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Short Stuff: Wigs in English Court · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. Let's get to it.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Why do you lawyers were wigs in Britain? Go? You
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: know what's funny is when I was researching this, it's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: really funny to me to look at modern pictures of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: these And I don't want to make fun of it,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: but it is funny in two thousand nineteen to look
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: at photos of barristers and judges wearing powdered wigs. Just
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: let me say that out loud before did you just
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: say that out loud? Like you see them outside? There's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: pictures smoking a cigarette on their on their smartphone wearing
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: these wigs, right playing. Um, before we get started, a Chuck,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I want to differentiate between a barrister and a solicitor,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: which I did not know until today actually in difference. Yeah,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I thought maybe one was like a defensive ernie and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: one was a prosecutor like we have here in the US. Um,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that's not the case. A solicitor is like the lawyer
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that you go meet with outside of court, uh and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: maybe advises you on family and children matters, or bankruptcy
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: or divorce or something like that, and then they might
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: negotiate contracts that kind of thing. But then when you're
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: in court, you're represented by a barrister, and the barrister
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: works with the solicitor to understand your case. But it's
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the barrister who's petitioning the court on your behalf. So
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: they're both working like for the people, they're not prosecuting somebody.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But that's the difference. One of the other differences, at
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: least one of the most obvious and apparent differences between
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a barrister and a solicitor is that you don't see
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: solicitors wearing wigs. You do see barristers wearing wigs. So
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: that's a short stuff within a short stuff, the difference
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: between barristers and solicitors everybody. That's just an s s.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It's so short. So to the wigs, there are a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: lot of reasons are called Peruke's um that over the years,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to the whole fashion of the whigs
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in a minute too, but uh, there are several reasons
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: why they wore them to begin with him. While they
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: still might wear them in certain cases. Um one of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the main reasons is to give it a more formal proceeding, um,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: a more solemn proceeding. Another big reason is it's a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: safeguard almost like and that I've seen the word disguise used.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It's very bad disguise because it's just the wig. Oh yeah,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I hadn't noticed that. But in the in criminal court,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: they it's supposedly lends to anonymity, these robes and wigs.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So where if this criminal sees their attorney on the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: street six months later, they might be like, I don't
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: even recognize the guy. He looks familiar, but if only
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: he had a powdered wig on, I might be able
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to knife them in the tube. Can't quite place him.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So uh, that is sort of what they represent. And um,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: they have been a part of the court system over there,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: um not forever, but since what year? Uh, since six
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: five at least. Yeah, previously that they didn't use these wigs,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: which is interesting. It is interesting because at the time
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: wigs were already all the rage in Europe and had
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: been for a few years. But I guess the court
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: system was like, no, we're going to not take part
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in this ridiculous fashion trend. And I guess just portraits
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: from the early sixteen eighties even um just showed like
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: people without wigs on, and then all of a sudden, bam,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: wigs start showing up in the portraits. And they've been
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: there ever since, even long after wiggs fell out of fashion.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I mean wiggs were only fashionable for less than a
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: hundred years, actually far less than a hundred years, No,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: about a hundred years, let's say, And then and then
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: they were gone, and the British court system wherever it
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: popped up around the world, um hung onto these wigs
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: for another like two hundred, three hundred years. Yeah, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: there you know, as far as the whigs themselves, uh,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you can get a little bit of variety, but it's
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: not like you can walk in there with your rainbow
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  Speaker 1: afro wig, um, John. They're generally similar barristers have you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it's a little little frizzed at the top. They have
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the horizontal curls on the side and the back and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: then the very very back the mullet section. You have
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: these two long strips um below the hairline with a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: little looped curl. The the judges themselves have the much
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: more ornate wigs that's more full, um very long, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: super long. These are the one you know. That's how
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you can tell the difference. When you see the the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: dude with a big, huge, full long wig, that's a judge.
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  Speaker 1: When you see the little little one sitting on top,
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  Speaker 1: standing outside the court house with your smartphone and your cigarette,
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  Speaker 1: that's a barrister and the judge. His wig looks very
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: very much like a seventies rocker hair. Do if you
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: step back and look at it? Yeah, like really, I'm
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: trying to think of who, like maybe like a tour
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: manager for led Zeppelin or something like that. All right, maybe,
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  Speaker 1: although he famously did not have long hair, but sure
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: who Phil Graham? He was ball on top? Was that
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: his name? He was the promoter? Okay? Phil Graham was alright,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: well man. He used to stick people up. He would say, like,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: if if you don't give us an extra hundred thousand dollars, uh,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: my boys aren't going on stage, like five minutes before
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: they were supposed to go on. He was pretty legendary
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: piece of work. So as far as the wigs, oh
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: they're expensive. Um. Judges can throw down about three grand
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: on a wig. Um. The barristers may spend anywhere from
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: five hundred to a thousand. These are dollars, not pounds. Yeah, yeah,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and uh, they're made of horsehair. UM. Traditionally have always
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: been made of horse hair if you can afford it. Um,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: just because of tradition. It's not like horse hair is
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: some super valuable thing, but some have been made through
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: other things like goats hair or just cotton, or maybe
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a dead human or or even a live human. Uh.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: At the time, back in the day, humans would donate
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: their long white hair kind of like locks of love.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: But rather than you know, for people who have survived cancer,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: it's for the courts. And rather than for love, it's
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: for money. So it doesn't really bear that much of
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: a resemblance although hair was involved. But the the horse hair,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: it's like you said, it's not prize. It's this tradition.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: That's what they were made out of originally, and that's
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: why they continue to be made out of. UM. But
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that's not to say they're just like thrown together. These
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: are UM remarkably well made where they're supposed to be.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: For for a very long time, they were very well made,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: UM artisan crafted wigs. All right, let's take a break.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: We're gonna come back and talk a little bit more
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  Speaker 1: about the history of these wigs, and while on Earth
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they're still wearing them right after this as why skol
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: definite should ski all right, So the history of wigs here. Uh,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: it may surprise you to know that a big reason
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: these wigs started to be worn is because syphilis was rampant. Yeah,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: it seems like everybody had syphilis. Yeah. And one of
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the things that could happen when you have syphilis, aside
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: from blindness and rashes and dementia and open source as
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: you can lose your hair. So what it maybe unfairly
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: because male pattern baldness is a thing anyway, if you
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: lost your hair and you're a prominent person, but a
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: lot of people probably looked at you and said, well
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: he got syphilis. Yeah. Plus, at the time, long hair
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: on men was very much in fast and that does
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: not go well with syphilis if you're if you're balding.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So wiggs came into play, and they might not have
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: come into play as strongly as they did had it
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: not been for Louis the fourteenth, the King of France,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the same king who um they believe had syphilis, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: he started wearing wigs himself. He reigned from sixteen forty
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: three to seventeen fifteen, and he was a huge trend setter.
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  Speaker 1: So when he started wearing these powdered wigs, everybody started
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: wearing powdered wigs, and not just in France and not
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: just among his court, but in courts and the aristocracy
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and the upper classes of all of Europe, including in England,
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  Speaker 1: which was rained by Charles the Second at the time,
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  Speaker 1: who was the cousin of Louis the fourteenth. And also
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: maybe he had syphilis. Yeah, syphilis. Everywhere you get syphilis,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: you get syphilis, you agains hyphilis. Uh. And like you said,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: it spread through all of aristocracy. Um, finally it fell
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: out of fashion over time. Um that like you said, well, yeah,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: didn't take that long for the whigs to fall out
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: of fashion, would you say, less than a hundred years. Yeah.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: By by the time King George the Third, who was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: presiding over England during the American Revolution, when he was
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: in charge, it was really just basically, um, Coachman, bishops,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and I believe the court and in the eighteen thirties
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: the church or the Anglican Church that bishops don't need
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to wear those anymore. I don't know when Coachman stopped
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: wearing them, but then like we're with the bishops, right,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: then the courts are um. They just kept it up
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: from that point on. Yeah. So finally in two thousand
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: seven there was a court challenge, UM, an actual like
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: suit brought forward to say can we not wear these
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: wigs anymore? And there was a ruling that said, uh
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: that that technically did away with barrister whigs, but entirely
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: because that was only in civil court um or appearing
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: before the Supreme Court. But in criminal cases they were like,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: keep those wigs on everybody, and I believe they still do, right. Yeah,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: that's what I couldn't quite figure out. Like I read
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: like in this article it says until two thousand eleven
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: when the practice was discontinued, Well that was with judges.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, alright, that makes more sense now, barristers in
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: two thousand seven, judges in two thousand and eleven. But
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I believe that in criminal cases both barristers and judges
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: are still required to wear wigs or else it's a
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: real affront to the decorum of the court. Yeah. Like
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I was reading articles from last year that talked about
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that they were still trying to get it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: not mandatory for criminal cases, but I think they are
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: still wearing them and it had a sweeping effect, like
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: everyone around the world that had that worked in the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: legal system of a country that was a former British colony,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: whether in Africa, whether also Astralia, whether Canada, or just waiting.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Actually I think Canada did away with him before, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: it's like they were just waiting to pull these wigs off. Um,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Jamaica got rid of their's in two thousand thirteen, Australia
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: got rid of their's finally in two thousand ten. So
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: whatever lawsuit that was in two thousand seven, that had sweet,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: like literally global effects. Yeah. I mean one of the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: articles I read talked about in England the heat they're
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: in the summertime heat. Yeah, in the summertime, these rogues
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and these wigs, they were like that, it's just like
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it's a problem and they just should just file a
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: petition or whatever. That just says to whom it may concern,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Come on, this is ridiculous. It's two thousand nineteen the end. Yeah,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: we look silly. Yeah, although in Hong Kong they they
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: are still with it from what I understand. So if
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: you want to go see your lawyers and your judges
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: wearing traditional wigs. Go to Hong Kong. I think it's
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the upshode of the shorts. Yeah, go commit a crime
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: in Hong Kong. There you go. Um, thanks a lot
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: for joining us. If you want to get in touch
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: with the shoot us an email, why don't you send
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: it off to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot
• 12:10
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