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"Baden Powell" redirects here. For other meanings, see Baden Powell (disambiguation).
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (pronounced /ˌbeɪdn̨ˈpoəl/) OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB (22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B-P, 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 city 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 Pearson, for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas through a camping trip on Brownsea Island that began on 1 August 1907, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.
After his marriage with 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 in 1941.
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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, England, UK on 22 February 1857.Jeal, Tim (1989). Baden-Powell. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-170670-X. 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."Palstra, Theo P.M. (April 1967). Baden-Powel, zijn leven en werk. De Nationale Padvindersraad. Drewery, Mary (1975). Baden-Powell: the man who lived twice. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-18102-8.
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.
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. He was posted in Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence. He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.Baden-Powell, Sir Robert (1915). My Adventures As A Spy. PineTree.web. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.
Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896 to aid the British South Africa Company colonials under siege in Bulawayo during the Second Matabele War.Baden-Powell, Robert (1897). The Matabele Campaign, 1896. Greenwood Press. 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.Proctor, Tammy M. (July 2000). "A Separate Path: Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa". Comparative Studies in Society and History 42 (3). ISSN 3548-1356. 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. 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.Barrett, C.R.B. (1911). History of The XIII. Hussars. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. Retrieved on 2007-01-02. 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 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 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.Latimer, Jon (2001). Deception in War. London: John Murray, pp. 32–5. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.Conan-Doyle, Sir Arthur (1901). The Siege of Mafeking. PineTree.web. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.
Contrary views of Baden-Powell\'s actions during the Siege of Mafeking pointed out that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham stated that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the natives\' garrison.Pakenham, Thomas (1979). The Boer War. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 0-380-72001-9. However, Pakenham decidedly retreated from this position.Pakenham, Thomas (2001). The siege of Mafeking.
Baden-Powell on patriotic postcard in 1900
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.Robert Baden-Powell: Defender of Mafeking and Founder of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. Past Exhibition Archive. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved on 2006-11-17. 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 1910 lieutenant-general Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.Baden-Powell of Gilwell * Chief Scout of the World. The Ultimate Boy Scouts of America History Site. Randy Woo. Retrieved on 2007-08-01.Lord Robert Baden-Powell "B-P" – Chief Scout of the World. The Wivenhoe Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.
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." Saint George Saunders, Hilary (1948). "Chapter II, ENTERPRISE, Lord Baden-Powell", The Left Handshake. Retrieved on 2007-01-02. It was widely rumoured that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to inculcate the myth.Baden-Powell, Sir Robert (1915). My Adventures as a Spy. PineTree.web. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.
| Pronunciation of Baden-Powell [\'beɪdʌn \'pəʊəl] |
| Man, Nation, Maiden Please call it Baden. Further, for Powell Rhyme it with Noel |
| Verse by B-P |
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.Peterson, Robert (2003). Marching to a Different Drummer. Scouting Magazine. Boy Scouts of America. Retrieved on 2007-01-02. 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 of mixed social background 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.Woo, Randy (Aug 1996). Ernest Thompson Seton. The Ultimate Boy Scouts of America History Site. Randy Woo. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.Ernest Thompson Seton and Woodcraft. InFed (2002). Retrieved on 2006-12-07.Robert Baden-Powell as and Educational Innovator. InFed (2002). Retrieved on 2006-12-07. Scouting for Boys was subsequently published in six instalments in 1908.
Three Scouting pioneers: Robert Baden-Powell (seated) Ernest T. Seton (left), and Dan Beard (right)
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.Family history, Person Page 876. The Peerage. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. Burke\'s Peerage & Gentry. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. 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 Rolls-Royce car and an Eccles Caravan. This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education. Baden-Powell as an Educational Innovator. Infed Thinkers. Retrieved on 2006-02-04. 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.Nagy, László (1985). 250 Million Scouts. Geneva: World Scout Foundation.
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:
In January 1912, Baden-Powell met the woman who would be his future wife, Olave St Clair Soames, on the ocean liner, Arcadian, heading for New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours.Baden-Powell, Olave. Window on My Heart. The Autobiography of Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, G.B.E.as told to Mary Drewery. Hodder and Stoughton. Retrieved on 2006-11-16.Fact Sheet: The Three Baden-Powell\'s: Robert, Agnes, and Olave (PDF). Girl Guides of Canada. Retrieved on 2007-01-02. She was a young woman of 23, while he was 55, a not uncommon age difference in that time, and they shared the same birthday. 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 30 October 1912.Olave St Clair Baden-Powell (née Soames), Baroness Baden-Powell; Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved on 2006-11-16. 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 and Chapel Farm, Ripley, Surrey from about 1919 until 1939.Wey people, the big names of the valley. Wey River freelance community. Retrieved on 2007-04-29. The Bentley house was a gift of her father.Wade, Eileen K.. Pax Hill. PineTree Web. Retrieved on 2006-11-16. Directly after he had married, Baden-Powell had begun to have problems with his health, suffering 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 moving into a makeshift bedroom set up on his balcony.
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. 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.
Jeal argues that Baden-Powell\'s distrust of communism led to his implicit support, through naïveté, of fascism. In 1939 Baden-Powell noted in his diary: "Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organization etc.—and ideals which Hitler does not practice himself."Jeal, Tim (1990). The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell. New York: Morrow, 550. He also admired Mussolini, and some early Scouting badges had a swastika symbol on them.Boy Scout medal with fleur-de-lis and swastika, 1930s. The Learning Federation. Retrieved on 2007-08-01. According to his biographer Rosenthal, Baden-Powell used the swastika because he was a Nazi sympathizer. Jeal, however, argues that Baden-Powell was naïve of the symbol\'s growing association with fascism and maintained that his use of the symbol related to its earlier, original meaning of "good luck" in Sanskrit, for which purpose the symbol had been used for centuries prior to the rise of fascism. Despite these early sympathies, Baden-Powell was a target of the Nazi regime in the Black Book, which listed individuals which were to be arrested during and after an invasion of Great Britain as part of Operation Sealion. Scouting was regarded as a dangerous spy organization by the Nazis.Schellenberg, Walter (2000). Invasion, 1940: The Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain. London: St Ermin\'s Press.
Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, in St. Peter\'s Cemetery ()."B-P" – Chief scout of the world. Baden-Powell. World Organization of the Scout Movement. Retrieved on 2006-11-16. His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre, which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home": 
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell at Find A Grave 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.Olave St. Clair Baden-Powell at Find A Grave
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 Baronetcy and the title of Baron Baden-Powell. (1999) in Charles Mosley (editor): Burke\'s Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition, Crans, Switzerland: Burke Peerage Genealogical Books Ltd.
Baden-Powell made paintings and drawings, almost every day of his life. Most have a humorous or informative character. He published books and other texts during his years of military service to both finance his life and to educate his men.
Baden-Powell was regarded an excellent storyteller. During his whole life he told \'ripping yarns\' to audiences. After having published Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell kept on writing more handbooks and educative materials for all Scouts, as well as directives for Scout Leaders. In his later years, he also wrote about the Scout Movement and his ideas for its future. He spent the last decade of his life in Africa, and many of this later books had African themes.
For more details on this topic, see Robert Baden-Powell\'s sexual orientation.
Robert Baden-Powell\'s sexuality has been brought into question by his principal modern biographers,Rosenthal, Michael (1986). The character factory: Baden-Powell and the origins of the Boy Scout movement. Pantheon. isbn13 978-0394511696. who have found a great deal of evidence indicating he was attracted to youthful men and to boys. After an exhaustive review of the available material, Jeal presents the case that Baden-Powell was a "repressed homosexual." Jeal admits that there is not any documentary evidence that he ever acted on his sexual orientation. Baden-Powell is thought to always have remained chaste with his scouts, and he did not tolerate Scoutmasters who indulged in sexual \'escapades\' with their charges.
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Cover of second part of Scouting for Boys, January 1908 |
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Statue of Baden-Powell by Don Potter in front of Baden-Powell House
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 Silver Wolf worn by Robert Baden-Powell is handed down the line of his successors, with the current Chief Scout, Peter Duncan wearing this original award.
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 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-PowellMount Baden-Powell. USGS. Retrieved on 2006-04-17. () in California to his old Scouting friend from forty years before.Dedication of Mount Baden-Powell. The Pine Tree Web. Retrieved on April 23, 2006.Burnham, Frederick Russell (1944). Taking Chances. Haynes Corp, xxv-xxix. ISBN 1-879356-32-5. Today their friendship is honoured in perpetuity with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham ().Mapping Service. Mount Burnham. Retrieved on 2006-04-17.
Baden-Powell was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on numerous occasions, including 10 separate nominations in 1928. Nomination Database: Baden-Powell. The Nomination Database for the Nobel Peace Prize, 1901-1955. Retrieved on 2007-10-03.
As part of the Scouting 2007 Centenary, Nepal renamed Urkema Peak to Baden-Powell Peak.
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| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
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| New title | Baron Baden-Powell 1929 – 1941 | Succeeded by Peter Baden-Powell |
| Scouting | ||
| New title | Chief Scout of the World 1920 – 1941 | Succeeded by Lord Somers |
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 Scouting Topics
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Scouting in the United Kingdom
Founders, pioneers, and notable leaders Robert Baden-Powell · Olave Baden-Powell · Agnes Baden-Powell · Daniel Carter Beard · William D. Boyce · Frederick Russell Burnham · George Thomas Coker · David Cossgrove · Olga Drahonowska-Malkowska · Charles Eastman · Arthur Rose Eldred · William Hillcourt · Andrzej Małkowski · Ernest Thompson Seton · William A. Smith · James E. West · J. S. Wilson
Prominent places
Other Scouting articles |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Baden-Powell, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | B-P |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Founder of Scouting, British Army Lt.General |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1857-02-22 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paddington, London, UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1941-01-06 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Nyeri, Kenya |
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