University of Virginia Library

XXVIII. Major Offenses: Dissipation

A minor delinquency repeated once or twice became a
major offense; but there were certain offenses which were
designated as major in their first committal. These were
acts that went further than annoying misconduct or petty
misdemeanor; indeed, not infrequently, they fell just
short of actual crime, or even leaped beyond the border
to crime itself; but for the most part, they were social
vices rather than flagrant violations of law The most
common of these vices were gambling and drinking. Unfortunately,
drinking was universal, and gambling not
rare, outside the precincts, in that age of hearty geniality
and profuse living, and the University was a small mirror
that reflected the general condition elsewhere. The vigilant
Faculty, fully aware that habits of this nature would

be certain to loosen the reins of discipline, were unyielding
in their determination to punish the guilty student, although
they were so often thwarted that they had, from
time to time, to acknowledge a feeling of profound discouragement.

The playing of cards in the dormitories was constantly
detected, but where one instance was dragged into publicity,
it is quite probable that one hundred eluded detection.
We have already mentioned that one of the duties
imposed on the hotel-keepers was to report every case of
gambling among the young men that fell under their eye;
so far from doing this, they were repeatedly implicated
in the practice of this vice by their boarders. Even those
who kept aloof declined to testify. "If we do so," said
Warner Minor, in 1826, "we will be viewed in the light
of informers, and as such treated, and as things are now,
it would expose a man who respected himself, and was
determined to fulfill his engagements, to constant insult
and a certain loss of business." Loo was the most popular
game with students and hotel-keepers alike. In a
game occurring during that year, one of the young men
lost the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars at a sitting;
this happened in a dormitory that had the reputation of
being a gambling-hell; and it was even suspected that the
cards had been packed. At this period, it was the custom
to play on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights.

In 1830, Dr. Johnson, confident, from certain shuffling
noises overheard by him, that students were playing cards
in the neighborhood of his pavilion, cautiously left his
house, and gently knocked on the door of the suspected
room. It was furtively opened a little way and then
slammed violently in his face; but he had had time to
note the identity of those who had been taking part in
the pastime, as they leapt recklessly from the back-window.

One of the players was dismissed. This incident
illustrates the delicate sensitiveness of the professorial
ear of that period to the mysterious sound of chips
or coin, and also the danger that accompanied even
a quiet game i nthe dormitories. Harassed by this unresting
pursuit, many of the players retired in dudgeon
to Fitch's hotel in Charlottesville for their next bout.
In 1831, West Range, which, at that time, was the congenial
seat of all sorts of wild spirits, harbored the most
inveterate patrons of this sport. The chairman was informed
this year that at least one of its denizens had lost
two thousand dollars at a sitting. A large gambling-hell
now flaunted itself near the precincts; and this was a
popular resort with the dissolute students, in spite of
the vigilance of the Faculty, who endeavored to find out
the habitués by sending the janitor and the assistant
proctor to spy upon them. In April of this year, one of
the young men was called up to answer the charge of
having lost a thousand dollars in one of these disreputable
establishments. He testified that the bankers who
managed them always refused to play except for cash.
He denied that there was a professional gambling apartment
within the University boundaries.

The hotels in town, in 1833, were sometimes the
scenes of gambling, in which blacklegs from Richmond
and Washington took part. In several instances, at that
time, young men were prevented from matriculating by
the loss at the tables in the local taverns of the money
brought by them from home for that purpose. On one
occasion, a newly-arrived student was thus fleeced of one
hundred and twenty dollars in a game into which he had
been allured by a sly fellow-student in his second year,
who was acting as a stool pigeon for a notorious foreign
sharper. So rigid were the regulations that even a game

of backgammon was forbidden, although the delinquents
forgot this important fact. In November, 1836, the
proctor, while passing the door of a dormitory after dark,
heard the tell-tale words "Hearts are trumps. Play on,
friend, I hold low." When the bolt was turned at his
knock, the occupants of the room looked confused, but
asserted they had only been playing an innocent round of
draughts. Two of the players were, nevertheless, suspended
for the remainder of the session. Sometimes,
a game went on in the grounds of a University hotel,
but always there at a late hour. A supper would be given
in the dining-room after midnight, and if the weather was
warm, the whole party would go out to the secluded backyard
and play cards by candlelight.

Drinking was much more general than card playing,
since it required no previous scientific training for its indulgence.
The bars of the taverns were open on Sunday,
and as the young men were entirely at liberty on that day,
many of them were encouraged by idleness to visit these
spots. Drunken collegians were a constant annoyance
to the professors, both inside and outside the precincts;
and this began almost as soon as the University opened.
In 1826, two typical instances of this occurred. A student,
very much under the influence of apple toddy, while
driving in a hack from Charlottesville, saw a member of
the Faculty passing along the side-walk with one of the
ladies of his family. He poked his head out of the window
and reviled the professor in the foulest language.
Another, in the same condition of extreme inebriety, insulted
Bonnycastle on the steps of the Episcopal church
in town after the service. One of these rowdies was expelled,
and the other simply reprimanded in the presence
of his classmates.

The military company during this period never neglected

the social side of their organization. In April,
1828, "a treat," as it was called in those times, was
given by the officers, which consisted altogether of exhilarating
beverages. A large quantity of apple-toddy,
among the other brews, was provided for the fifty members,
and they, with some view possibly to mild dilution,
ground their arms at one of the University pumps to
drink it. The assembling of the company seems to have
been frequently only an occasion for this sort of imbibing.
A member testified that, at one of these meetings, he
had consumed, at a single sitting, about five glasses of
brandy julep. Two pitchers of julep and one of sangaree
had been provided as a "starter," he said, and in the
course of the meeting had been often replenished. A
general drinking party occurred on the 18th of January,
1831, and another on March 14 of the same year, which
were long remembered for the uproariousness which attended
their dispersion at a late hour. Bonnycastle, on
the latter occasion, went out on the Lawn and barely
escaped a serious injury when a bottle was thrown at him,
which, missing him by a hair's breadth, was smashed
against one of the pillars of the arcade behind him. It
was said that this party of young men was composed of
the most prominent, and curiously enough, of the most
"exemplary" students then enrolled at the University.
Perhaps, it was one of this superior band who very politely
asked the chairman whether he would be permitted
to drink in his dormitory a little claret mixed with a large
quantity of water,—which very moderate request was
very positively and promptly refused.

The smallest clue was now followed up. In the course
of 1831, the assistant proctor, Mr. Wertenbaker, reported
that, in visiting one of the rooms, he had discovered
an empty glass that was faintly, but still perceptibly,

tainted with the fumes of liquor. The two occupants
admitted the truth of the charge; but they said, in
their own defense, that they had been suffering from
colds, and that a young friend in the medical school,—
for whose professional knowledge they had the highest
respect,—had advised them to drink a mixture of spirits
and ginger before retiring to bed at night. They had
very cheerfully and trustfully followed this prescription.
The chairman drily replied that this recipe was entirely
without virtue, but the two students, guided by their own
experience, did not agree with him. Perhaps his judgment
was somewhat warped by the number of bottles
marked "medicine" which were now reported to him to
be on the shelves in the dormitories.

Although Wertenbaker was so active in detecting any
suspicious odor which might linger about a glass, yet he
too, following the long established custom of the hotel-keepers,
gave social parties at which the guests were
bountifully supplied with toddy, brandy, and wine. The
mixer of the bowl at one of his entertainments was
accused of showing some "excitement before the end,"
which was hardly remarkable in a person engaged in performing
a duty that called for such constant sampling.
Mint-sling was now the popular beverage, and again we
notice that it was the habit of many of the young men
inclined to this indulgence, to seek the spring situated
near the janitor's house, as the proper place for its enjoyment.
There was a conspicuous return about this
time to the custom of holding drinking-parties in the dormitories;
at one meeting of the Faculty in 1835, three
such parties were reported for their flagrant violation of
the ordinances. The beginning of this session (1835–6)
was marred by many instances of drunkenness, which occurred
because the delay in opening the lecture-rooms

had left the students in a state of idleness. The dissipation
again broke out during the following Christmas,
when it assumed the form of numerous parties to drink
egg-nog; one that was held on December 22, led to fifteen
students being summoned before the Faculty and the
suspension of the host. These boisterous entertainments
took place, not only in the dormitories, but in a vacant
hotel. Even the proctor disregarded the ordinances in
his own residence,—in 1836, Colonel Woodley was
charged with supplying his guests with brandy with which
to brew a large mint-julep.

The students, as time advanced, lost none of their ingenuity
in evading the charge of violating the law against
drinking. One who was called up in 1837 asserted that
the julep found in his room had been left by a friend
on his table while he was asleep, and that when he awoke,
being only human, he had been unable to resist the temptation
of emptying the glass. The presence of mint was
always accepted by the Faculty as unrebuttable proof of
guilt; unfortunately for its possessor, that sweet smelling
plant had but one practical use; and the janitor was
ordered with sternness to report every instance of its
discovery. The same conclusion could not so irresistibly
be drawn from the presence of champagne bottles;
three espied in a dormitory, in 1837, were boldly declared
by their owner to be simply innocent receptacles for
his milk, molasses, and lamp oil.

The secrecy accompanying some of these champagne
parties was often incredible. Having reason to suspect
that such an entertainment was going on, the proctor
and chairman, on the night of March 4, 1837, spent
two hours heroically walking up and down the arcades
in the cold and darkness seeking in vain to detect a sound,
—the popping of a cork, an outburst of hilarity,—that

would indicate the room in which it was in progress. In
general, however, the culprits revealed their merriment
in a very blatant manner. In the following April, a
party that had been drinking heavily were not satisfied
until they had broken into the courthouse in town and
alarmed the awakened population by the violent ringing
of the bell and prolonged shouts and war-whoops. In
July, a similar party took possession of a vacant dormitory
and kept up their carouse long after midnight,
when they dispersed with a wild concert of yells. A less
boisterous demonstration occurred the ensuing Christmas
eve. The scene was a dormitory in West Range,
and although the noise was restrained, the proctor was
sent to suppress it. He tried to push his way into the
room, but the door was finally slammed in his face. In
their defense before the Faculty, the students who were
summoned claimed that the proctor had stated, before
the entertainment came off, that no objection would be
offered to it provided that it was conducted with decorum.
He, however, asserted that what he had really said was
that, while the Faculty would give no specific permission
to drink spirits of any sort at Christmas, he felt
confident that there would be no interference if the indulgence
was free from excess and the hour unmarred by
turbulence. "It was the general custom of the country,"
the Colonel had sympathetically remarked, "and to
be maintained on condition that the bounds of reason
were not crossed." "Let there be decency and order,"
he added expansively, "and all would certainly go well."
This comfortable doctrine, so much in harmony with the
social bent of the times, was promptly repudiated by the
Faculty. They acquitted the culprits in this instance,
but announced that such leniency would not be repeated.
Few months went by, before the close of the period under
review, that the members of drinking parties were not
summoned before that body for punishment; and not
even severe penalties, ranging all the way from admonition
to expulsion, were able to scotch the evil.[34]