Baden-Powell of Gilwell

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell of Gilwell; January 8 1941, also known as B-P, was a Lieutenant-General in the British Army, writer, and founder of the world Scouting Movement.

Early life

Baden-Powell was born in Paddington, in London in 1857. He was the sixth of eight sons among ten children of a Savilian professor of geometry at University of Oxford. To his family and friends he was known as Stephe (rhymes with Livy). His father, Reverend Baden Powell, died when he was three. Subsequently, he was raised by his mother, Henrietta Grace Baden-Powell, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. Baden-Powell would say of her in 1933, "The whole secret of my getting on lay with my mother".

After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, Baden-Powell was awarded a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school. His first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds. He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist of some talent, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were usually spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.

His name

In a short verse he wrote, he mischievously described the correct pronunciation:

Man, Nation, Maiden

Please call it Baden.

Further, for Powell

Rhyme it with Noel.

Baden-Powell is often abbreviated to "B-P" (with various punctuations). The well known motto of the Scouts, Be Prepared, also plays on these initials.

Military career

In 1876, Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India. In 1895, he held special service in Africa and returned to India in 1897 to command the 5th Dragoon Guards.

Baden-Powell enhanced and honed his Scouting skills amidst the Zulu tribesmen in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was mentioned in dispatches. During one of his dispatches, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training program he started after he founded the Scouting movement. His skills impressed his superiors and he was soon transferred to the British secret service.

Baden-Powell was subsequently posted for three years as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean based in Malta. He frequently traveled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings. He then led a successful campaign in Ashanti, Africa, and at the age of 40 was promoted to lead the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1897. A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled "Aids to Scouting", a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.

He returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in a number of actions against the Zulus. By this time, he had been promoted as the youngest colonel in the British army. He was responsible for the organization of a force of frontiersmen to assist the regular army. Whilst arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army of in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to some of the cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers were ordered to simulate avoiding non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.

During the siege, a cadet corps (consisting of white boys below fighting age) was used to stand guard, carry messages, assist in hospitals and so on, freeing up the men for military service. Although Baden-Powell did not form this cadet corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege, he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of Scouting for Boys.

The siege was lifted in the Relief of Mafeking on May 16, 1900. Promoted to Major-General, Baden-Powell became a national hero. After organizing the South African Constabulary (police), he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903.

Founder of Scouting

On his return, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, "Aids to Scouting", had become something of a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organizations.

Following a meeting with the founder of the Boys' Brigade, Sir William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership, and in 1907 held a camp on Brownsea Island for 22 boys of mixed social background to test out some of his ideas. Scouting for Boys was subsequently published in 1908 in six installments. Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout Troops and the Scouting movement had inadvertently started, first a national, and soon an international obsession. The Scouting movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1908, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guides movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell.

Although he could have doubtless become Field Marshal, Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army in 1910 with the rank of Lieutenant-General on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Baden-Powell put himself at the disposal of the War Office. No command, however, was given him, for, as Lord Kitchener said: "he could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts." It was widely rumored that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to foster and inculcate the myth.

Baden-Powell and his wife moved to Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire, a gift of her father in 1918. They established their family home there for over twenty years.

In 1920, the first World Scout Jamboree took place in Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World.

Baden-Powell was made a Baronet in 1922.

In 1929, during the third World Scout Jamboree he received as a present a new car, which happened to be a Rolls Royce. This car was soon nicknamed Jam-Roll. He also received an Eccles Caravan, which was nicknamed Eccles Cake, so the Scouts attending the event were treated with a Jam-Roll towing an Eccles Cake. This combination served well the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. During the same event, Baden-Powell was created Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell in the County of Essex, in 1929, Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre. B.-P. also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education.

Under his dedicated command the world Scouting movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.

Scouts and Guides mark February 22 as "Founder's Day" (Scouts) and "Thinking Day" (Guides), the joint birthdays of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.

Family life

Olave St Clair Soames in a picture likely taken by her husband around the time of their marriage

In January 1912, Baden-Powell met his future wife, Olave Soames, on an ocean liner (Arcadia) on the way to New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours. She was a young woman of 23, while he was 55, and they shared the same birthday. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation. However, it was perhaps due to Baden-Powell's fame, as such an age difference was not uncommon at the time. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on October 30, 1912. The Scouts of England each donated a penny to buy Baden-Powell a wedding gift, a car (note that this is not the Rolls Royce they were presented with in 1929). Before he got married to Olave, Baden-Powell was briefly engaged to Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of American Girl Scouting and showed interest in other women.

Baden-Powell and Olave lived in Pax Hill from about 1919 until 1939. Soon after he had married, Baden-Powell had begun to have problems with his health, suffering several bouts of illness. He complained of persistent headaches, which were considered by his doctor to be of psychosomatic origin and treated with dream analysis. The headaches subsided upon his ceasing to sleep with Olave and moving into a makeshift bedroom set up on his balcony. In 1939, he moved to a house he had commissioned in Kenya, a country he had previously visited to recuperate. He died on January 8, 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, Kenya, near Mount Kenya. His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the center, which is the trail sign for "Going Home", or "I have gone home".

When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared B.-P.'s grave a national monument.

The Baden-Powells had three children — one son and two daughters (who gained the courtesy titles of Honourable in 1929; the son later succeeding his father in 1941):

• Peter (Arthur Robert Peter), later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (1913–1962)
• Hon. Heather Baden-Powell (1915–1986)
• Hon. Betty Baden-Powell (1917–2004), who , married Gervase Charles Robert Clay (b. 1912) in 1936 and had 3 sons and 1 daughter

Awards

In 1937 Baden-Powell was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of the most exclusive awards in the British honours system, and he was also awarded 28 decorations by foreign states.

The Bronze Wolf, the only distinction of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting, was first awarded to Lord Baden-Powell by a unanimous decision of the then-International Committee on the day of the institution of the Bronze Wolf in Stockholm in 1935. He was also the first recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award in 1926, the highest award conferred by the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1931, Major Frederick Russell Burnham dedicated Mount Baden-Powell in California to his old scouting friend from 40 years before. Today their friendship is honoured in perpetuity with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham.

Baden-Powell was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 1939, but the Swedish Nobel Committee decided not to award any prize for that year due to the start of World War II.

Baden-Powell´s Last Message

• Last Message to Scouts

Bibliography and Biographies

External links Baden-Powell Baden-Powell Family Jamborees Photo Gallery Library World Tour (Special Note: The original text is form english wikipedia and has been heavily edited especially where the author refutes the original wikipedia text. Author: Jonathan Govier)