Scouts honour the teachings of their founder

Neither two world wars nor social reform have dampened the scouting spirit. David Behrens traces the movement to its roots.

FOR MORE than a century, the Boy Scout movement has inspired generations of youngsters, and these rarelyseen pictures from the archive trace the movement to its very beginnings.

Robert Baden-Powell was already a national hero for his 217-day defence of Mafeking during the second Boer War, when in 1908 he wrote Scouting

For Boys, the manual that has served the organisation ever since. His mission, he said, was to foster good citizenship, chivalrous behaviour, and outdoor skills in boys aged 11-15.

Save for his original omission of female scouts, the template he set down has little changed after two world wars and immense social upheaval. Boys, he said, should organise themselves into patrols of six or seven, each with a leader. They were to be trained in tracking, reconnaissance, mapping, knotting and first aid, and they would earn badges for each. The scout “oath” he set down for each new member has also endured.

But while Baden-Powell might have conceived it as a singularly British diversion, scouting quickly became a worldwide phenomenon.

Within two years of the book’s publication, there were scout troops in South America, Scandinavia and throughout what was still the British Empire. Across the Atlantic, the Boy Scouts of America became one of the largest youth organisations the world, despite the anomaly of troops having to observe local customs on racial segregation.

Back home, cub scouts, sea scouts and air scouts were added to Baden-Powell’s army, and in 1910, in response to demand from its members’ female siblings, the Girl Guide organisation was formed. By the beginning of the First World War, with the creation of the Brownies – originally known as Rosebuds – the scouting umbrella covered every young age group.

PICTURES: TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES/ FOX PHOTOS/ NICK YAPP PICTURE: GEORGE PICKOW/THREE LIONS/GETTY IMAGES FOUNDER: From top – Major-General Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement; scouts crammed into a tent during a camping holiday in Muswell Hill, London, 1926; a group of scouts haul a log of wood in 1908; a scout from the 17th Manchester troop repairs a rocking horse in 1936. ROPE WORKS: A scout group lashes spars at a methodist centre in Yorkshire, in 1950. According to the Scouts website, spars are poles and they are lashed together for projects such as making gateways, bridges, or camp gadgets – for example, wash stands, tables, place racks or camp showers.

PICTURES: GEORGE PICKOW/THREE LIONS/ HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY PAYING ATTENTION: Top – scouts in a prayer meeting in Yorkshire, 1955; above – Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, inspects a parade of Wolf Cubs during the First World War. By the end of the war the scouts and associate groups covered all young age groups.