Nickname | B-P |
Place of birth | Paddington, London, England |
Place of death | Nyeri, Kenya |
Service/branch | British Army |
Years of service | 1876–1910 |
Rank | Lieutenant-General |
Commands held | Chief of Staff, Second Matabele War (1896–1897)
5th Dragoon Guards in India (1897)
Inspector General of Cavalry, England (1903) |
Battles/wars | Anglo-Ashanti Wars,
Second Matabele War,
Siege of Mafeking,
Second Boer War |
Awards | Ashanti Star (1895),[1]
Matabele Campaign, British South Africa Company Medal (1896),[2]
Queen's South Africa Medal (1899),[3]
King's South Africa Medal ( 1902),[4]
Boy Scouts Silver Wolf
Boy Scouts Silver Buffalo Award (1926),[5]
World Scout Committee Bronze Wolf (1935),[6]
Großes Dankabzeichen des ÖPB (1927)
Großes Ehrenzeichen der Republik am Bande (1931)
Goldene Gemse (1931)
Grand-Cross in the Order of Orange-Nassau (1932),
Order of Merit (1937),
Wateler Peace Prize (1937)
Order of St Michael and St George,
Royal Victorian Order,
Order of the Bath |
Other work | Founder of the international Scouting Movement; writer; artist |
Wikipedia; baden powell
On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual,
Aids to Scouting, had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations.
[25] Following his involvement in the
Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend,
William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write
Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a
camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys from local Boys Brigade companies and sons of friends of Baden-Powell's from public schools Eton and Harrow to test out the applicability of his ideas. Baden-Powell was also influenced by
Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the
Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book
The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians and they met in 1906.
[26][27] The first book on the
Scout Movement, Baden-Powell's
Scouting for Boys was published in six instalments in 1908, and has sold approximately 150 million copies as the
fourth bestselling book of the 20th century.
[28]
Boys and girls spontaneously formed
Scout troops and the
Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as 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 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first
Girl Scouts. The
Girl Guide Movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend,
Juliette Gordon Low, was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to America, where she founded the
Girl Scouts of the USA.
In 1920, the
1st World Scout Jamboree took place in
Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed
Chief Scout of the World. Baden-Powell was created a
Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours and
Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, in the County of Essex, on 17 September 1929,
Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre.
[29] After receiving this honour, Baden-Powell mostly styled himself "Baden-Powell of Gilwell".
In 1929, during the
3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new 20 horse power
Rolls-Royce car (chassis number GVO-40, registration OU 2938) and an Eccles
Caravan.
[30] This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. The caravan was nicknamed Eccles and is now on display at
Gilwell Park. The car, nicknamed Jam Roll, was sold after his death by
Olave Baden-Powell in 1945. Jam Roll and Eccles were reunited at Gilwell for the
21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007. Recently it has been purchased on behalf of Scouting and is owned by a charity, B-P Jam Roll Ltd. Funds are being raised to repay the loan that was used to purchase the car.
[30][31] Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education.
[32] 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.
[33]
At the
5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937, Baden-Powell gave his farewell to Scouting, and retired from public Scouting life. 22 February, the joint birthday of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, continues to be marked as
Founder's Day by Scouts and
Thinking Day by Guides to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.
In his final letter to the Scouts, Baden-Powell wrote:
...I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness does not come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. 'Be Prepared' in this way, to live happy and to die happy — stick to your Scout Promise always — even after you have ceased to be a boy — and God help you to do it.[34]
Personal life
In January 1912, Baden-Powell met
Olave St Clair Soames, on the ocean liner,
Arcadian, heading for New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours.
[35][36] She was 23, while he was 55; they shared the same birthday, 22 February. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation due to Baden-Powell's fame. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on 31 October 1912, at St Peter's Church in
Parkstone.
[37] 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). There is a monument to their marriage inside St Mary's Church,
Brownsea Island.
Baden-Powell and Olave lived in
Pax Hill near
Bentley, Hampshire from about 1919 until 1939.
[38] The Bentley house was a gift of her father.
[39] Directly after he had married, Baden-Powell began to suffer persistent headaches, which were considered by his doctor to be of
psychosomatic origin and treated with
dream analysis.
[7] The headaches disappeared upon his moving into a makeshift bedroom set up on his balcony.
Baden-Powell with wife and three children, 1917
The Baden-Powells had three children, one son and two daughters, who all acquired the courtesy title of "
The Honourable" in 1929 as children of a baron. The son succeeded his father in 1941 to the Baden-Powell barony and the title of
Baron Baden-Powell.
[29]
- Arthur Robert Peter (Peter), later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (1913–1962). He married Carine Crause-Boardman in 1936, and had three children: Robert Crause, later 3rd Baron Baden-Powell; David Michael (Michael), current heir to the titles, and Wendy.
- Heather (1915–1986), who married John King and had two children: Michael, who died in the sinking of SS Heraklion, and Timothy;
- Betty (1917–2004), who married Gervas Charles Robert Clay in 1936 and had a daughter: Gillian, and three sons: Robin, Nigel and Crispin.
In addition, when Olave's sister Auriol Davidson nee Soames died in 1919, Olave and Robert took her three nieces, Christian (1912–1975), Clare (1913–1980), and Yvonne, (1918-1995?), into their family and brought them up as their own children.
[40]
In 1939, he and his wife moved to a cottage he had commissioned in
Nyeri,
Kenya, near
Mount Kenya, where he had previously been to recuperate. The small one-room house, which he named
Paxtu, was located on the grounds of the
Outspan Hotel, owned by
Eric Sherbrooke Walker, Baden-Powell's first private secretary and one of the first Scout inspectors.
[7] Walker also owned the
Treetops Hotel, approx 17 km out in the
Aberdare Mountains, often visited by Baden-Powell and people of the
Happy Valley set. The Paxtu cottage is integrated into the Outspan Hotel buildings and serves as a small Scouting museum.
Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, in St. Peter's Cemetery
[41] His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre

, which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home":
[42] When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared
Baden-Powell's grave a national monument.
[43]