Student Lock-Up

With only a few days to go before I leave Estonia I am rushing to get through the list of things to see and do. Today I visited the University Art Museum, situated in the Main Building just around the corner from my office, and consisting mostly of 19th century plaster copies of ancient Greek sculptures. More interesting was my trip up to the attic of the Main Building to see the preserved student lock-up which was used up until the end of the 19th century to incarcerate students for short periods of time if they infringed any of the University regulations.

It was fascinating to compare the punishments for different sorts of misdemeanors. For example,

disturbance of the night's rest......2 days
failure to return library books.......2 days
insulting a lady.........................4 days
insulting a cloakroom attendant.....5 days
cursing..................................5 days to 3 weeks
deceiving a shopkeeper.............3 weeks
duelling.................................3 weeks

To pass the time, students in the lock-up covered the walls and ceilings with pictures and graffiti. Some of this has been left on the walls of the restored lock-up. (There were originally five lock-ups in the attic of the Main Building, but three were destroyed in a fire in 1965 caused by an electrical fault and the other remaining one has not been restored.)


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