Dyvour, Dyvour's Habit Law and Legal Definition
According to Scotch law, dyvour means a bankrupt. It is a debtor’s badge of poverty in Scotland.
Dyvour’s habit is a custom where the bankrupts were compelled to wear an upper garment, half yellow and half brown, with a parti-colored cap. The bankrupts, who were set free on a cessio bonorum (a voluntary surrender of goods by a debtor to his creditors), were obliged to wear this unless it was proved that the bankruptcy proceeds from misfortune. If the bankrupts were dealers in an illicit trade, they were condemned to submit to the habit even where no suspicion of fraud against them. This practice was based on the Roman civil law and was abolished during the reign of William IV.
