Scotch College

The Legacy of "The Boss"

"The Boss" William Littlejohn

Bill Littlejohn died seventy years ago. In 1933, Scotch's third principal, William Still Littlejohn, nicknamed 'The Boss”, announced his retirement for the end of year, but influenza forestalled it. 'His wonderful constitution and the ordered simplicity of his life caused us to believe that he would soon shake off the effects of this illness. The attack was, however, of a desperate character, and grave complications developed. The unremitting attention of his family and medical advisers was ineffective' (OSCA, Twentieth Annual Report, 1933).

His coffin lay in state in the Memorial Hall, draped with the college flag on top of which sat his trencher. Prefects and senior boys stood on watch until a full memorial service, after which his coffin left for a public service at Scots Church.

One of Littlejohn's Old Boys, Graham McInnes (1930) wrote later of the school's amalgam of Scottish, English and Australian. 'Scots was the religious tone, the moral fervour, the insistence upon examinations and above all exam results as the eye through which even the most bulky camel could enter the Kingdom of Heaven. English was the emphasis on innumerable societies—debating clubs, dramatic societies, camera clubs, science clubs, stamp collecting clubs, the orchestra—with their passionate amateurism. English, too, was the emphasis on games; but the overwhelming importance attached to them and the prowess attained in them were both indubitably Australian. Moreover, though the school itself was located in a city of almost one million inhabitants, it could not escape from its hinterland; and the grey brooding bush, the deep sunny skies and the enigmatic wariness of the Australian landscape gurgled and flowed around the school buildings and permeated us all' (Road to Gundagai, p. 102).

Littlejohn made Scotch the largest school in Australia, indeed in the Empire, with around 1300 students. He appointed distinguished teachers but kept administration firmly in his own grasp. He stamped his personality upon the school—a driving ambition, a questing intelligence tied to assessing and commenting upon academic outcomes, and a hearty religious belief more Christian than Presbyterian and yet dourly Scottish in tone and trappings. When he took office, to be the successor to Alexander Morrison must have seemed an impossible task; by the time he died 30 years later he had created his own legend.

Dr Jim Mitchell - Co-Archivist