The only thing worse than getting caught breaking the rules at school is being made to write a handwritten note about how, exactly, you broke the rules. And the only thing worse than that, of course, is for your school’s administration to archive those notes and digitize them over a century later for all to see. The Student Confessions collection from Millersville University of Pennsylvania brings together a collection of mostly handwritten student confessions written between 1889 and 1920 at Millersville Normal School. We’ve selected ten of our favorite confessions to share, but the entirety of the collection is freely available on JSTOR.
A fifteen-year-old Thomas D. Thomas sold his hat for wine money, drank two bottles in the road with a few friends, and then returned to school to sleep in the room of his friend, Mr. Andes. Thomas then had a difficult morning. “I was sick in Mr. Andes’s room,” he writes. “My legs were weak and Mr. Andes and Mr. Williams had to help me to school.”
During the last week of summer 1904, Alonzo Breen spent a “moonlight night” in a field with two ladies. “I did not take any liberties of any kind with either of the girls, nor did I say anything improper to them,” he’s quick to assure his reader. “I conducted myself in a gentlemanly manner.”
When Thomas M. Smitham went out one night in 1889 after the last bell, “the girls threw some water down” on him, and he called out. Then he “made a noise like a cat” for about five or ten minutes.
George H. Fox recited “a very vulgar and obscene selection” at the Page Junior Society in 1889, “which describes a man taking an Irish gardener to the bedroom and what was done there.”
In 1890, Monroe Bollinger shot off some fireworks either in or near a school building. He promised in his note not to do that anymore, on penalty of suspension (he also promised not to have any playing cards in his room).
“Among other things,” wrote Guy C. Keiper in 1895, “I bought some eggs and helped two other boys put them in three beds, where they were broken.” For this stunt, Mr. Keiper received 60 demerits.
In 1898, William J. Donlen stole a boat in order to row up a creek to take some grapes from Mr. Jacob M. Frantz’s vineyard. Along with receiving 40 demerits, Donlen had to pay fifty cents as his share of the damage.
Not only did Charles L. Fleming take Mr. Plank’s pocket-book (containing $8.75) from his trunk in his room, he also returned several days later to take Mr. Plank’s fountain pen, “which was lying on his bed.” As if that wasn’t enough, he also took a key from the book room, and he had been smoking in his room, too.
In 1898, Robert E. Scragg “threw the head of a match on the floor in one of the classrooms.”
In 1890, Anna J. Dibert “became engaged to Mr. W. A. Munroe” one Saturday evening in Miss Emory’s room (with Miss Emory’s permission). “I have done little things in connection with W. Munroe,” she writes, “that were not allowed by the school regulations.”
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