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ST EDWARD’S
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A R C H I V E S
Very few women were on the School’s full
time teaching staff before the 1970s, with
one notable early exception being Sylvia
Richards, a Scholar of Girton College,
Cambridge (First Class, Classical Tripos)
who was hired in 1918 to take on the
Lower Fourth and Classical Fifth Forms,
mainly due to there being no suitable
males left to fill the job. She was well
accepted and was singled out for special
praise when she helped nurse the many
staff and pupil members who went down
with the ‘Spanish Influenza’ epidemic in
December 1918 until she too caught the
infection. She left in the Easter Term of
1919 having ‘stayed a term longer than
she intended’ (
The Chronicle
). Despite
being the first female teacher, she never
warranted any mention in the
School Roll
- a grievous oversight, corrected in 2013.
With her departure, the School would
wait another 53 years before engaging a
second full time female teacher - Elizabeth
Weeks in 1972, who would be Head of
Spanish for 19 years.
Part time or visiting female teaching
staff were employed from time to time,
but here again there were very few. By
1977 the full time female teachers of
the School numbered four, reducing to
three by 1981, a number that stayed
constant until the late 1980s when six
were in place. After the move to co-
education began in 1983, the female
contingent of the Common Room
expanded significantly as the number of
girls entering the School increased. Space
does not allow me to include every lady
who worked at the School prior to co-
education but hopefully I have described
the most prominent. The attitude to
the opposite sex was well summed up
by Warden Henry Kendall’s refusal to
allow girls from local schools to ballroom
dances with the boys, suggesting ‘they
should use cushions’ instead! Frank Fisher
at least made some progress by agreeing
to allow girls to these events but with
stringent conditions!
Eventually, Warden Fisher was further
persuaded to allow local girls to be
invited to join the School drama casts,
the first being in 1964 for Fred Pargeter’s
production of
Under Milk Wood.
Likewise,
the School’s Choral Society in the 1960s
started a long collaboration with Milham
Ford School, Wychwood School and the
Oxford High School for Girls to jointly
present concerts far and wide, especially
beneficial at a time when the School’s
treble pool seemed to be dwindling!
Additionally female members of staff
families had started to be embedded in
both musical and drama productions often
taking lead roles.
The 1985 common room, with just four ladies included. Linda Lyne and Pauline Ely are in the third standing
row, Jeanie Bee in the second and Elizabeth Weeks in the first. While few in number, jointly these particular
teachers served the school for a total of 95 years.
Penny Brown (nee Burke), first female pupil to
enter St Edward’s
‘Mother’ Blencowe at the window of the first school shop 1897