Definition
A jerguer (also spelled jerquer) was an officer of the English custom-house whose function was to oversee the waiters — that is, the customs officers stationed at ports to watch over goods and vessels. The jerguer's role was supervisory within the customs establishment, providing a check on the lower-ranking watchers who monitored dutiable cargo.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in general modern use; variant spelling "jerquer" is noted as a historical customs official.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 redirects to "jerquer," the more common spelling, indicating no independent common meaning attached to this orthographic variant.
Editorial note: This is effectively a term of art from English revenue administration with no meaningful gap between its technical and common usage — both refer to the same historical official. The term has no currency in modern ordinary language.
Common Confusion
JERGUER and JERQUER are variant spellings of the same office. Researchers encountering either form in historical customs records or legal texts should treat them as identical. The distinction is purely orthographic. Neither form should be confused with "jerque," the related verb describing the act of searching a ship's papers, or with the "jerque note," the clearance document issued after that examination.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is effectively a dead letter in modern legal research but retains relevance for historians of English revenue law, admiralty practice, and customs administration. Several points bear noting:
First, the term appears only in English legal sources and reflects the hierarchical structure of the pre-modern English customs service, which organized port oversight through a layered system of officers — surveyors, jerquers, waiters, and land-waiters among them. Researchers working in historical customs records, port authority documents, or admiralty court materials from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries may encounter this title without explanation.
Second, all three historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus cite "Techn. Dict." — a reference to a technical dictionary of arts and trades — rather than to any statute or case. This signals that the term was never deeply embedded in case law or legislation; it was an administrative title, not a legal doctrine. Researchers should not expect to find it litigated as a legal concept.
Third, the spelling variation between "jerguer" and "jerquer" is common in historical sources and reflects the instability of technical vocabulary in early customs administration. Database searches should account for both spellings.
Fourth, researchers interested in the broader customs law framework should follow the trail from this office to related instruments: the jerque note (the document certifying a vessel's papers had been examined) and the customs waiter's role, both of which appear more frequently in primary sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: all three define jerguer identically, word for word, as an officer of the custom-house who oversees the waiters, and all three cite the same source, "Techn. Dict." The uniformity here is notable — it suggests the compilers of these major dictionaries were drawing from a single trade or technical reference rather than from legal practice, and none of the three entries provides additional elaboration, statutory grounding, or case law. This is a thin entry across the shelf, and researchers should not expect to find richer treatment elsewhere in the standard legal dictionary tradition. The historical dictionaries collectively reflect that this term was never the subject of significant legal controversy requiring doctrinal development.
Jurisdictional Note
This is exclusively an English law term, specific to the customs administration of England. It has no recognized counterpart in American federal or state law. Researchers working in United States customs law should not expect to encounter this title in domestic legal sources.