"Curled Darlings of the Nation" Caught in Act of Flagrant Cruelty--1877 "Chronicle" Deplores Loose Harvard Morals

If there is anyone so disillusioned as to believe that attacks of collegiate "morality" originated with the advent of the automobile, the flapper and the bootlegger and the alleged evils attendant on them, or that college youths of the decades preceding the "Gay Nineties" passed their scholastic careers in a state of idyllic "purity", let him read the following passage from the May 19, 1877, edition of "The Cambridge Chronicle" which a curious Crimson reporter unearthed to the everlasting shame of Harvard men. Called "A Specimen of College Morality--Cat and Dog Fight Last Sunday--Where were the Police", it throws light upon the pranks of those days when college boys were college boys.

"It is seldom we are called upon to record such an act of cruelty and low-lived blood thirstiness as was enacted by a party of students last Sunday afternoon. About 15 of them repaired to a retired spot in a field near Porter's Station; they brought with them two bags, each bag containing a cat and they were followed by a bulldog. A circle was formed, a cat was then let out and made to confront a ferocious bulldog; they attacked each other with the merciless fury characteristic of both species when unable to escape. During the 'high toned' entertainment indulged in by the curled darlings of the nation' a lady appeared who expressed her contempt of such specimens of humanity. Both animals were torn and bleeding, the cat being too much for the dog in the fight for life. The students despatched the tortured cat with a cane, and let the remaining one go, after which becoming alarmed they made their escape. . . . The foregoing is no slight contribution to the controversy going on concerning the skepticism of Harvard College, which has drifted off into a question of the moral status of the University and students. . . . To continue, it has been a favorite recreation for the scholastic mind to keep fighting cocks in their rooms; bull dogs but a short time since graced their appearance on the street, or afforded them pleasure in secret brutal contests. . . . When we consider the morbid state of mind possessed by those collegians who night after night sat before the footlights of the notorious Soldene, and rose after each act in a body to resort to a liquor saloon near by, we are not surprised at other (perhaps but little lower) exhibitions of a mind thoroughly imbued with an immoral and contaminating influence."

Thus spake "The Cambridge Chronicle" concerning modern youth at a time, to use its own words, when "hip pockets for lapdogs are the latest innovations in ladies' dresses" and there were to be "no more strolls by moonlight in the Court House yard."