The End Of Bloody Monday

Remembering 1860 in Harvard

The End Of Bloody Monday

Forgive me for using this as a source, but Wikipedia actually has really good information on football in American colleges before 1869:

One of the really interesting things here is that we can actually find contemporary newspaper evidence of the end of football (and the “Bloody Monday” tradition) at Harvard. This editorial reads almost like it was written a year or two ago about the evils of hazing:

From Aurora of the Valley (Bradford and Newbury, VT), December 8, 1860, page 1

As if that wasn’t cool enough, there’s also this:

From Boston Evening Transcript, September 4, 1860, page 4

The whole thing reads like something from Harry Potter.