Ragtime Hooligans

Last week all undergraduates at England's Cambridge University got a stiff, stern letter from Vice Chancellor Charles E. Raven. It concerned their behavior on Guy Fawkes Day, on the 342nd anniversary of Fawkes's unsuccessful attempt to blow up the House of Lords.

It had begun as an ordinary "rag" (prank)--the sort that Cambridge students have been playing for centuries. Before the night was through, reported the Vice Chancellor, "undergraduates, in disorderly mobs, often several hundred strong, surged about the streets intent upon doing damage ... In Petty Cury they overturned and seriously damaged a car, regardless of the presence of a woman inside . . . On King's Parade, they damaged [another] car, crumpling its bonnet . . .

"In the center of the town, they overturned a small commercial van and caused damage of serious consequence to the business of its owner-driver, who was in it at the time. They also uprooted a traffic beacon and thrust it through the glass door of a shop. Near Christ's Lane, a car was seized and attempts were made to overturn it. The occupants, an old lady and gentleman, were severely shaken and the lady collapsed ...

"Missiles were thrown through windows at Newnham College [for women] ... at buses and at street lamps. In Senate-House yard, a heavy explosive charge was detonated, and some 70 panes of old crown glass were smashed . . ."

Some of the older undergraduates, the letter admitted, had tried to stop the mob. One older boy, "indeed, performed an act of considerable courage when a smoke candle was thought to be endangering a child's life. Except for this," the Vice Chancellor concluded, "nothing can be said in extenuation of what must pass into University history as a shameful episode."

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