How the Girl Guides Won the War. Janie Hampton

could play useful roles beyond the purely domestic.

      It didn’t take long for other employers to realise that Guides were honest, trustworthy and loyal, and soon many factories only employed them. In some munitions factories, where safety was paramount, all the workers were Guides aged from fourteen up. During their lunch hour they would assemble in the factory yard and remove their working overalls and caps to reveal their Guide uniforms and their hair in long, single plaits. Their Captain wore a long skirt, navy blouse and white kid gloves to go with her felt hat and lanyard. They practised first-aid on each other, and learned new skills towards more badges. When the factory whistle went they would put their overalls and caps back on, and return to making armaments. Some employers paid for the Guides’ uniforms and outings. Even after the school-leaving age was raised to fourteen in 1918, there were still many working Guides: in 1921 the 9th Oxford Guide Company was registered in the Savernake glove factory off Botley Road.

      When the First World War ended, Guides were considered so reliable by the War Office that a contingent was taken with the British delegation to France. British Guides ran errands at the Palace of Versailles for the Paris Peace Conference in June 1919, and sixteen Ranger Guides were invited to witness the signing of the treaty.

      Five months later, Baden-Powell made a speech at a Guide peace rally in a packed Albert Hall. He told the 8,000 Guides present that it was small, unselfish deeds that led to peace and greater understanding between people. ‘Each of you can go further and take a valuable part in this great work,’ he said. ‘There is no doubt that you can do this. The only question is — will you do it?’ There was a resounding cheer in response: ‘Yes we can!’

      With so many men lost during the war, the Guide movement was a blessing for many young women who had been left with little chance of finding a husband. They had to learn to support themselves, and needed all the skills they could muster for employment. Child Nurse, Toy-Maker and Gymnast Proficiency Badges were all useful for future nannies; and before the introduction of the national driving test, Mechanic and Map-Reading Badges could lead to chauffeur or taxi-driving jobs. ‘The Artist’s Badge helped me to get a job designing toffee papers,’ said former Guide Verily Anderson. Not all badges meant hard work: for the Dancer’s Badge, ‘the Irish jig should be danced with plenty of spirit and abandon’, wrote Mrs Janson Potts in Guide Badges and How to Win Them.

      Among the proposed names for older Guides, aged sixteen to twenty-one, were ‘Citizen-Guides’, ‘Torchbearers’, ‘Eagerhearts’, ‘Pilots’, ‘Pioneers’ and ‘Guide-women’. Baden-Powell had a sound sense of marketing: he pointed out that a vague name, without any historical connotations, would be best, as it could acquire its own meaning. He suggested ‘Rangers’, and ‘Sea Rangers’ for those who lived near the sea or rivers. These young women were at ‘the age of fullest sexual development’, wrote Olave Baden-Powell to new Guiders, ‘when a real love for the out-of-doors can give her many healthy interests and a wholesome tone. Beware of any tendency of allowing the idealism of the age to be fixed on ourselves [leaders] with our human failings, which must inevitably disappoint.’

      Running Brownie packs and Guide companies proved an invaluable outlet for the energies of many unmarried women at a time when they were beginning to express a desire for equality. The Guide movement filled a gaping hole in contributing to social order, education and entertainment. Badges now included Landworker and International Knowledge, the latter requiring an understanding of the League of Nations and the International Labour Office. The ‘Badge of Fortitude’ was created in honour of Nurse Edith Cavell, who had been executed by a German firing squad in October 1915 for helping British soldiers to escape. This special badge was awarded to Guides with physical disabilities who showed extra fortitude.

      By the end of the war, relations between Olave and Agnes were still strained, and there was nothing Agnes could do to prevent her young sister-in-law from appointing her own secretarial staff, taking charge of the training department and writing her own book, Training Girls as Guides. When Olave was appointed first Chief Commissioner, and then in 1918 Chief Guide, Agnes had to throw in the towel and content herself with the title ‘the Grandmother of Guiding’.

      The following year, the Baden-Powell family settled down in Hampshire, in Pax Hill, a house big enough for entertaining, run by domestic servants, many of whom were young enough to be enrolled as Guides and Scouts. It was quite normal for the Baden-Powells to have up to 150 people to a garden party, with Guides providing country dancing. The three Baden-Powell children were allowed to come down from the nursery with their nanny and join in the fun.

      ‘Guiding is a Game; Guiding is Fun; Guiding is an Adventure,’ declared Olave. In 1919 she formed the International Council, to help Guides and Scouts share their ideas around the world. Dispensing with Agnes’s older friends, she rallied some well-known and influential women to join the committee. A number of them had married older men, didn’t like children much and preferred uniform to civilian clothes. One of these was Violet Markham, who always used her maiden name even after she was married to a Lieutenant-Colonel. The daughter of a wealthy mine-owner, she first championed the causes of miners, and then female domestic servants. Olave’s Assistant Chief Commissioner was Katherine Furse, who had been brought up in Switzerland, and was an excellent skier and keen mountaineer. During the First World War she had worked for the Red Cross, and had then started the Women’s Royal Navy and the Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing service. An open-minded woman, she wanted Guides to be more socially responsible, and soon became head of the Sea Rangers, which had been started in 1920 by former Wrens. They sang shanties and learned how to handle small boats, to signal and lifesave, and to cook and keep their gear tidy in cramped quarters. Before enrolment, a Sea Ranger had to make a lanyard with at least eight different knots.

      In 1926 Dame Katherine founded the World Association, and was its director for ten years. A brilliant administrator and organiser, she once joked, ‘If I saw a child being run over by a tram, my first reaction would be to organise somebody else to rescue it.’ ‘Dame Katherine represented sheer slogging hard work,’ said Olave. ‘There was a strange unexpected streak of intolerance in her make-up and her critical, questioning mind made her appear slightly argumentative and unbending in temperament. She was so absolutely upright, that you could not but bow to her decisions.’

      In July 1925 the Girl Guides held a rally in Oxford. The Oxford Times reported the Chief Guide’s opening speech: ‘Our aim is to train young girls to develop themselves to be useful, loyal, honourable, capable and helpful. We want them to think not only for themselves, but of others.’ By then half a million girls had joined the Guides and Brownies in over thirty nations — nearly double the number of Boy Scouts and Cubs. In 1929 there were enough Guides all over the world to raise £60,000 to build substantial headquarters overlooking the Royal Stables in Buckingham Palace Road. Opening in 1931, these smart new offices housed the publisher of The Guide and The Brownie, as well as a tailoring department where uniforms were made — Guide overcoats cost two guineas.

      At a time when the mortality rate was still very high, anything that helped to reduce death and disease was appreciated. Guides couldn’t do much about sewers and clean water supplies, but they could learn about hygiene and be on hand for first-aid in emergencies. In 1927 the 46th Westminster Company demonstrated their skills as well-prepared first-aiders, making a 16mm film in which a woman crashes her horse cart. Luckily some passing Guides take control of the frightened horse, while others bandage up the woman’s leg and carry her to the village doctor. Then, as the Guides walk along a cliff, they see a boy fall over the edge. One Guide climbs down to him, while another swims across a river to alert a boatman. With the tide coming in, the unconscious boy is rescued in the nick of time.

      Within just ten years of the movement’s foundation, Guide companies had been started in penitentiaries, orphanages and care homes. Guiding was a way in which ‘the poor and needy’ could be encouraged to help themselves, and the better-off could learn to help others. When a Colonel Strover organised ‘The Woodlarks Camp for Cripples’, over a thousand children suffering from club feet, polio and TB of the spine arrived for a holiday in their wheelchairs or on crutches, and were cared for by eager Guides. Before the Welfare State or the National Health Service, disabled children had to rely on charities and volunteers. Extension