Ascham has long been shaped by families who return to educate their daughters here, generation after generation. The continuity of familial ties of these multi-generation Ascham families brings depth and perspective to the community. Over decades, their presence has helped form the character of our School.
One family has branches that reach as far back as our founder Miss Wallis’ era and forwards to today. They are central to the Ascham story, and their legacy of graduates includes many women who have gone on to lead, influence and inspire.
Under our first headmistress Miss Wallis in the 1890s, four sisters named Linda, Gladys, Olga and Eileen Teece were educated. Linda went on to marry Albert Littlejohn and together they built their family home, The Knoll, in 1914 on land bought from our second Head of School, Mr Carter. The Knoll itself was later bought by our third Head, Miss Bailey, and renamed Macintosh House, one of our current boarding houses.
The Littlejohn’s four children, daughters Barbara and Patricia, and sons Edward and Richard, all attended Ascham—they had special access via a hole in the fence, as they were growing up next door in The Knoll! Linda and Albert Littlejohn were great supporters of the School.
Linda Littlejohn was on the AOGU Committee and a respected figure in the Sydney women’s movement; she founded the League of Women Voters in 1928 to support female candidates for public office and to press for feminist reforms. By the 1930s she had become a journalist and pioneer in women’s radio broadcasting. She travelled annually to America and Europe to lecture on women’s equality issues and empowerment, including actively urging women to oppose fascism and preserve democracy. She gave a speech at the United Nations, of which we hold a copy in the Ascham Archives.
With encouragement from her parents Linda and Albert, and Headmistress Miss Bailey believing fiercely in women’s education, after school Patricia Littlejohn not only went onto university but in 1935 became the first woman to graduate from Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney.
‘It took special women to brave the all-male Veterinary Science Faculty at the University of Sydney,’ said the Australian Veterinary History Society. ‘She was the first, but far from the last [woman], to contribute significantly to her faculty.’ Patricia went on to teach at the university and established a successful career in veterinary pathology, inspiring many more female graduates to follow in her footsteps.
Today, at the University of Sydney and at universities across the country, women far outnumber men in veterinary science courses and on teaching staff. In fact, over the past two decades around 80% of vet science graduates in Australia have been women, to the point where universities now actively recruit male students for these courses.
Who would ever have imagined this reality at a time when Patricia Littlejohn and fellow Ascham student Ann Flashman were the first and second women to graduate from the University of Sydney as veterinarians in 1935 and 1936 respectively?
From the Teece sisters who were Ascham students under Miss Wallis, down through the generations to current Year 10 student Charlotte and Year 6 student Ella, it has been Ascham’s great privilege to educate so many women in this large and distinguished family, for well over a century.
References:
The Australian Veterinary History Record, The Australian Veterinary History Society, July 1999
‘Male vets are a dying breed, and it’s not helping a critical shortage’, SMH, 26 November 2022
Ascham Remembered, Fine Arts Press, 1986
Wikipedia entry on Linda Littlejohn
