Who is baden powell

Olave St Clair Soames in a picture likely taken by her husband around the time of their marriage. This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia with only minor checks and changes see www.

See also our Disclaimer. Founder of Scouting. Paddington London , England. Founder of the international Scouting movement ; writer; artist. Man, Nation, Maiden Please call it Baden.

He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist of some talent, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were usually spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers. A Boer army of in excess of 8, men surrounded him and his troops. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for days, and much of this is attributable to some of the cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison.

As a result, Baden-Powell became a national hero back home. On his return home, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual "Aids to Scouting" had become something of a best seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organizations. Following a meeting with the founder of the Boys' Brigade, Sir William Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership, and in held a camp on Brownsea Island for 22 boys of mixed social background to test out some of his ideas, which is now seen as the beginning of the Scouting movement.

In he wrote his next book called Pigsticking or Hog Hunting about boar hunting. Since there was not a corps of scouts available for this mission, Baden-Powell conducted his own scouting trips to learn about the terrain and the people. He would later publish his experiences in a book called The Matabele Campaign. Baden-Powell cited the adventure as a crucial learning experience in the ways of scouting.

He dedicated much of his position to training the troops in tracking and surveillance techniques. In he published Aids to Scouting, which was intended for the military, but had also gained surprising interest among the general public.

In the same year, the commander-in-chief of the British army sent Baden-Powell back to South Africa to deal with an expected war between the British and the Boers. The Boer War was a bloody struggle between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking whites for control of South Africa's mineral wealth—the world's richest gold reefs. While the chief of the British army, Lord Wolseley, wanted to send 10, troops to South Africa, the British cabinet disagreed and instead sent 20 special service officers to organize a defense of the frontiers, one of whom was Baden-Powell.

He was assigned to raise a small regiment to protect Rhodesia and to deceive the Boers into thinking that more British forces were on the way. The Boers surrounded Baden-Powell and his men in Mafeking, a small town about miles west of Johannesburg. Baden-Powell managed to defend the town against over 7, Boers for days.

Some viewed this as the first real victory for the British against the Boers and Baden-Powell was considered a hero. Mafeking was an important experience for Baden-Powell in two respects.

First, he finally experienced real military action that he had desired for so long. The experience also gave him the respect of the military he was looking for and the recognition as a leader.

He was promoted to the rank of major general because of his success with this mission. Second, Mafeking was the beginning of Baden-Powell's idea for boy scouts. Because the men were busy protecting the city, Baden-Powell organized the boys into a Mafeking Cadet Corps to take care of the smaller tasks around town. In Baden-Powell was appointed head of the newly created South African Constabulary, a military police force, for three years.

He was named inspector general of the cavalry from until It was during this last appointment that Baden-Powell really began to develop his ideas about the scouting movement.

Smith had asked Baden-Powell to rewrite his book Aids to Scouting for a younger audience. According to Michael Rosenthal in The Character Factory, this gave Baden-Powell "the vision of a British society made strong by legions of well-disciplined, morally upright, patriotic youth who found their satisfaction in defending the interests of the empire and following the orders of their superiors. Since Baden-Powell was still occupied as inspector general of the cavalry, it took a few years to put his ideas into action.

In he wrote a short paper called "Scouting for Boys," where he put some of his ideas into print. Seton and Beard had started similar youth organizations in the United States.

This small paper turned into a six-part series called Scouting for Boys, which was published between January and March of The series included the first publication of the Scout Oath and Scout Law. This series then led to an official weekly magazine, called The Scout, which increased the visibility and appeal of the scouting movement in the public's eye. In the summer of Baden-Powell acted upon his ideas and ran a demonstration camp for boys on Brownsea Island off the coast of Dorset. Twenty-two boys, from ages 10 to 17, took part in the weeklong exercise, which consisted of camping, cooking, tracking, singing, and storytelling.

This was the beginning of what was called "unquestionably the most significant youth movement of the twentieth century " in Michael Rosenthal's The Character Factory. In Baden-Powell resigned from the Army and became the chairperson of the Executing Committee of the scouting movement.

This movement quickly spread to other countries.