As we approach May Morning, let’s reflect that drunken Oxford students aren’t a new fad.

They were a particular concern of Arthur Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, back in 1905.

Winnington-Ingram delivered his annual sermon at the University Church on October 29. The Church was so packed that the congregation fell over themselves, looking for somewhere to sit.

Stepping up to the pulpit, Bishop Ingram presented a lengthy discussion on the mustard seed parable from the Gospel of Matthew.

Then eyelids opened as he launched into a vitriolic assault on the “wave of drunkenness” in Oxford colleges.

After finding no fewer than 20 Oxford University graduates among the vagrants he’d picked up in East London, his anger had been stirred.

Winnington-Ingram, some 30 years after engaging in godly study at Keble College, claimed that every undergraduate’s room had become a bar room.

Drinks were served at every hour of the day. In the event known as the “fresher’s drunk”, any new student who refused to serve booze would find their furniture – and possibly themselves, broken and “insulted”.

Furthermore, Winnington-Ingram insisted, the Dons turned a blind eye to the carnage.

In The Oxford Times the following Monday, the President of Magdalen College reacted by saying that students were no more drunk in 1905 than when he was a lowly undergraduate at Balliol.

The Provost of Worcester College chipped in to admit the allegations came as a great shock. He hadn’t noticed anything amiss from the Herefordshire Rectory where he spent his hours.

Closer to the action at the Town Hall there was a meeting of the Oxford Temperance Society just a few days later.

Even they had cause to refill the teapot – celebrating the noticeable reduction of drunks about town.

In retrospect it turns out Winnington-Ingram was a champion party-pooper.

By the age of 94 he claimed to have saved around £10,000 through not drinking or smoking. He said the secret of a long life was “never tell a dirty story”.

Today Winnington-Ingram is remembered, if at all, for a sermon he delivered in 1915 where he encouraged his congregation to go on what he called a “great crusade” to kill Germans.

“Kill Germans” he argued, “lest the civilisation of the world itself be killed.”

So should you be foolish or crafty enough to take the 20ft plunge into knee deep water on May Morning, let your last thought be of Bishop Ingram, and of how his classmates at Marlborough School had the nerve to nickname him “Chuckles”.