Nerd Notes: 19th-Century Cambridge Was a Den of Iniquity

The diary of a 19th-century Cambridge student has now been published, and he paints an interesting picture! Blurb:

The spires of Cambridge, its wooden punts, ancient colleges, greens and historic dining halls, do not generally conjure up images of drinking and prostitution.

But for a visiting 19th-century American student, whose diary of his time at the university is being published for the first time in 100 years, the crooked streets of the university city were full of immorality.

Charles Astor Bristed, who spent five years at Trinity College studying classics in the 1840s, said that students would “work hard and play hard”, and his contemporaries saw prostitution as something that was avoided only by those who were “frigid, highly religious or seeking physical benefits”.

O RLY?