St Trinian's School
Encyclopedia
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, the creation of English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
cartoonist Ronald Searle
Ronald Searle
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian's School. He is also the co-author of the Molesworth series....
, that later became the subject of a popular series of comedy films.
The first cartoon appeared in 1942, but shortly afterwards Searle had to fulfill his military service where he was captured at Singapore and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese. After the war, in 1946 he started making new cartoons about the girls, but the content was a lot darker in comparison with the previous years.
The school is the antithesis
Antithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
of the Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton was an English children's writer also known as Mary Pollock.Noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups,her books have enjoyed huge success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 600 million copies.One of Blyton's most...
or Angela Brazil
Angela Brazil
Angela Brazil was one of the first British writers of "modern schoolgirls' stories", written from the characters' point of view and intended primarily as entertainment rather than moral instruction. In the first half of the twentieth century she published nearly 50 books of girls' fiction, the...
-type posh girls' boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
; its pupils are wicked and often well armed, and mayhem is rife. The mistresses (as female teachers in Britain were known at the time) are also disreputable. Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls drank, gambled and smoked. It is reputed that the gymslip
Gymslip
A gymslip is a sleeveless tunic with a pleated skirt most commonly seen as part of a girl's school uniform. The term gymslip primarily refers to athletic wear; otherwise the term pinafore dress or jumper dress is usually preferred.The introduction of the gymslip as female athletic wear is...
style of dress worn by the girls was closely modelled on the uniform of the school that Searle's daughter Kate attended, JAGS
James Allen's Girls' School
James Allen's Girls' School, or JAGS, is an independent day school situated in Dulwich, South London, England. It has a senior school for 11–18 year old girls, a prep school for 7–11 year old girls , and a pre-preparatory school — JAPPS — for 4–7 year old girls.-Jags History:The school is part of...
in Dulwich
Dulwich
Dulwich is an area of South London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth...
. The films implied that the girls were the daughters of gangster
Gangster
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
s, crooks, shady bookmaker
Bookmaker
A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.- Range of events :...
s and other low-lifes and the institution is often referred to as a "female borstal
Borstal
A borstal was a type of youth prison in the United Kingdom, run by the Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court...
".
The real St Trinian's School
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The 'real' St. Trinian's was based on St Mary's School, Cambridge, and the Perse School for Girls, Cambridge. Searle, growing up in Cambridge, saw the girls on their way to and from school on a regular basis and they were the original inspiration for the cartoons. Testaments to this fact can be found in the Perse School for Girls' Archive area where there are several original St Trinian's books, given to the school by Ronald Searle.
Some claim that the concept and name for St Trinian's came from St. Trinnean's school in Edinburgh, which was established by Miss C. Fraser Lee and opened on 4 October 1922 with sixty girls, at 10 Palmerston Road.
She practised the revolutionary Dalton system
Dalton Plan
The Dalton Plan is an educational concept created by Helen Parkhurst.Inspired by the intellectual ferment at the turn of the 19th century, educational thinkers such as Maria Montessori and John Dewey began to cast a bold vision of a new progressive approach to education...
of education — where the emphasis was on self- rather than school-imposed discipline — which led to it being said that St Trinnean's was the school "where they do what they like".
In 1925 the school moved from Palmerston Road to St Leonard's House near Dalkeith Road, and at the beginning of the Second World War moved again to Gala House in Galashiels. The school was closed in 1946 after the retirement of Miss Fraser Lee.
It is said that a family by the name of Johnston, whose two daughters attended St Trinnean's, were evacuated to Kirkcudbright
Kirkcudbright
Kirkcudbright, is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.The town lies south of Castle Douglas and Dalbeattie, in the part of Dumfries and Galloway known as the Stewartry, at the mouth of the River Dee, some six miles from the sea...
, where they met sapper
Sapper
A sapper, pioneer or combat engineer is a combatant soldier who performs a wide variety of combat engineering duties, typically including, but not limited to, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences, general construction and building, as well as road and airfield...
Ronald Searle. He drew a cartoon depicting his idea of the school attended by the girls. Searle spent part of the war in a Japanese POW camp. After the war Lilliput magazine
Lilliput (magazine)
Lilliput was a small-format British monthly magazine of humour, short stories, photographs and the arts, founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant. The first issue came out in July and it was sold shortly after to Edward Hulton, when editorship was taken over by Tom Hopkinson in 1940....
published the cartoons. The first film was made in 1954.
10 Palmerston Road is now in private ownership. St Leonard's House is now called St Leonard's Hall, part of Pollock Halls of Residence
Pollock Halls of Residence
Pollock Halls of Residence are the main halls of residence for the University of Edinburgh, located at the foot of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland...
for the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
; it is used for administration and conferences. One of the rooms within is called St Trinneans.
The school's existence became widely known when it advertised a reunion coffee party for old girls in The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
in September 1955. By this time the fictional school was very well known; the typesetter incorrectly used Searle's spelling in the advertisement. In an interview with the Sunday Express the headmistress firmly denied that her girls were anything like their fictional counterparts, although the real Miss Fraser Lee was reputedly quite like her on-screen persona.
Books
- Hurrah for St Trinian's (1948)
- The Female Approach (1950)
- Back to the Slaughterhouse (1952)
- The Terror of St Trinians or Angela's Prince Charming (1952 - text by Timothy Shy, pen-name for D. B. Wyndham-LewisD. B. Wyndham-LewisDominic Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL was a British writer best known for his humorous contributions to newspapers and for biographies. His family were originally from Wales, but he was born in Liverpool and brought up in Cardiff...
) - Souls in Torment (1953)
Films
In the 1950s, a series of St Trinian's comedy films was made featuring well-known British actors including Alastair SimAlastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
(in drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
as the headmistress, but also playing her brother), George Cole as spiv
Spiv
In the United Kingdom, a spiv is a particular type of petty criminal, who deals in stolen or black market goods of questionable authenticity, especially a slickly-dressed man offering goods at bargain prices...
"Flash Harry
Flash Harry (St Trinian's)
Henry Cuthbert Edwards aka Flash Harry is a fictional character from the St. Trinian's series of films who first appears in the 1954 The Belles of St Trinian's. The term refers to "an ostentatious, loudly-dressed, and usually ill-mannered man", who may also be a spiv...
", Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Irene Grenfell, OBE was an English actress, comedienne, diseuse and singer-songwriter.-Early life:...
as Sgt Ruby Gates, a beleaguered policewoman, and Richard Wattis
Richard Wattis
Richard Cameron Wattis , was an English character actor.He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the family electrical engineering firm before becoming a professional actor. After his debut with Croydon Repertory Theatre he made many stage...
and Eric Barker
Eric Barker
Eric Leslie Barker born in Thornton Heath, Surrey, was an English comedy actor. He is most remembered for his roles in the popular British Carry On films.-Career:...
as the civil servants at the Ministry of Education
Ministry of Education (United Kingdom)
The administration of education policy in the United Kingdom began in the 19th century. Official mandation of education began with the Elementary Education Act 1870 for England and Wales, and the Education Act 1872 for Scotland...
for whom the school is a source of constant frustration and nervous breakdowns. Searle's cartoons appeared in the film's main title design.
In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, and, as a result, was always threatened with closure by the Ministry. (In the last of the original four, this became the "Ministry of Schools", possibly because of fears of a libel action from a real Minister of Education.) The first four films form a chronological quartet, and were produced by Frank Launder
Frank Launder
Frank Launder was an English writer, director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat....
and Sidney Gilliat
Sidney Gilliat
Sidney Gilliat was an English film director, producer and writer.He was born in the district of Edgeley in Stockport, Cheshire. In the 1930s he worked as a scriptwriter, most notably with Frank Launder on The Lady Vanishes for Alfred Hitchcock, and its sequel Night Train to Munich , directed by...
. They had earlier produced The Happiest Days of Your Life
The Happiest Days of Your Life
The Happiest Days of Your Life is a 1950 British comedy film directed by Frank Launder, based on the play by John Dighton. The two men also wrote the screenplay. It's one of a stable of classic British film comedies produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat for British Lion Film Corporation. The...
(1950), a stylistically similar school comedy, starring Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
, Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Irene Grenfell, OBE was an English actress, comedienne, diseuse and singer-songwriter.-Early life:...
, George Cole, Richard Wattis
Richard Wattis
Richard Cameron Wattis , was an English character actor.He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the family electrical engineering firm before becoming a professional actor. After his debut with Croydon Repertory Theatre he made many stage...
, Guy Middleton
Guy Middleton
Guy Middleton Powell, usually credited as Guy Middleton, was an English film character actor.Middleton was born in Hove, England and originally worked in the London Stock Exchange, before turning to acting in the 1930s...
and Bernadette O'Farrell
Bernadette O'Farrell
Bernadette O'Farrell was an Irish actress.She is best known for playing Maid Marian in the 1950s TV version of The Adventures of Robin Hood...
, all of whom later appeared in the St Trinian's series, often playing similar characters.
Barchester
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
and Barset
Barsetshire
Barsetshire is a fictional British county created by Anthony Trollope, which is featured in the series of novels known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". The county town and cathedral town is Barchester...
were used as names for the fictional county in which St Trinians School was supposedly located in the original films.
St Trinian's is depicted as an unorthodox girls school where the younger girls wreak havoc and the older girls express their femininity overtly, turning their shapeless schoolgirl dress into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the times: skirts are short and show the tops of the dark stockings that the girls wear, and busts are emphasized by the cut of the tunic and shirt of the uniform. St Trinian's is often invoked in discussions about groups of schoolgirls running amok.
The St Trinian's girls themselves come in two categories: the Fourth Form, most closely resembling Searle's original drawings of ink-stained, ungovernable pranksters, and the much older Sixth Form sexually precocious to a degree that must have seemed especially alarming in 1954.
In the films, the Fourth Form includes a number of much younger girls who are the most ferocious of them all. It is something of a rule of thumb that the smaller a St Trinian's is, the more dangerous she is — especially when armed, most commonly with a lacrosse
Lacrosse
Lacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...
or hockey
Hockey
Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick.-Etymology:...
stick — though none of them can ever be considered harmless.
In the first two films, St Trinian's is presided over by the genial Miss Millicent Fritton (Sim in drag), whose philosophy is summed up as: "In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared." Later there were other headmistresses, including Dora Bryan in The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery.
In December 2007, a new film, St Trinian's, was released. The cast included Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
, Colin Firth
Colin Firth
SirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...
, Russell Brand
Russell Brand
Russell Edward Brand is an English comedian, actor, columnist, singer, author and radio/television presenter.Brand achieved mainstream fame in the UK in 2004 for his role as host of Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother's Big Mouth. His first major film role was in the 2007 film St Trinians...
, Lily Cole
Lily Cole
Lily Luahana Cole is an English model and actress. Cole's modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Soho, London when she was 14....
, Talulah Riley
Talulah Riley
Talulah Jane Riley-Milburn is an English actress whose films include Pride and Prejudice, St Trinian's, The Boat That Rocked and St...
, Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
and Gemma Arterton
Gemma Arterton
Gemma Arterton is an English actress. She played the eponymous protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and starred in the feature films St Trinian's, the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tamara...
. Reviews were mixed. A second new St. Trinians film was released in 2009.
- The Belles of St Trinian'sThe Belles of St Trinian'sThe Belles of St Trinian's is a comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School, released in 1954. It and its sequels were inspired by British cartoonist Ronald Searle. Directed by Frank Launder and written by him and Sidney Gilliat, it was the first of a series of five...
(1954, the first film) - Blue Murder at St Trinian'sBlue Murder at St Trinian'sBlue Murder at St Trinian's is British comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School. Directed by Frank Launder and written by him and Sidney Gilliat, it was the second of the series of five films and stars Terry-Thomas, George Cole, Joyce Grenfell, Lionel Jeffries and Richard...
(1957, the second film) - The Pure Hell of St Trinian'sThe Pure Hell of St Trinian'sThe Pure Hell of St Trinian's was a 1960 British comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School. Directed by Frank Launder and written by him and Sidney Gilliat, it was the third in a series of five films.-Plot:...
(1960, the third film) - The Great St Trinian's Train RobberyThe Great St Trinian's Train RobberyThe Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery is a British comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School, released in 1966, three years after the Great Train Robbery had taken place...
(1966, the final film of the quartet) - The Wildcats of St Trinian'sThe Wildcats of St Trinian'sThe Wildcats of St. Trinian's is the fifth British comedy film set in the fictional St Trinian's School, released in 1980.It poked fun at the British trade union movement which had been responsible for the recent wave of strikes that culminated in the Winter of Discontent.The film was not a...
(1980, with Maureen LipmanMaureen LipmanMaureen Diane Lipman CBE is a British film, theatre and television actress, columnist and comedienne.-Early life:Lipman was born in Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Maurice Julius Lipman and Zelma Pearlman. Her father was a tailor; he used to have a shop between the...
taking on the Joyce Grenfell role) - St Trinian's (2007)
- St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold (2009)
The School's Coat of Arms
The coat of arms was originally shown as a black skull-and-crossbones on a field of white. This was later changed to a white Tau Cross (symbolizing the "T" in Trinian's) on a black field bordered white.The School Motto
The school has no fixed motto but has had several suggested ones. The school's motto is depicted in the original movies from the 1950s and 1960s as "In flagrante delictoIn flagrante delicto
In flagrante delicto or sometimes simply in flagrante is a legal term used to indicate that a criminal has been caught in the act of committing an offence...
". The original theme song by Sidney Galliat (c.1954) implies that the school's motto is "Always strike first". A poem in one of Searle's books called "St Trinian's Soccer Song" states the motto is Floreat St. Trinian's ("May St. Trinian's Bloom or Flourish"), a sly reference to the motto of Eton (Floreat Etona - "May Eton Flourish").
The school song
The musical score for the St. Trinian films was written by Malcolm ArnoldMalcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...
and included the school song, with words accredited to Sidney Gilliat (1954):
- Maidens of St Trinian's, gird your armour on.
- Grab the nearest weapon; never mind which one.
- The battle's to the strongest; might is always right.
- Trample on the weakest; glory in their plight.
- St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Our battle cry.
- St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Will never die.
- Stride towards your fortune boldly on your way,
- Never once forgetting there's one born every day.
- Let our motto be broadcast: "get your blow in first!"
- She who draws the sword last always comes off worst.
St. Trinian's Football Song
The School Fight Song.- Whack it up, girls! Bung the ball
- Thro' Life's goalposts at the call.
- Who can stay the Island Blood?
- Rub their bustles in the mud!
- Gallant hearts and bulldog pans,
- Floreat St. Trinian's!
In popular culture
Between 1968 and 1972, the BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
comic-book The Beano
The Beano
The Beano is a British children's comic, published by D.C. Thomson & Co and is arguably their most successful.The comic first appeared on 30 July 1938, and was published weekly. During the Second World War,The Beano and The Dandy were published on alternating weeks because of paper and ink...
ran a series entitled The Belles of St. Lemons
The Belles of St. Lemons
The Belles of St. Lemons was a comic strip in the UK comic The Beano, first appearing in issue #1495, dated March 13, 1971, although the characters themselves had first been introduced in the 1968 edition of The Beano Annual....
, which was inspired by the original St. Trinian's cartoons by Ronald Searle
Ronald Searle
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian's School. He is also the co-author of the Molesworth series....
.