Phineas is a painted wooden statue of a Scottish highlander and the trade mark of the Gallagher and Jamieson Tobacco Company. Phineas statues were widely used to attract customers into tobacconists’ shops, with this Phineas originally adorning a tobacconist’s shop on Tottenham Court Road. He is depicted dipping his fingers into a pot of snuff, a powdered tobacco product.
On 1 March 1900, during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), celebrations were held across the UK to mark the end of the siege of the town of Ladysmith in South Africa (where British troops had been besieged for 118 days while waiting for reinforcements). Students at UCL joined in with these celebrations, abandoned their classes, filled the quad, and made their way to Tottenham Court Road, where they stole the Phineas statue and took him back to campus. He was returned but then stolen again a few months later, after the relief of the town of Mafeking, and again to mark peace celebrations in May 1902.
This began a tradition amongst students, with important moments marked by the theft and return of what was becoming a popular student mascot, Phineas.
Over the next few decades, as he became a central component in our rivalry with King’s College and other colleges, he was regularly kidnapped, rescued and paraded in RAG processions. Following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922, Cambridge students kidnapped Phineas as part of an elaborate Egyptian-themed RAG in which they raised Phineas ‘from the dead’. He even met Queen Mary, wife of King George V, in 1927.
In 1932, Catesby’s – the department store on Tottenham Court Road which now owned Phineas - decided to give the statue to the Union Society (UCL’s then men-only union) and he moved permanently to live at UCL, at first in the Cloisters, where visitors could greet Phineas alongside Jeremy Bentham.
After the Second World War, Phineas remained an important focus for students, featuring in almost all student-produced handbooks and newspapers of the era. His birthday was celebrated each year, and he met visiting dignitaries such as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In the 1950s, students revitalised the pre-war RAG traditions and Phineas travelled as far afield as Newcastle and Cardiff.
By the late twentieth century, these traditions were in decline at UCL and other higher education institutions. The statute of Phineas was encased in glass and given pride of place inside the Union’s Gordon Street building in what was renamed the Phineas Bar in 1993. Into the 2010s, however, Phineas continued to act as a mascot for UCL sports teams, with students dressing up in a life-size Phineas costume at Varsity fixtures.
Phineas remained in the bar until 2019, when refurbishments led him to be placed in storage. During this time, the Students’ Union UCL Executive began to consider how appropriate it was to have a quasi-military figure, especially one linked to the tobacco trade and acquired during Boer War celebrations, as the mascot of a diverse international student community. Later that year, a decision was made to remove Phineas as the official mascot, and he remained in storage until further consultation could take place. This work was halted with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic soon after.
A subsequent consultation found that very few students were aware of the statue’s significant history at UCL, nor the links to colonial wars. After some debate, the statue was loaned to the Object-Based Learning Lab and used in teaching.
In 2025, 125 years after he was first captured by UCL students, Phineas returned to a purpose-built display case in Phineas Bar. While no longer serving as the official mascot, Phineas is displayed in the bar in recognition of his long-standing role at the heart of the UCL student community.
This short history of Phineas is part of efforts to inform students about UCL’s long history as London’s first university and Students’ Union UCL as the first officially recognised students’ union in England.
Further reading
- ‘Phineas of Gower Street’, University College Magazine, IX, no. II (March 1932).
- Sam Blaxland, Students’ Union UCL: A Short History (Students’ Union UCL, 2023)
- Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland, Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital (UCL Press, 2026)