The chapter on American academic hoods in the 1923 edition of The Degrees and Hoods of the World’s Colleges and Universities by Frank Haycraft included a description of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume and a long list of schools, each with a description of its hood lining. The chapter was written in a way that implied that this list was from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). Actually, most of Haycraft’s American hood information was out of date (from c.1912) or inaccurate, derived from a chart of college colors in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac, with the first color in this chart interpreted by Haycraft to indicate the lining color of the school’s hood and the second color in the chart interpreted to indicate the chevron color of the school’s hood.

That said, some of the schools in Haycraft’s book did not appear in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac or were listed differently in those sources. So apparently Haycraft was given a partial list of college and university hoods from the Intercollegiate Bureau, which he supplemented with additional schools from the 1909 or 1910 World Almanac.

Knox College is an example of an institution that did not appear in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac, which suggests that the college’s hood lining description cited by Haycraft is from information he received from the IBAC around 1912. If so, this means the Bureau assigned a hood lining to Knox between 1895 and 1912. Haycraft described Knox’s hood lining as purple (not “royal purple”) with an old gold chevron.

The first definitive IBAC description of the college’s hood is from 1927, where it was identically described as purple with an old gold chevron, a description that did not change in any Intercollegiate Bureau list thereafter. That said, the Bureau often abbreviated its descriptions of “royal purple” to “purple”, so today it is not known whether the IBAC assigned Knox a royal purple hood lining or a purple hood lining, particularly since the college itself used both shades of purple in the late 1890s.

Here the college’s original royal purple and old gold colors have been restored.