| Administrative History | The "Cloche Boys" were all former students in the Faculty of Arts at Aberdeen University in 1953. |
| Description | A special interview for the Quincentennial History Project. Recorded on the 29 August 2000 by John Hargreaves. It's intended to elucidate an inscription which has recently appeared on a seat in the King's College Quadrangle which reads 'The Cloche Boys November 3 1953 in penance for a dastardly deed'.
Transcription of Interview :
[Note: some additions to the transcript have been made by Iain Davidson, and are indicated in italics in square brackets]
H There are five names attached to that inscription and three of those named are here today. Perhaps I might start by asking them to introduce themselves?
D Iain Davidson.
M Mike Meston.
A Alan Anderson.
H And you were I think all students in the Faculty of Arts in 1953. And two other people were named?
D Yes Johnny Adams who was in History, as Mike and I were, and Gus Howitt, who was in History and Economic History and was about two or possibly three years behind us, I think two, and both of these are dead.
H Thank you very much. Alan, I think perhaps you would like to start by describing the dastardly deed and what actually took place.
A [Reading from written account] It was October 1953, term had not long started. After a year in Göttingen I was still a bit unsettled and viewing an examless Junior Honours year with little enthusiasm. In this mood I bumped into Iain Davidson and John Adams, both into final year History and both similarly disaffected.
"Let's do something."
Wandered into the Library, saw the bell. "Let's take the bell". I could borrow a cousin's car. We would need a driver, Gus Howitt was recruited. We would need publicity. Mike Meston's father was deputy editor of the Press & Journal. Mike was recruited.
The plan evolved simply. On Tuesday 3rd November, I attended the German Club in the Union. This finished about 9 p.m., giving me time to drive to King's and park out front, where Gus collected the car. I went into the Library and met Iain and Addie. (I expect all five of us had a last minute huddle before splitting up, but I don't recall.) We climbed the stairs to the left of the entrance going up to the gallery. About half way up there was (is?) a window giving on to the roof. Addie and I went out on to the roof and Iain bolted the window behind us. Shortly afterwards the bell was rung for the closure of the Library, normally about 9.30/9.40 as I recall.
Iain hid behind the bookstacks [upstairs] in the History/English? [Modern Languages] bay until the Library had been vacated and checked by the night watchman. He then let us in off the roof and we went down to collect the bell which stood half way along the floor of the Library to the left side. We muffled the clapper and Addie and I picked it up and followed Iain.
H How heavy was the bell? Was it a one man load?
A It wasn't terribly heavy but it was awkward. It was a bell hanging on a wooden frame needing two of us.
M It needed to be muffled.
A It was about 5 feet by about 2 to 3 feet wide - the frame was. [Resumes reading from written account] It was of course dark, and while Addie and I could see well enough, Iain couldn't and kept bumping into things, "Bloody Hell Davidson!". The plan was to come down into the foyer of the Library and leave by Dr Simpson's office on the right as you go out (now cloakroom and lavatories). We did this as far as the external door giving on to Cromwell Tower.
Mike was outside the door keeping watch on the Sacrist's office where the night man sat. Given the all-clear by him, we came out into the Tower, out into the Quad, quickly round the corner, down to the playing fields. We crossed the corner of the field to the wall alongside Regent Walk behind which Gus was parked. The bell was over the wall and into the car with Gus, Iain, Addie and myself and away! - Mike astride his motorbike.
The meeting with the P&J took place, not at the junction of the Ring Road and Great Northern Road, somewhere (across the Don?) [in an old quarry] more quiet and secure*. Afterwards we drove to Iain's home and put the bell in his parents' coal cellar. Next day Iain's mother [sister] opened her P&J: "What's Iain and Alan's photograph doing in the paper? Oh goodness me!" Meanwhile beneath her feet …
The Librarian, Dr Simpson's immediate reaction was to close the Library in the evenings. This upset the many students who used the Library as a workplace of an evening. [Nevertheless, the vast majority found the prank amusing] I don't recall how long we had planned to keep the bell, if indeed we had thought that far, but, quickly to alleviate the inconvenience to fellow undergraduates and with the help of a complaisant taxi driver we returned the bell on Friday afternoon. End of story.
H A very well planned operation. The thought occurred to me, had you been reading accounts of the Stone of Scone?
M No, not at that stage, I had no recollection that that had anything to do with it. We did discover that there was a route out using yale locks on the inside, that didn't involve any difficulty of keys. It went into what was the old lending part of the Library and then from there there was another door out into the corridor in Cromwell Tower. The Cromwell Tower door also had a yale key. I, in fact, was inside upstairs in the bay to let people out and I actually flashed a signal to Gus on the outside. I recall flashing a signal that all was now clear inside.
D My recollection is: I was upstairs and I got a signal from Mike who was under the Pavilion door and he flashed and then I went and let them in. That's my recollection.
M Shall we say the unreliability of evidence.
D You're familiar with that? [said ironically]
M Yes, I am quite reasonably familiar with it in Court.
A Presumably you'd come through from the Pavilion round the front of the Library?
M Yes, I must have done that. I don't really recollect, but I certainly was at the door of the Cromwell Tower. It was my function to shut it, it wouldn't have done if burglars had got in. I had to make sure it was shut, but obviously with the Sacrist in his box on the other side I had to leave that for some time because I had to bang it three times to get it closed, eventually having given people a chance to make off. Nonetheless there was no reaction at all to the door being hammered shut.
H The Sacrist did maintain a night watchman patrol in those days?
M They were in the box. They did a patrol and once they'd cleared, [they went into the box] you now just under the archway coming in. The most startling thing that I had was the following morning, it was rather different from your problem with mother [Iain's sister] spotting your photograph, was being seized by one of the Library attendants the next morning and thought I had been rumbled already. But he proceeded to tell me how the bell had been taken out and he was entirely wrong and I couldn't very well tell him. He indicated that we had got the key out of Dr Simpson's desk and his room was half way down the Library, well we didn't know it was there, but nonetheless it didn't explain how therefore we got it back again and left the door locked. He was totally wrong as to how it had been done but I didn't feel able to enlighten him.
D The reason we decided to take the bell was because the very sour old man who used to be on night watch, I think he had been trained by Heinrich Himmler, and he used to come round at night and ring it and that was the end, it was actually closer to 9.50
A 10 O'clock closing time
D And it made an awful noise because by then you were really going hard the last few minutes. It made a terrific noise and I think he took some pleasure out of this. It was a way of getting back at him. The other thing is perhaps Alan you could mention why we were called the Cloche Boys.
A Well this was my French/German connection. Cloche being French for bell, very smart. But also there were then a lot of the gangs in Glasgow were known as the Cosh Boys.
M I'd forgotten that.
H And this was the name you used to the P&J?
M Yes. The fact that my father happened to be deputy editor of the P&J at the time and happened to speak to a photographer who happened to turn up somewhere near Persley, I think in a lay-by, he just happened to be passing by at the appropriate time.
H Yes, another happy coincidence.
D We were very lucky with the weather, it was a fresh November night, windy, no rain, nothing like that. When Alan and Johnny Adams went out on the roof, clad in coat and hat and so on, you really weren't very cold, so that was in our favour. I don't know what we would have done if it had been raining.
A Got wet
D There was a slight hesitation as we got the bell over to the side wall, and just before we took it over the wall into the car, there was a courting couple who refused to go away and it took some while I think for Gus to persuade them [to move on]. I found out, by coincidence, the courting couple, the lady, was known to my own sister and when she found out about it she said 'if we'd only known we'd have given them a hand'. If I can mention just another point that where we did meet was an old quarry and I think we were there about fifteen minutes. One thing Alan mentioned, I don't think we'd thought far ahead about what to do and when Douglas Simpson closed the place we were caught, we couldn't go on. But linked with that were our notifications. Can you remember who we notified? The P&J ran an account and the Evening Express together with the photograph which is in the Friends newsletter.
A That was the P&J photograph?
D Yes. We're not sure about the text are we? I seem to remember there was something about the text that we weren't sure about. Well, this is where we talk about student apathy and we put together this rather orotund statement. I'm sure that was composed up at Jack's.
A Where else could it have been.
D Of course it was just an excuse. You asked John about student apathy now?
H In glorious depth especially you say at that particular moment, anything particular you had in mind?
D You'd been away for a year so life was a bit duller. Can you remember anything? [To A]
M I can't think of anything very particular, it just sounded good at the time.
D We were practising to write up for our final essays I think.
A It was a bit of fun.
D Yes, exactly and we did. [Have fun]
M And a small bit about trying to silence the bell in the evening, that was the sum total of it.
A The bell was a focal point for a sort of a protest.
H Was the bell, was it a common grievance do you think, did a lot of people say "that bloody bell".
All Oh yes.
D In fact when people were interviewed, either by local reporters, and especially the Gaudie reporter, this is when Gaudie was a readable newspaper, I remember Alan and myself being interviewed in the Union bar on a Saturday night by Donald MacDonald who was a reporter. And in all seriousness we agreed with him and certainly when I listened to him and talked to friends there was nobody who disagreed at all. The only regret was the Library had got closed but we weren't blamed for it.
A In fact the tendency was to blame Dr Simpson for his reaction. In fact wasn't it the case that the Library Committee didn't want to close it.
D There's some mystery here. I asked Colin McLaren some years back about the minutes of the Library Committee and he looked them up and said there was nothing special and yet David Daube whom you will remember well, he was on the Committee at the time, his son Jonathan was a two/three years behind us and he told us, not knowing we were involved, that his father's account of the discussions of the Library Committee showed a roughly 50/50 split of people who approved and people who disapproved but the majority didn't want the Library closed. Now that doesn't show up in the Committee Minutes at all so perhaps there were no minutes taken for that.
H Do you think he convened a special meeting of the Library Committee?
M I think that probably was it.
D Though I'm not sure that shows up in the Committee minutes of the Library.
M I should no doubt have followed this up myself when I subsequently became Curator of the Library and in charge of the Library.
H And what would you have done?
D Perhaps your Freudian conscience Mike, was in action there. We notified the papers and we helped with the interviews, anonymously so to speak with Gaudie was there anything other we did?
A I don't recollect this meeting with Donald Cunningham.
D No, Donald MacDonald.
A Oh D J MacDonald.
D No, not D J. This was one of the crowd who hung around with David Craig and Coutts. He had a speech defect, you might remember him, he spoke with a nasality . He was quite prominent in debating and so.
A But he wasn't aware that we were the Cloche Boys.
D No, nobody was.
A He was just asking us our opinion.
D Nobody knew who we were and it stayed like that.
H Could we go on to the return of the bell and the eventual revealing of your identify, if and when that took place?
D It was in my mother's coal cellar - we lived in a tenement - in the cellars of the basement, and on the Friday afternoon, Gus Howitt, our driver, had arranged with a taxi driver from a firm with which Gus occasionally drove to return it and Alan, it was you and I who took it out of the cellar and up our tenement stairs and into the taxi. The boot was just big enough and he reported afterwards what had happened. He had taken it out, he told it quite well according to Gus, he stopped the car, in the days you could park outside King's College and he strolled in, and the Sacrist was in there, and he said "I've got a bell for you". Eyes pop out. You remember Morrison, was Morrison still here when you … and of course his daughter was a student, so I don't think he was too upset. But he asked where it came from "Oh I dinna ken, just twa lads gave me some money" and we gave him a big tip and that was it. And it wasn't knocked or damaged or anything.
H There were no witnesses of its reunion with Douglas Simpson?
D No, I wish I'd been a fly on the wall. I rather think he would have had a real smile. He had a wicked sense of humour but in his official position what could he do.
M I found it interesting that the bell was no longer used after that.
D That's right. We claimed, well amongst ourselves but there was nobody else we could claim success to.
A I'd forgotten that, the bell was stopped.
M They did, they stopped using that as a means of closing.
D That's right. I think it must have arrived at King's College about 2 o'clock on the Friday afternoon, so it was away on the Tuesday night, the Library closed Wednesday, Thursday, Friday night and Saturday. Fortunately this was the sort of middle of term so students weren't quite at the panic stage, apart from the obsessionals, and we didn't know any of those.
A The who?
D And then it opened on Monday and there was a little notice in the doorway during this period: "Owing to the abstraction of University property the Library will no longer be open …'
H How many people used the Library on a typical evening until 10 o'clock in those days?
D It was quite busy.
M You might have managed to get a seat in mid-November.
A It was certainly busy.
D This was in the days before Halls of Residence and everybody came out of their digs partly to get warm and my marker is going up to Jack's for coffee. You had to time that or you couldn't get in in the evening.
H Did Principal Taylor make any pronouncement on the subject?
M I don't recall that.
D His sense of humour was open to question, was it not?
A It was non existent.
D I don't think so.
M I don't recall any comment from him at all.
D I'm sure Douglas Simpson would have contacted him.
A I remember the French/German people were fairly amused by it.
H When did your identity become known?
A It didn't - until we wanted it to
M We eventually decided that it would be no bad thing to mark the occasion by donating a bench in the Quad and the original plaque simply had initials on it and for some reason a new plaque was needed, I forget why.
D The date.
M Ah, the date was wrong.
A The year was wrong.
M Yes. Then we put the full names on but that was the first time it emerged.
H And that was when, the original bench?
A The Quincentenary year
M It's as recent as that.
D The new plaque is only some months old because Alan looked into that.
M The opportunity was to donate a bench for the Quincentenary and that was when we did it.
H Well, it was a highly professional operation. I hope you have no others to that you are considering. Last question I suppose. Do you think you served the cause of reducing student apathy in the short term or in the long term?
D Short term.
M Very short, yes.
A A couple of days.
D It was great fun.
A It brightened our lives.
D To carry a secret around. I told Jonathan Daube, after I left University, and I told Denis Rice, long after I left University, and then I don't suppose I discussed it with anybody for 30 years. In fact an old friend of ours who was at Gordon's with us, Bruce Ingram, we mentioned it to him two months ago and he hadn't known, so this is nearly half a century.
H The perfect crime. Well, thank you all very much indeed.
End of Interview
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