In 1825, The Times published a ‘Parody of a Cambridge Examination Paper’ in which students, instead of being assessed on their knowledge of scripture or the classical languages, were examined on subjects of decidedly more interest to the would-be fashionable Corinthian: London theatres, the finest tailors and shoemakers, and the pleasures of the Fancy (‘Who was Prime Minister when Cribb defeated Molyneux? and where did the battle take place? Explain the terms – “milling, fibbing, cross-buttock, neck and crop, bang up, and prime”’). Advertisers feature heavily in the examination, with the candidates being asked to ‘enumerate the patentees … of liquid blacking’ and to engage in practical criticism of a sole-proprietor jingle by a poetical barber-surgeon:

The examination also tests students' command of the best-advertised quack medicines, beginning with an exhortation to sketch the topography of Samuel Solomon's premises in Liverpool and concluding by asking candidates to demonstrate a sound knowledge of some of the principal brands of proprietorial medicines: