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The Fountain | Autumn 2014 | Issue 19
A Little History of Magpie and Stump
By Harriet Cartledge (2011)
The Magpie and Stump is one of the oldest societies in Cambridge, and over the years it has acquired a small body of myth and legend.
It all began in 1866, when the Magpie and Stump was founded in F2 Great Court, the room of its first president, J. C. Colvill, with 13 members (including the son of Charles Darwin). In its first embodiment, it appears to have been a debating society in the loosest sense of ‘debating’; its members could meet up and share their broadly similar views, drink coffee and port, take snuff and eat biscuits. In the 1890s, the society seems to have taken on its characteristic humorous bent. In 2009, Magpiety (= President) Jack Lewars moved the society away from ‘light-hearted debate’ and explicitly towards stand-up comedy. The reason for the name has been lost, but it may be linked with the Magpie and Stump pub in London (a more unlikely contender is a Magpie and Stump Mexican restaurant in Alberta, Canada). The pub has been active since 1550 and, being opposite Newgate Prison, used to give men their last drink as they went on their way to the gallows. The name may alternatively be taken directly from the society’s patron, a taxidermied magpie on a stump referred to as His Majesty the Bird. Our current magpie dates to 1900 (with his crown attached in 2013), after his predecessor, presented in 1899, unfortunately rotted owing to improper preservation.
Many of Magpie’s alumni have gone on to high achievements within their fields. Past members include Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, Bertrand Russell, F. W. Maitland, Ralph Vaughan-Williams and King George VI, amongst over 2000 others. In 1936, ‘His Satanic Majesty Himself’ was elected to honorary membership, with only one vote against. As far as I am aware, this decision has never been repealed. Even those who whilst at the society do not necessarily seem destined for greatness, tend to do well for themselves in the end. For example, the Magpiety of 1937, P.D. Coates, a ‘bloody, bawdy villain’, who left ‘memories of a reign of terror, accompanied by the shrieks of crushed and bleeding victims’, later became a distinguished consul in the Chinese Service. Curiously, their involvement with the society has tended to drop off the CVs of most of these alumni. Higher members of the College have been involved in the society as well as students. The Deans of College and Chapel have made frequent appearances in debates over the years. Indeed, the Head Porter has been known to perform, usually to bring ‘Private Business to a decisive close, speaking concisely and keeping severely to the point’. In 1921, members
of Magpie and Stump caused a small explosion in Great Court, shattering one of the windows in Hall. Those responsible have remained unnamed, largely because (it is suspected) they were also members of the Fellowship. Traditionally, Magpie has occupied the Old Combination Room. The resident portrait of Isaac Newton seems to have pleased the society greatly, and his law of gravity was frequently formally repealed and replaced with a ‘law of levity’. Between 2003 and 2007, the various Magpieties appear to have existed in varying states of perpetual inebriation, culminating in alcohol being banned from the audience and the society being kicked out of its ancestral home and moved to the Winstanley Lecture Theatre. Magpie has always been a home for those with a somewhat over-inflated sense of self-importance; after all, a society that is mostly made up of those who are ‘willing to cast their dignity aside for the warm (often lukewarm) applause of their peers’ must encourage people somehow. Despite being a comparatively small college society, it has boisterously proclaimed itself as an alternative to the ‘crooks who operate behind the Round Church’; similarly, it has maintained a healthy amount of disdain for the