Early Records Set Forth Eating Problem of 250 Years Ago--Bootlegging of Dainties Rigorously Repressed

Two hundred and fifty years ago the problem before the University was not to gather the students together in one place for sociably gregarious feeding, but rather to keep them so assembled. All undergraduates were then required to eat in Commons, where the food was of nebulous origin and doubtful consistency. "Eating out" was forbidden by ordinance of the University, who had an eye to the pecuniary advantage to be obtained from running its own dining-rooms, and to satisfy their cravings for tasty morsels, the students took to bootlegging dainties of all sorts into their rooms.

This illegal traffic to the inner man was conducted on a large scale, and was as severely punished by the authorities as is that of latterday liquefied bootlegging. In the court records of 1672, is an entry to the effect that "Edward Pelham, of the Class of 1673, coming by with a fowling piece in his hands, persuaded two boys to shoot a turkie sitting on Captain Cookin's fence." The remains were then wrapped in a coat and taken to Samuel Gibson's, where "it was dressed by his wife & baked in the oven, & in the night following it was eaten by Mr. Pelham, John Wise, and Jonathan Russell, studts." There are many other records, among them the tale of a student who was convicted of smuggling on the indisputable evidence of goose and turkey feathers in his room, to show the wicked practices of the hungry undergraduate. The scarcity of "turkies" on the forces of Cambridge precludes any such solution of the food problem of to day.

In 1723 the Overseers reported that "Freshmen, as well as others, are seen in great numbers going into town on Sabbath mornings to provide breakfast." Here is the prototype of the modern student, rumpled and unshaven, sallying forth into Harvard Square on Sunday morning for his "Times" and toast. But the defection from Commons proved so general and so violent, that gentler laws were passed, permitting the hungry to seek elsewhere for their sustenance, and it is no doubt from the passage of these laws that the growth of the present facilities dates.