My aunt was one of the original two dishevelled schoolgirls who were drawn by Ronald Searle; the other was Ronald’s sister, Olive. His drawings would eventually become ‘St Trinian’s’, but that wouldn’t happen till a few years later. Ronald Searle, the famous cartoonist, was born in Cambridge in March 1920. My aunt, Joan Hale, was born in Melbourn, a village ten miles south of Cambridge, eight months later. Ronald Searle’s sister, Olive, was born early in the following year – so they were all much of an age.
Joan and Olive were best friends at the Cambridgeshire High School for Girls. They used to arrive at school all neat and tidy, and leave each day in great dishevelment, having caused mayhem in between.
Ronald was studying nearby at the Cambridge College of Art, and used to draw them while they were in that state. He showed them some of the drawings – but if he ever gave any of them to Joan, she never kept them. A pity.
He published the first St Trinian’s cartoon in 1941, in Lilliput magazine, while he was in the Army. He had taken the name from a school in Scotland (St Trinnean’s).
Some websites say that he based his cartoons on two girls from St Trinnean’s, but that, I am utterly certain, was not the case. My aunt told me about all this, several years ago, and her memory was very sharp. That story was a later false assumption.
In 1945, Ronald returned from being a POW in the Far East and then, from 1946 until 1952, he produced a regular St Trinian’s’ strip cartoon, in which the school buildings were based on Joan’s school, and also on the Perse School for Girls, and on St Mary’s School – all of which were in Cambridge. Joan’s and Olive’s school is now the Long Road Sixth Form College. The Cambridge College of Art is now part of Anglia Ruskin University.
‘Same old stuff...’
What later happened to Ronald (who died in 2011, aged 91) the world knows. What happened to Olive I do not know.
My aunt obtained Higher School Certificate in mathematics, and then became a WREN meteorological officer, reaching a rank equivalent to Lieutenant RN. She married a fellow naval officer and, after the war, they ran several hotels.
As a widow, she retired to Harpenden, near to her daughter, and she died in 2022 at the age of 101.
