court. You can imagine that wigs were not at the top of their packing list. Paradoxically, the adoption of wigs in BC bolsters (somewhat) my hunches as to why they were not embraced in Ontario. British Columbia was established significantly later, at the other end of the continent and as a British Crown colony. Its attachment to all things British included driving on the left side of the road and the absence of the Monday morning newspaper. When BC’s justice system was formalized, lay practitioners were replaced by British legal professionals who followed the traditions of the motherland. John Cleland Hamilton in 1904 commentated that: “The dignity of the Bench is there very assertive…” Wigs were not outdated fashion accessories to these men. They were an essential part of their professional identity.

BC judges and lawyers also benefitted from key advances in wig technology: in 1822 a patent was issued for a maintenance-free “forensic wig.” Made of white horse hair and its curls tied, it didn’t require the use of pomatum or powder and its curls were permanent. The forensic wig is what British barristers wear to this day.

Wigs became optional in BC in the late 1800s, but few took advantage of the new rules. In 1905, the legislature banned wigs outright. Only Justice Archer Martin, arguing that the Admiralty Court was a court of federal jurisdiction and therefore exempt, resisted the measure.

On the way out… or not

Since then wigs have been losing ground around the world, Great Britain included. Some barristers and judges remain fiercely attached to them. Wigs are important to the dignity of the courts they argue and, especially in the criminal courts, they provide a degree of anonymity. Hong Kong is particularly attached to wigs as they represent the uniqueness of the city within China and the independence of its judiciary and Bar. A battle is raging there between solicitors, who can now appear in some of the courts, and barristers for the right to wear them. Solicitors fear that their lack of wig will make them look like lesser advocates. The real victims in this argument are court staff, who watch the exchange with chattering teeth, in courthouses conditioned for the comfort of jurists wearing heavy gowns and wigs.

Selected Sources

“Acts of the General Assembly of His Majesty’s Province of New Brunswick, 1827”, Accessed at Canadiana Online.
Murray B. Blok, “A Brief History of Court Attire,” The Advocate, vol. 64, Part 1, January 2006, p. 65 accessed at HeinOnline.
Canadian Law Review, vol. 3, 1904, p. 376
The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository, vol. III, no. 13, 1824, p. 65 Accessed on Early Canadiana Online on June 29, 2015.
Te-Ping Chen, Allison Morrow, “Wigged-out: Hong Kong’s Lawyers Bristly over Horsehair Headpieces,” The Wall Street Journal, Accessed at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324743704578444422350608136 on June 25, 2015.
“Court Dress,” Lord Chancellor’s Department, accessed at http://www.lcd.gov.uk in May 2003.
“Court insisted on wearing a wig,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, Aug. 26, 1905, p. 12 accessed on Google News, June 23, 2015
Ede and Ravenscroft, “The Evolution of Judicial Head Dress,” About Us section, accessed at www.edeandravenscroft.co.uk/about-us/History_Of_Legal_4.htm on July 26, 2007
John Cordy Jeaffreson, Pleasantries of English Courts and Lawyers, New York: James Cockroft, 1876 accessed on HeinOnline, June 17, 2015
The Legal News, vol. 18, no. 20, Oct. 15, 1895, p. 318
Susan Lewthwaite, “Superior Court on Autumn Circuit,” The Law Society of Upper Canada website, accessed at http://www.lsuc.on.ca/with.aspx?id=372 on June 25, 2015.
John McLaren, Hamar Foster, “Hard choices and sharp edges: the legal history of British Columbia and the Yukon,” Essays in the History of Canadian Law, vol. VI, Hamar Foster and John McLaren eds., Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Legal History, 1995.
“The making of wigs,” The Legal News, vol. 12, no. 6 (feb. 9, 1889), p. 47, 48. Accessed June 19, 2015 at http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_04844_578/7?r=0&s=1
Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario Lawyers, 1797 – 1997, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997
Harry Mount, “Good riddance to barristers’ wigs – they’re pompous, pointless and itchy,” The Telegraph, November 22nd, 2011, accessed at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harrymount/100058195/good-riddance-to-barristers-wigs-theyre-pompous-pointless-and-itchy/ on June 22, 2015.
Jan Noel, “Defrocking dad: Masculinity and Dress in Montreal 1700 – 1867,” Fashion: A Canadian Perspective, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004
“Professional Costume,” Canada Law Journal, vol. 36, p. 301, 1900
Jean-Baptiste Thiers, Histoire des Perruques, Avignon: Louis Chambeau, 1777. Accessed on June 19, 2015 at https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_NBqfb3ZHjL8C
Victoria Daily Colonist, April 23, 1905, p. 8; March 28, 1905, p. 8
“Wig,” Encyclopaedia Americana, Francis Lieber ed. Vol. XIII, Boston: B.B. Mussey & Co., 1854, p. 172. June 19, 2015 at https://books.google.ca/books?id=h5VRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thomas Woodcock, Legal Habit: A Brief sartorial History of the Wig, Robe and Gown, Ede and Ravenscroft, 2003
Justice John de P. Wright “Gowns” cited in “Traditions and anecdotes,” accessed at http://www.courts.ns.ca/history/anecdotes.htm, May 17, 2007
Charles M. Yablon, “Judicial Drag: An Essay on Wigs, Robes and Legal Change,” Wisconsin Law Review, 1995, p. 1129 accessed at Hein Online June 23, 2015