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Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM GCMG GCVO KCB
All quotes From Wiki
After having been educated at Charterhouse School in Surrey, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. Based on those earlier books, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for youth readership. In 1907, he held the first Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.
The first Scout Rally was held at The Crystal Palace in 1909, at which appeared a number of girls dressed in Scout uniform, who told B-P that they were the "Girl Scouts", whereupon B-P and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell formed the Girl Guides Movement. After his marriage on 30 October 1912 to Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell and his wife actively gave guidance to the Scouting and Girl Guiding Movements. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.
How many know that his Scouting for boys had origins from North America???
Scouting for Boys (1908) is Baden-Powell's rewrite of his earlier book Aids to Scouting (1899)[2] with many youth training ideas openly taken from The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians (1906)[3] written by Ernest Thompson Seton, who later became the Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America[4][5] Aids to Scouting was mostly a written explanation of the military scouting and self-reliance skills lessons Baden-Powell had learned from Frederick Russell Burnham, the British Army Chief of Scouts, but following the siege of Mafeking this military handbook unexpectedly became popular with many youth groups and educators, like Charlotte Mason, in Britain.[4][6][7] At Mafeking, Baden-Powell had recruited and trained boys aged 12–15 as postmen, messengers, and later to carry the wounded, to free men for fighting. Upon his return to England, following the Second Boer War, Baden-Powell learned some British schools had been using Aids to Scouting to teach observation and deduction. In 1906, Seton discussed youth training ideas with Baden-Powell and shared with him a copy of The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians.[5] Soon after, Baden-Powell decided to revise Aids to Scouting into a book for boys.[4] Several friends supported Baden-Powell, including Sir William Alexander Smith, founder of the Boys' Brigade, and Cyril Arthur Pearson, who owned newspapers and printing presses.[8] Baden-Powell wrote a draft, then called Boy Patrols, which he used and tested with 22 boys for one week at camp on Brownsea Island in the summer of 1907, where Pearson's literary editor Percy Everett assisted.[4]Ernest Seaton was Canadian, thus the North American link
Scouting for Boys was published in six fortnightly instalments of approximately 70 pages each, from January to March 1908. They were produced by Pearson's printer, Horace Cox. These six publications were a success, and as planned were issued in book form on 1 May 1908. Although Aids to Scouting strongly influenced the book, Scouting for Boys presents Scouting from the perspective of outdoorsmen and explorers rather than military men, and it adds the Scout Oath, Scout Law, honors and games for youth.[4][5] The book was very popular upon release, and became one of the best-selling books in history. Scouting for Boys has been translated into many languages. In 1948, the book was still selling 50,000 copies annually. Only in 1967 was a decline noted by the publisher, and in the last decades of the 20th century, even by the Scout movement, the book came to be seen as a period curiosity.[8] It is claimed to be the fourth bestselling book of the 20th century.[9][10] A realistic estimate is that approximately 4 million copies of the UK edition have been sold. Extrapolating this to 87 different language editions worldwide, historic world sales of Scouting for Boys can be estimated at 100 to 150 million copies since 1908
For those who love history, the Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians can be read online here
Birch Bark Roll book
and lastly Scouting for boys
I hope I leave you knowing more about where scouting came from, and why we do what we do.
