Bills, Bills, Bills

This invoice, dating from the late nineteenth century, is a pro forma found in the account books of the classicist John Edwin Sandys who was elected a Fellow of St John's in 1867. When he became a tutor in 1870, Sandys took charge not only of the academic life of his students, but also their wider activities at the College, down to keeping track of their bills for rent, tuition and even beer. He did this in a collection of immaculately neat account books which are preserved in the Archive.

This particular invoice, found loose in his account book for the period 1878 to 1880, demonstrates the breakdown of charges recorded in Sandys’ accounts. In fact, these are not even as detailed as the books themselves; despite the warning that ‘Undergraduates must pay their own Tradesmen’s bills’, Sandys often has a record of debts to tradesmen under the £5 minimum detailed here, including, on occasion, debts to bricklayers, who would be brought in for alterations or perhaps in the case of unusual damage to a student’s rooms.

Interestingly, in this period the bedmakers were not members of College staff as they are today. They were essentially self-employed subcontractors, who undergraduates could engage as they wished. It would perhaps be interesting to see how many of the students of the late nineteenth century declined to employ a bedmaker, and whether the habits of those who didn’t mirror the behaviour of countless teenage boys who can’t seem to remember to make their beds today!