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"Baden Powell" redirects here. For other meanings, see Baden Powell (disambiguation).
| |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Founder of Scouting | |||||
| 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[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), (1926), 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 | ||||
/ˈbeɪdən ˈpoʊ.əl/; 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement.After having been educated at Charterhouse School, 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 militaryreconnaissance 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 Pearson, for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas through a camping trip on Brownsea Island with the local Boys' Brigade and sons of his friends that began on 1 August 1907, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.
After his marriage to Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell and notably his wife actively gave guidance to the Scouting Movement and the Girl Guides Movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.
Contents
- 1 Early life
- 2 Military career
- 3 Scouting movement
- 4 Personal life
- 5 Works
- 6 Awards
- 7 Styles
- 8 See also
- 9 Notes
- 10 Related readings: biographies
- 11 External links
[edit] Early life
Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell, or more familiarly as Stephe Powell, at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington in London, on 22 February 1857,[7] He was named for his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer,[8] his third name was his mother's maiden name. His father Reverend Baden Powell, a Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, already had four teenage children from the second of his two previous marriages. On 10 March 1846 at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, Reverend Powell married Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824 – 13 October 1914), eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth and 28 years his junior. Quickly they had Warington (early 1847), George (late 1847), Augustus (1849) and Francis (1850). After three further children who died when very young, they had Stephe, Agnes (1858) and Baden (1860). The three youngest children and the often ill Augustus were close friends. Reverend Powell died when Stephe was three, and as tribute to his father and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, the mother changed the family name to Baden-Powell. Subsequently, Stephe was raised by his mother, 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."[7][9][10]After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, during which his favourite brother Augustus died, Stephe 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, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.[7]
[edit] Military career
In 1876, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, as he styled himself then, joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was Mentioned in Despatches. During one of his travels, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training programme he started after he founded the Scouting Movement. Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and he was Brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp of the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth.[7] He was posted in Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence.[7] He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.[11]Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896 to aid the British South Africa Company colonials under siege in Bulawayo during the Second Matabele War.[12] This was a formative experience for him not only because he had the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in Matobo Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here.[13] It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to the American Old West and woodcraft (i.e., scoutcraft), and here that he wore his signature Stetson campaign hat and kerchief for the first time.[7] After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell took part in a successful British invasion of Ashanti, West Africa in the Fourth Ashanti War, and at the age of 40 was promoted to lead the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1897 in India.[14] 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.
Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war, Matabele chief Uwini, in 1896, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered. Uwini was shot by firing squad under Baden-Powell's instructions. Baden-Powell was cleared by an inquiry, and later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character".
B-P returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in further military actions against the Zulus. By this time, he had been promoted to be the youngest colonel in the British Army. He was responsible for the organisation of a force of Legion of Frontiersmen to assist the regular army. While arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to 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.[15] Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.[16] In one instance noting that the Boers had not removed the rail line, Baden-Powell loaded an armoured locomotive with sharpshooters and successfully sent it down the rails into the heart of the Boer encampment and back again in a strategic attempt to decapitate the Boer leadership.
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 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 16 May 1900. Promoted to major-general, Baden-Powell became a national hero.[19] After organising the South African Constabulary, the national police force, he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903. In 1907 he was appointed to command a division in the newly-formed Territorial Force.[20]
In 1910 Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army reputedly on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.[21][22]
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."[23] It was widely rumoured that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to inculcate the myth.[24]
[edit] Scouting movement
—Verse by B-P
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".
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
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