students, traditions

Company of Swiss Bell Ringers

In the nineteenth century, this group of clandestine students made it their mission to sneak into the College’s chapel, located in Seabury Hall, to steal the bell from the belfry, bring it down into the quad, and ring it in the open air. ¹⁾ Evidence of this group’s existence on the Trinity College campus is sparse, likely because it was a rather secretive association.

Image from the “Swiss Bell Ringers” directory in The Trinity Ivy, 1876

In The Trinity Ivy of 1876, a fanciful entry lists the group’s anonymous members as follows: “Rope Cutter, Gate Stealer, Vase Carrier, G.T. Poster, Bell Ringer, Brick Heaver.” This motley crew apparently never performed “in all the minor towns and villages in this or any country” but still claimed to be “prepared to play chimes of all descriptions.” However, from the account of a group of sophomore imitators, we can discern what may have actually taken place in the first iteration of the Company. An 1876 issue of The Trinity Tablet relates highly specific details of this second group’s scheme, which took weeks of planning and “burglarious tools” to infiltrate the Seabury Hall bell tower in the middle of the night. The imitators carried out their elaborate stunt without receiving so much as a slap on the wrist from the attendant faculty. ²⁾

One of the College’s foremost benefactors and trustees, William Gwinn Mather, Class of 1877, was a member of the second iteration of the Company of Swiss Bell Ringers, according to the club’s entry in The Trinity Ivy of 1877. Only two members, Mather being one of them, are listed as “Bell Ringers,” while two others are listed as “Miners and Sappers.” The remaining two played First and Second Guard. In 1928, W.G. Mather donated the funds for the construction of the College’s new chapel, what is now the architectural pride of Trinity’s campus and the home of the carillon.