The Judges' Bouquets

Even today, Old Bailey judges wear small bouquets on certain dates, and herbs are spread on the floor. This tradition comes from a time when the court neighbored Newgate prison and its "gaol fever." The Central Criminal Court of London adjoined Newgate, an overcrowded and unsanitary prison; typhus, transmitted by lice, proliferated there under the name of "gaol fever."

In 1750, during the "Black Sessions," an epidemic from the prisoners kills dozens of people, including the Mayor of London and several judges. The court reacts with means derisory in regard to modern science: fragrant flowers and aromatic herbs supposed to "purify" the vitiated air, according to the miasma theory then dominant.

We know since that smell had nothing to do with it: it is hygiene and the fight against lice that stop typhus. But the gesture has survived as ritual. The bouquets of the Old Bailey are the ceremonial vestige of a genuine sanitary terror — proof that judicial traditions sometimes preserve the memory of a fear that medicine has long since explained.