THIRD OR EARLY NINETEENTH

CENTURY EPISODE

SCENE I

TOWN AND GOWN RIOT

By

HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS

The Pageant presents a sort of composite photograph of the three famous encounters of 1841, 1854, and 1858, without regard to strict historical accuracy. The antagonism of Bursch and Philister-airs of superiority on the one side, with jealousy and resentment on the other-is as old as universities themselves. The tales of the Clerici vagantes in the Middle Ages, illustrated in English by Chaucer's "Reeves Tale" and "Milleres Tale," testify to the antiquity of the dispute.

At Yale, though there were doubtless earlier and unrecorded hostilities, the first Town and Gown rows of importance seem to have broken out in the last years of the eighteenth and the first years of the nineteenth centuries, when students resorting to a certain tavern in "Dragon," or Fair Haven, got into a fight with the oystermen, sailors, and similar native frequenters of the place. These battles were continued, or resumed, at Long Wharf; where students went to bathe and were attacked by mariners, longshoremen, wharf-rats, and the miscellaneous water-side population. In one of these encounters occurred the winning of that Excalibur, the celebrated Bully Club, said to have been

wrested from the grasp of a pirate by Asa Thurston of the Class of 1818, a quondam blacksmith of peaceable disposition but enormous strength; and, like Posson Jone, a "so fighting an' moz rilligious man."

Somewhat later the storm center appears to have shifted from the Dragonites to the volunteer fire companies of New Haven, which had a strong esprit de corps and included a considerable rowdy element. The Southern students, who were then numerous in the college, were quick in quarrel, and many of them went armed with pistols or knives. The affairs of 1841 and 1858 were affairs between the students and firemen, the latter between members of the Crocodile Club and of Engine No. 2, in which William Miles, a fireman, was shot dead. But the fire companies were not particularly concerned in the pitched battle of 1854, in which South College, where the students had barricaded themselves, was besieged all night by an angry mob, and two cannon trained upon the building. That affair began in a row at a theatre-the college men were followed all the way up Chapel Street by a crowd of "townies," and assailed with stones and brick-bats, until their leader, Patrick O'Neil, a barkeeper and general tough, was stabbed through the heart by a dirk in the hand, it was said, of a Senior from Mississippi.

Our scene presents the southwestern corner of the city Green. The annual football game between the Sophomores and Freshmen is in progress. There are about a hundred men on each side, mostly bare-headed and in shirt-sleeves, in old clothes, and some in purposely grotesque costumes. There was nothing scientific about the game: the picture is of "a dense mass of men, shouting, shoving, dragging, struggling, swaying to and fro toward either side of the field." There is holding, slugging, shin-kicking; men grab each other by the throat or the hair. Now and then the ball, a pig's bladder covered with leather, soars above the crowd. Cries of "Hi! Forty-four! Forty-five! Stop him! Quick! This way! Hold him! Push! Get the ball! Let go my hair, you damn Freshman!”

To these enter, from different sides, several fire companies, about fifty men in all, in red shirts and helmets, the captains calling orders through brass speaking trumpets. One company drags its hose across the football field, en route toward Center Church, where the companies will compete in playing on the spire. The game is broken up and turns into a free fight between students and firemen. Cries of "Yale! Yale! Cut the hose! Send for the Bully Club!" And on the opposite side, "Town! Town! Hustle the monkeys! This way, Hose Company No. 3! Get off the Green, ye damn stewed-nuts!" The ball is seized by the enemy-the hose is cut in a dozen places. The Bully Club, a gnarled oaken club, appears in the van, wielded by Hezekiah Sturges, '41, the last Bully. Three students (including Thomas Hudson Moody, '43, of Georgia) are finally arrested by the firemen, who constitute themselves a constabulary force and escort their prisoners toward the lower end of the Green, on the way to the police station. The students form a rescue party and attack the rear of the procession with cries of "Yale! Yale! Come on, fellows! Get our men loose!" There are scrimmages, several shots are fired-a fireman drops dead. Pause. The students gradually retire toward the colleges. The crowd about the center increases rapidly, and includes, besides the firemen, sympathizing citizens and unclassified "townies" of all kinds. group of firemen appears from somewhere dragging a cannon. The crowd swarm about it and rush it up to College Street with shouts of "Bring out the murderer! Blow up the college! Give 'em hell, boys!" A squad of policemen fight their way to the cannon and succeed in spiking it. The mayor of the city comes upon the scene, gets astride the cannon, and makes a speech to the infuriated mob. He takes off his hat, waves his arms, and makes signs for the crowd to disperse, but his voice is lost in the uproar. The students have all disappeared, the cannon has been put out of business, and the mob slowly and sullenly melts away, carrying off the dead and wounded.

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