
Eric Minoff
Vice President, Head of Department - US
LOT 37 ¤
A 'Phineas Snuff Taker' advertising mascot for Catesby's Limited, British, circa 1910,
The original Phineas, a painted carved wooden advertising figure of Phineas McLino a soldier in the Black Watch regiment, has been mascot of the students at University College Hospital London and latterly UCL's mascot since March, 1900, when as part of a celebration to mark the relief of the siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War, students stole Phineas - a wooden statue depicting the soldier taking snuff- from outside Catesby's a local department store on Tottenham Court Road. This was the first of many occasions when the Phineas statue was stolen by UCL and King's College students. Generations of students adopted Phineas as their mascot. Eventually the statue moved permanently to the Student's Union after Catesby's ordered a replica and donated Phineas to the Union, but more recently Phineas has been placed into storage.

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Vice President, Head of Department - US
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