Picture the Senate-House in the nineteenth century, crowded with students waiting for the mathematics results. As the names are read out, friends in the gallery lower an enormous wooden spoon on a rope, dangling it over one unlucky graduate below.
Until 1909, friends traditionally presented a wooden spoon to the lowest-placed successful honours candidate in the Mathematical Tripos, the bottom of the third class, known as the Junior Optimes. Importantly, it was not for someone who had failed. The spoon went to someone who had passed, just.
A place in an older system
Candidates once appeared in a published order of merit. At the very top stood the Senior Wrangler; at the other end, a student could become forever associated with the spoon. The Faculty’s history explains that the presentation was separate from the formal reading of the class list.
Not every tradition survives. Sometimes the object remains to tell us how much a place has changed.
History, rather than a current ritual
The custom ended when the ranking system changed in 1909. Selwyn preserves an example from 1906, when two students shared the lowest place and each received a spoon from friends. Objects like these reveal the humour, and the pressure, of an earlier university culture.
Sources & further reading
- Cambridge glossary: wooden spoon
- Faculty of Mathematics: history
- Selwyn College: a surviving wooden spoon
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