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Birmingham University Rag Day/week

M

maypolebaz

master brummie
I'm surprised to find there's no mention of that Day of Mayhem known as Rag Day on the forum !

I remember, probably mid 50s, I was in a bus going up Corporation St and the traffic was hardly moving. One of the passengers asked the conductor what was causing the delay and he said "Oh, it's Rag Day". The passengers all smiled tolerantly and said things like "Oh, it's the students !".
Coming out of Lewis's, later, I saw that there was a group of young men with long handled brushes and buckets of water, stopping the traffic and giving the buses a scrub. It was absolute gridlock but nobody objected.

Did Rag Day continue beyond the 50s I wonder ? Somehow I think the public attitude to such shenanigans would have hardened by the 60s !
 
yes, I can remember them in the early 80's and my dughter has just finished uni in Chester and they had them as fund raisers for local charities. The Liverpool one a couple of years ago produced a joke book which the students sold round the pubs, getting punters to buy them to stop them reading out the jokes al night.
Sue
 
That's exactly right Sue. The Birmingham University from what I recall always had a Rag Week for their fund raiser. I have a copy of a Rag Week booklet from the University of Manchester, it's full of silly jokes and drawings. I found a British Pathe film from 1928 with the students on floats in Brum during Rag Week. Looks like they were having a great time https://www.britishpathe.com/video/birmingham-students-carnival mapolebaz...You would have seen a modern version of a parade taking place in Rag Week. Hope they had as much fun as they appeared to have in 1928.
A description on Wikipedia as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag_(student_society)
 
I think all the universities had Rag Weeks then. Some also had processions through the town. I remember with embarresment being persuaded to go on the Chemistry society float at Bristol in (probably) 1964, supposedly representing a chemist with what was supposed to be a large test tube. However the "test tube" was made of thick polythene and looked much more like a large one foot wide condom clutched to my chest than a test tube !
 
Hi folks

In the early to mid 1950's my parents took me to torchlight parades through the city centre. Floats and people dressed up with flaming torches of hemp rope. By a process of elinination I think they must have been rag week parades (I was too young to remember anything other than the costumes, money in buckets and the torches.)
 
jennyann said:
That's exactly right Sue. The Birmingham University from what I recall always had a Rag Week for their fund raiser. I have a copy of a Rag Week booklet from the University of Manchester, it's full of silly jokes and drawings. I found a British Pathe film from 1928 with the students on floats in Brum during Rag Week. Looks like they were having a great time https://www.britishpathe.com/video/birmingham-students-carnival mapolebaz...You would have seen a modern version of a parade taking place in Rag Week. Hope they had as much fun as they appeared to have in 1928.
A description on Wikipedia as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag_(student_society)
Click to expand...

I'd forgotten the magazine that they sold, they used to sell them around the pubs I think. They were great.
A lot of the contents were similar to the present - day "Viz" magazine.
 
Rag Week is still alive and well here in Trinity College, Dublin! They don't go around washing buses with mops though:smug:

Simon
 
With thanks to Facebook member Stanley Tarrent who took these photo's himself.

Rag Week 4.jpgRag Week 1948 1.jpgRag Week 1948.jpg
 
Lovely photos my mother used to take me every year to see the Rag Week Parade, but we never went by the Town Hall which I think was where the parade began.
 
sylviasayers said:
Lovely photos my mother used to take me every year to see the Rag Week Parade, but we never went by the Town Hall which I think was where the parade began.
Click to expand...
I tried looking up the Birmingham Carnival (it was called that between the 20s and the 60s) at the library some time back. They had copies of the magazine that went with the event and the parade route changed over time. At the end it just went round Colmore Row and Great Charles St (if I remember correctly) but I have met people who remember watching it go by along (what is now) Ladywood Middleway on the way in from the University. At times the official route ran down Broad St past the site of the 60s library, down New St and to the Bull Ring. The associated events went on for weeks some years.
 
The last 4 images of Rag Week 1948.

I would think the first photo of the girl in a carriage is the 'Rag Queen'. I love the pram too!!



Rag Week 19486.jpgRag Week 19487.jpgRag Week 19488.jpgRag Week 19489.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Do they still have this in Birmingham ?

A great piece of 1928 Pathe News footage in post #3. Viv.
 
Well remember Rag Week, students would board the bus on the way to work and rattle collection tins and way behold you if you didn't put your small change in.
They would also kidnap and hold to ransom the Star appearing at The Hippodrome or Theatre Royal.
Students would camp out on the traffic islands in Corporation Street a The Grand Parade would be headed by The Policeman who had no trousers (how risquie was that!).
 
My first job which I started in 1963 was as a laboratory technician in the Chemistry Dept of Birmingham University. I'm not sure how it happened, but I got very friendly with a number of second year students, and I was soon illicitly getting into the regular Saturday Night Hops in the Students Union - the resident band at the time being The Spencer Davis Group. These students, who became good friends, decided that as the Chem Dept hadn't put up a float for some time, they'd do it for the 1965 Rag Week and I hauled aboard and kind of seconded as 'materials manager'. In all honesty, the float was the worst of the entire parade by far, but I can still remember that day - which in itself is miraculous given the amount of booze that was downed during the progress around the City Centre. As far as I can remember, the float was abandoned somewhere on the Campus and we all retired to the Union Bar - access to which should have been denied to me as I wasn't a Students Union member. But I don't think anyone cared by then. They were great days - love 'em and miss 'em!

Does anyone remember when The Golden Boys statue outside the Registry Office on Broad Street was painted green during a Rag Week? Nothing to do with me, honest.

G
 
Does anyone remember when The Golden Boys statue outside the Registry Office on Broad Street was painted green during a Rag Week? Nothing to do with me, honest.

G

we believe you G:D:D

lyn
 
For what it's worth, the library of Birmingham has a fairly solid run of the Carnival magazine that Birmingham University put out to go with the annual carnival week (more or less) from the 20s (or earlier) into the 60s. It's in the archive so you have to ask for it - it was called "Carnival".
 
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