HISTORY FESTIVAL: The Accidental Heiress

Club History Night: "The Accidental Heiress"

Lecture and Optional Dinner

Tuesday 7 May 2024 

Emeritus Professor Carol Grbich presents the story that won the History Society of SA's Keain Medal in 2020.  Letitia Leake, as a 7yo child, inherited the vast Glencoe Station, a large, successful and famous sheep station in the State's SE.  Hers was a story of running wild with the local Boandik aboriginal children of the area before being caught up in a saga of alleged murder, infidelity, corruption, contested wills and acrimonious legal action.  She and her husband relocated to the UK and purchased an English Estate, which she and her husband gifted to the Australian Government, when WW1 broke out to become No.1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital. Some 50,000 wounded diggers passed through it in the course of their treatment and rehabilitation. Letitia and her husband played an active role in making sure it was a…