page_title: Sacred Cod
section_title: Harvard Lampoon
hierarchical_section_title: Sacred Cod / "Cod-napping" and other incidents / Harvard Lampoon
caption_attribution_description: English: The interior of the Massachusetts Senate Senate, whth the Holy Mackerel in the Chandelier.
context_page_description: The Sacred Cod is a four-foot eleven-inch carved-wood effigy of an Atlantic codfish, "painted to the life", hanging in the House of Representatives chamber of Boston's Massachusetts State House‍—‌"a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth"
  .
  The Sacred Cod has gone through as many as three incarnations over three centuries: the first
  was lost in a 1747 fire; the second disappeared during the American Revolution; and the third is the one seen in the House today.
  Sacred Cod is not a formal name but a nickname which appeared in 1895, soon after the carving was termed "the sacred emblem" by a House committee appointed "to investigate the significance of the emblem [which] has kept its place under all administrations, and has looked upon outgoing and incoming legislative assemblies, for more than one hundred years". Soon sacred cod was being used in reference to actual codfish as well, in recognition of the creature's role in building Massachusetts' prosperity and influence since early colonial times.
context_section_description: In an incident now referred to as "The Cod-napping" by State House officials,
  on April 26, 1933, members of the Harvard Lampoon (the Harvard College humor magazine) entered the House of Representatives gallery, cut down the Cod, and carried it away in an unusually large florist's box equipped with protruding decoy lilies.
  According to The New York Times‍—‌which reckoned the Cod's value to be "something less than nothing. As an object of art it is worthless"‍—‌Massachusetts officials were "shocked into a condition bordering on speechlessness" by the theft,
  "some legislators holding that it would be sacrilege to transact business without the emblem of the Commonwealth looking down upon them."
  (Nonetheless, at the appointed time "[House] Speaker [Leverett] Saltonstall looked mournfully at the vacant place and then banged the gavel. The first act of the House fitted the occasion. It passed to be engrossed a bill allowing the cold storage of swordfish.")
  Meanwhile, Boston mayor James Michael Curley received a telephone message: "Tell the Mayor that when the Sacred Cod is returned it will be wrapped in the municipal flag, now flying in front of City Hall. Try and catch us when we cop the flag. Lafayette Mulligan, we are here." 
  "Indignant" police dragged the Charles River and, acting on a tip that a Lampoon editor had flown to New Jersey with the Cod, had the plane searched on landing; the tip turned out to be a red herring.
  Detectives followed "scores" of clues, one of which took them to a Cambridge box factory and from there to "collegiate circles".
  "So much general interest was provoked that The Boston Transcript indulged in two columns of news, hearsay, and speculation upon the missing emblem," the Times further reported,
  later referring to the Cod as Boston's "Palladium".
  Eventually a mysterious telephone call directed Harvard official Charles R. Apted to West Roxbury, where he was met by an automobile which he followed into some woods; there two young men, with collars up and hatbrims down, handed him the Cod (not wrapped in any flag) before speeding away.
  In the early hours of April 29, after repairs to three damaged fins, the Sacred Cod was re-hung in the House chamber, "six inches [15 cm] higher [than] the reach of any individual. A stepladder will be needed to remove it in the future." 
caption: The Holy Mackerel above the chandelier in the Massachusetts Senate chamber
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