PAIR OF WHITE GLOVES?

Taranaki Daily News, 30 October 1935, Page 4

PAIR OF WHITE GLOVES?

NO CRIMINAL CASES YET NEW PLYMOUTH SUPREME COURT. PRESENTATION TO JUDGE LIKELY. OLD ENGLISH LAW CUSTOM KEPT. On present indications His Honour Mr. Justice Reed will receive a pair of white gloves when he takes his seat on the Bench at the opening of the Supreme Court sessions at New Plymouth on Monday. The list of cases for hearing was announced yesterday and there are no criminal cases set down for either trial or sentence. It will be the first time such an event has happened since 1965. From time almost immemorial the practice of presenting yzhite gloves to a judge has been followed in English assizes or New Zealand Supreme Court sessions when the list has contained no criminal cases, and its origin is lost in the past. The accepted explanation, however, is that in ancient times judges were not allowed to wear gloves on the bench, so that to give a judge a pair of gloves meant that he need not take his Although it cannot be definitely stated that there will be no criminal business, there is little likelihood that anything will arise in the meantime to alter the position. A search in the New Plymouth courthouse records has shown that no sessions since 1905 has been free from criminal cases, and inquiry among members of the legal profession with experience dating from many years before that has failed to reveal any previous instance of the ceremony at New Plymouth sessions.

The rules for court procedure when there is no criminal business state that the Grand Jury summoned to attend comes forward but is not sworn unless its members indicate that they have something to present. The registrar then informs His Honour that there is •no business for the Grand Jury and His Honour asks the jury if it has any presentment to make. He is then presented with the pair of white gloves and addresses the Grand Jury on the absence of crime.

Of the symbolical uses of the glove one o- the most widespread in the middle ages was the practice of tendering a folded glove as a gage for waging one’s law. The origin of this custom is probably not far to seek, me promise to fulfil a judgment of a court of law, a promise secured by the delivery of a wed or gage, is one of the oldest of all enforceable contracts. This gage was originally a chattel of value which had to be deposited at once by the defendant as security into his adversary’s hand, and that the glove became the formal symbol of such deposit is doubtless due to its being the most convenient loose object for the purpose.