As many of you know, I grew up in Scouting and my sons are Scouts as well. I am fascinated with the roots of the Scouting movement in B-P’s military manual, “Aids to Scouting” which was later expanded into a serialized book targeted at boys and the Brownsea Island experiment. Even during that summer, he had no intention of being the head of an organization for boys. He just wanted to validate his concept.
Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell (he pronounced it POE-el, btw) in a uniform from the South African Constabulary at the first Boy Scout camp on Brownsea Island in 1907. The camp was an experiment to see if his “scouting” concepts developed during his time in South Africa would actually work with boys. B-P made a point of recruiting boys from both the upper and lower classes to see if they could work together. Obviously, it was successful, but it still was not his intent to start a movement. B-P thought other boys organizations might find it useful, but boys started reading his book, “Scouting for Boys”, and starting Scout patrols and troops, sometimes themselves recruiting a man to be their Scoutmaster.
