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.
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