The girls of St Elphin’s get their marching orders - Published 2 July 1977

How the head beat the jolly gymslip jesters

The belles of St Elphin’s planned to ring down the curtain on the old term with a bag full of jolly hockey tricks.

Whispering conspirators slipped out of bed after lights out to plot dark deeds in the darkened dorms.

It was going to be the end-of-term to end all end-of-terms at the £750-a-year boarding school.

Finally the big day dawned..... and the great Jape caper got off to a splashing start when games mistress Mrs Mary Archer took an unexpected dive into the swimming pool.

Sneak
Round One to the jokers - and the next rib-tickling trick was expected to be a knockout.

The gymslip jesters of the Upper Fifth and Sixth planned to ensure that the parents’ ball fell flat by letting down their car tyres.

But no school story is complete without a sneak...

And the balloon went up when whispers of the prank reached the staff room.

Now, instead of laughing all the way to the hols, the deflated conspirators have been sent home a day early from the exclusive school in Darley Dale, Derbyshire.

Headmistress, Miss Audrey Mayhew, yesterday defended her decision as an act of ‘self protection’.

‘And both the staff and parents agree with me,’ she added.

The teacher who was thrown in the pool treated it as a prank, but she doesn’t want to talk about it.

Joke
Miss Mayhew revealed that the big let-down was just one of several japes the girls had up their sleeves.

‘I know it was planned as a joke, but it would have been jolly inconvenient for guests leaving at 1.30 in the morning,’ she added.

Meanwhile, the girls who planned the laugh-in are feeling jolly rotten about the whole thing.

‘We’re not happy about being sent home,’ said 17-year-old Sandra Little of Nottingham.

‘It was all harmless fun but it seems that the head can’t accept an old school tradition’.

Push
And Mr Vernon Colquhoun, a solicitor from Bakewell, Derbyshire, who has a daughter at the school believes Miss Mayhew should have taken a leaf out of her predecessor’s book and played the girls at their own game.

For two years ago Miss Phillippa Robinson let the punishment fit the crime when the Upper Fifth pushed her car into the school dining room.

‘She woke them up in the middle of the night and told them to push it out again.’ said Mr Colquhoun.

Source: The Daily Mail, 2nd July, 1977

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