Better late than never: Stolen Cambridge University clock hand finally returned

Almost a century after the initial prank, a stolen clock hand has been returned to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

The hand was replaced with a cardboard copy by Geoffrey Hunter Baker, a student of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge from 1934 to 1937.

It was then inherited by his daughter, Trixie Baker, who returned the inherited clock hand last year during a visit to the college. Gonville and Caius has since kept the hand in its College Archive. 

During his studies at Cambridge, Geoffrey and another student took the clock hands from the college chapel’s clock. They each kept one hand (Baker the hour hand, the unknown student the minute hand) and replaced them with cardboard replicas.

According to Trixie Baker, “these worked very well until it rained”. The college subsequently replaced these replicas with more functional clock hands. 

Inside Gonville and Caius’ College Chapel.
Image Credits: Scarlett Coburn

Gonville and Caius, one of Cambridge’s oldest colleges, has a history of student pranksters. In 1921, for example, Caius students swiped a German artillery gun and displayed it in the college’s Caius Court.

In 1958, some Caius engineering students put an Austin Seven van on the roof of the Senate House, a ceremonial building belonging to the university.

Gonville and Caius College
Image Credits: Anna Mardling 

There remain some unanswered questions: The whereabouts of the minute hand are still unknown, as is the identity of the second prankster.

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As for whether this mystery of the missing clock hands will ever be fully solved – only time will tell. 

Featured Image Credits: Scarlett Coburn