(Uni)forming youth: Girl guides and boy scouts in Britain, 1908-39

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 102-134

  Proctor, Tammy M ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 54749142851     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/1998.45.103     Document Type: Review

References (120)

1. On the scouts, see for example: Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory, New York: Pantheon, 1984;
2. John Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society, London: Croom Helm, 1977;
3. Paul Wilkinson, 'English Youth Movements 1908-1930', Journal of Contemporary History 4:2, April 1969.
4. There have been a number of biographies of Robert Baden-Powell, but the best is the most recent one by Tim Jeal, The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell, New York: William Morrow, 1990.
5. On social control as a concept used by historians, see: Gareth Stedman Jones, 'Class Expression versus Social Control? A Critique of Recent Trends in the Social History of Leisure', in Languages of Class: Studies in Working Class History, 1832-1982, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 76-89;
6. and Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo, 'Ways of Seeing: Control and Leisure versus Class and Struggle', in Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure, ed. Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981, pp. 128-154.
7. The most successful of the various competing movements were the Boys' Brigade and Girls' Brigade for younger children and the Club movements for older youth. See Springhall, Youth, Empire, and Society, p. 135.
8. For membership estimates see Wilkinson, 'English Youth Movements',
9. and Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society, p. 131. Wilkinson cites a study by Mass Observation in 1966 that claimed 34% of males born between 1901-1920 were Scouts. If Wilkinson's numbers are correct, the numbers of interwar Scouts were substantially higher since membership doubled from 1918 to 1930. Springhall cites a survey that says at least 60% of British women had been Guides at one time.
10. On comparative youth movements, see Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society,
11. and Wilkinson, 'English Youth Movements'.
12. On the Jewish Lads' Brigade, see: Richard A. Voeltz, '". . . A Good Jew and a Good Englishman". The Jewish Lads' Brigade, 1894-1922', Journal of Contemporary History 23:1, January 1988, pp. 119-127.
13. Michael J. Childs, Labour's Apprentices: Working-Class Lads in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, London: Hambledon Press, 1992, pp. 142-151.
14. See also, David Fowler, The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in Interwar Britain, London: Woburn Press, 1995.
15. Jill Julius Matthews, 'They Had Such A Lot Of Fun: The Women's League of Health and Beauty Between the Wars', History Workshop 30, Autumn 1990, pp. 22-54.
16. Figures are taken from the Annual Reports of the Guide and Scout Association from 1917-1939. These reports are on file at the Scout Association and Girl Guide Association Archives in London.
17. The relative freedom that boys enjoyed echoed the pre-war era. See, for example: Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870-1914, London: Rivers Oram, 1996;
18. Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, London: Routledge, 1981;
19. and Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
20. Figures used to compile this table are taken from the Annual Reports of the Scout and Girl Guide Associations and from the Census of England and Wales, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1924, 1934.
21. Roy Brook, The Story of Huddersfield, London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1968, p. 211;
22. Noreen Branson, Britain in the Nineteen Twenties, London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1975, p. 82.
23. Information on the occupations in Yorkshire was taken from the Census of England and Wales 1931, London: HM Stationery Office, 1934, pp. 280-295.
24. David Hey, Yorkshire from A.D. 1000, London: Longman, 1986, pp. 258-259, 303;
25. David H. Pill, Yorkshire: The West Riding, London: Batsford, 1977.
26. Leslie Horsfall, interview with author, 7 May 1993, Huddersfield; 16th Huddersfield Warrant Records, Huddersfield North District, in the possession of Gwen Pearson, District Secretary; Ralph Whiteley, interview with author, 5 May 1993, Huddersfield.
27. Ralph Whiteley, interview with author, Huddersfield, May 1993; Kirklees Sound Archive (Huddersfield), oral history of male born 1907, interviewed by Ilona Avotins 27 February 1986, interview #041CH. Both Whiteley and other people I interviewed mentioned the importance of Scout concerts in Huddersfield, and they especially cited the role of actor James Mason (a Huddersfield Scout) and his brothers in the success of these events. Each told a rags-to-riches story about Mason and Scouting's influence on his later success.
28. Whiteley interview, 5 May 1993. Ralph Whiteley is still active in the Scout movement in Huddersfield.
29. Kirklees Sound Archive, Huddersfield, Yorkshire: Female born 1904, Interview by Gillian Greaves, 28 October 1986, interview #234; Female born 1911, Interview by Allison Coulson, 2 December 1986, interview #247 CH; Female born 11 November 1918, Interview by Sandy Smith, 21 November, 1986, interview #249 CH.
30. Sheffield Warrant records for 1st Croft Hall. Warrant records are located in Group Folders at the Sheffield City Boy Scout Archive, Trippet Lane, Sheffield. My sincere thanks to Roger and Mary Sanderson, archivists, and to the staff of the Scout Association for their assistance in using these records.
31. Sheffield Warrant Records for 7th Attercliffe and 10th Mount Tabor.
32. Sheffield Warrant Records - 1st Croft Hall, 1944 testimonial.
33. Still the best article on notions of respectability as defined in homes and neighbourhoods is Ellen Ross, '"Not the Sort that Would Sit on the Doorstep". Respectability in PreWorld War I London Neighborhoods', International Labor and Working-Class History 27, Spring 1985, pp. 39-59.
34. The most famous early study of London remains the 5-volume study by Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902).
35. For historical studies of London in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, see for example: Davin, Growing Up Poor,
36. David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds, Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989;
37. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class and Outcast London;
38. Roy Porter, London: A Social History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994;
39. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London 1870-1918, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993;
40. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
41. Census of England and Wales 1931: General Report, London: HMSO, 1950;
42. David R. Green, 'The Metropolitan Economy: Continuity and Change 1800-1939', in London: A New Metropolitan Geography, eds Keith Hoggart and Green, London: Edward Arnold, 1991, pp. 22-24.
43. For boys, the numbers given represent those aged eleven and older; for girls, aged fourteen and older. Hubert Llewellyn Smith, The New Survey of London Life and Labour, vol. IX, London: P. S. King and Son, Ltd., 1935, pp. 190-191, 239. See chapters VII on Social Organizations for Adolescent Boys and VIII on Social Organizations for Adolescent Girls.
44. Smith, New Survey, pp. 155, 190-191, 240.
45. Smith, New Survey p. 220.
46. Presbyterian Settlement Junior Guides Report of Members, Poplar, East India Dock Road, 1934-35; Girl Guides Association Archive (GGA), London. These records show that life for working-class girls had not changed that much in London since the late 19th century. See Ross, Love and Toil, especially Chapter Five.
47. T. S. Lukis to Archie Hogarth, 5 April 1908, March 1909, 21 June 1909; TC/93, Scouts Association (SA), London.
48. Jeal, The Boy-Man, pp. 404-409.
49. Much more work remains to be done on the local records of the Scout and Guides movements, kept at the county and divisional levels. For work that supports my finding about cross-class membership, see: Michael Blanch, 'Imperialism, Nationalism and Organized Youth', in Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, John Clarke, Charles Critcher and Richard Johnson, eds, Birmingham: Centre for Cultural Studies, 1979, pp. 102-120,
50. and Charles Griffiths, 'The Beginnings of the Boy Scout Movement in Reading, Berkshire, 1908-1914', unpublished project for Open University, 1996, on file at SA London.
51. For an interesting study of uniforms as devices for socialization and nationalization, see: Nathan Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through Clothing, New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.
52. Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 60-61.
53. Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 5-9.
54. Sally Alexander, 'Becoming a Woman in London in the 1920s and 1930s', in Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800, ed. David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones, London: Routledge, 1989, 256-257.
55. Michael Budd's work on this subject suggests that a major transformation in the understanding and articulation of physical culture took place after World War I, especially in regard to youth. Michael Anton Budd, 'Heroic Bodies: Physical Culture, Commerce and the Promise of the Perfected Self, 1898-1918', PhD diss. Rutgers, October 1992.
56. For other works on the body and consumption, see: Matthews, 'They Had Such a Lot of Fun', pp. 22-54,
57. and Alexander, 'Becoming a Woman', p. 262.
58. Matthews, 'They Had Such a Lot of Fun', pp. 25, 35.
59. For information on the movements for national efficiency and for worries about degenerated youth, see: John Gillis, Youth and History New York: Academic Press, 1974;
60. Harry Hendrick, Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem 1880-1920, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990;
61. Rosenthal, Character Factory;
62. Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society,
63. Allen Warren, 'Mothers for the Empire', in Making Imperial Mentalities, ed. J. A. Mangan, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990;
64. and 'Citizens of the Empire', in Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. John Mackenzie, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986;
65. Wilkinson, 'English Youth Movements'.
66. Ramsay MacDonald to Robert Baden-Powell, 20 April 1914. (When MacDonald was prime minister in 1929, he arranged for a peerage to be awarded to Baden-Powell at the jamboree. Memo by Olave Baden-Powell, November 1950. TC/95, SA London.)
67. Edward Ezard, Battersea Boy, London: William Kimber, 1979, p. 84.
68. Almeria Stockdale to Rose Kerr, 2 November 1930. GGA London.
69. D. Allport to Mr Middlemas, 30 November 1954. TC/271, SA London.
70. Ida Edwards to Rose Kerr, no date, GGA-London. Quoted in full in Rose Kerr, The Story of the Girl Guides, London: GGA, 1940, pp. 64-68.
71. Of course, street abuse, fights and territoriality were not uncommon experiences for children in Britain, whether they were wearing their uniforms or not. For a good discussion of some of these divisions, see Davin, Growing Up Poor, pp. 204-208.
72. May A. M. Rainer, 'Emma's Daughter', unpublished memoir, 1977, Brunel University.
73. For this kind of bargaining, see: Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986, p. 70.
74. William Tucker, Autobiography of an Astrologer, Sidcup: Pythagorean, 1960, pp. 17, 24.
75. Peter Kimpton, interview with author, 25 March 1993, Roland Philipps Scout Centre, London.
76. Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides, London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1917, p. 66.
77. Winn Everett, interview with author, 24 March 1993, Bushey, Hertfordshire.
78. G. V. Holmes, The Likes of Us, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1948, pp. 97-98.
79. Chaim Bermant, Coming Home, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976, pp. 37, 94-95.
80. Molly Weir, Shoes were for Sunday, London: Hutchinson and Co, 1970, pp. 11, 46, 162-164.
81. Alice Linton, Not Expecting Miracles, London: Centerprise Trust Ltd, 1982, pp. 17, 56-57.
82. 'Scout! Get your "Kit" from Gamage's: The World's Largest Scout Outfitters', A. W. Gamage, Ltd., Holborn, E. C., 1911, p. 31. TC/84, SA London.
83. Catalogue, 1927, 1938, London: Girl Guides Association;
84. GGA-London. Advertisement in The Scouter, 21:5 May 1927, p. 159; SA-London. These are representative selections from the many catalogues in the Scout and Guide archives.
85. Winifred Renshaw, An Ordinary Life: Memories of a Balby Childhood, Doncaster: Doncaster Library Services, 1984, ch. 35. [Typescript with no page numbers.]
86. A good exploration of changing state and societal definitions of age divisions is: Roger Cooter (ed.), In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880-1940, London/New York: Routledge, 1992.
87. For the importance of 'adolescence' as an age division, see: Gillis, Youth and History.
88. For information on expanded work opportunities for young women, see: Diana Gittins, Fair Sex: Family Size and Structure, 1900-1939, London: Hutchinson, 1982.
89. Militarization and its effects are usefully discussed in: Michael Geyer, 'The Militarization of Europe, 1914-1945', in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John Gillis, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1989, pp. 65-102.
90. Nellie Priest, 'Nellie Priest,' in The Island: Life and Death of an East London Community, 1870-1970, London: Centerprise, 1979, p. 39.
91. For a discussion of tomboys and sex-specific clothing in pre-war working-class, neighbourhoods, see: Davin, Growing Up Poor, pp. 70-81.
92. On the lengthening process, see John Burnett, Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1984, p. 305.
93. For a further discussion of Guiding/Scouting and imperialism, see: Tammy Proctor, 'Gender, Generation, and the Politics of Scouting and Guiding in Interwar Britain', PhD diss., Rutgers University, October 1995, pp. 168-236.
94. Cicely Stewart-Smith, 'The Log of a Loafer in the Guides', [unpublished handwritten diary] 1923-25, GGA-London.
95. J. Kerridge, 'Honour', Leader's Opinion XII, August/September 1921, p. 14. Unpublished Guide magazine, GGA London.
96. Susan Stewart has examined collections as 'devices for the objectification of desire'. She sees the acquisition of objects by a collector as the replacement of production with an abstract form of consumption. Following Marx's theory of commodity fetishism, Stewart theorizes that 'collection in general marks the final erasure of labor within the abstractions of late capitalism'. Although Guide and Scout collecting was as much a response to as it was a part of mass consumption, Stewart's theories do fit with the frenzied collecting that characterized interwar Guiding and Scouting among members of all classes. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984, pp. xii, 156, 164-65, 169.
97. These catalogues and others like them can be found in TC/238, SA London, and at GGA London.
98. Katharine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates, London: Peter Davies, 1940, p. 287.
99. Helen Storrow, 'Report on Girl Guiding, June 1920'. Girl Guide Box, Girl Scouts of the USA - New York City.
100. Roy Hattersley, A Yorkshire Boyhood, London: Pan Books, 1990, p. 89.
101. Harold Wilson, Memoirs: The Making of a Prime Minister, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson and Michael Joseph, 1986, p. 22.
102. My thanks to Tony Peffer for this phrase and for his insights regarding this topic.
103. 30 June 1934, 2nd Shipley Log Book (1930-1939), in possession of Sheila Marks, Ilkley, Yorkshire. The actual Dorothy doll, complete with full uniform and tiny metal and cloth badges, is on display at the Girl Guide Association in London.
104. On the question of material possessions becoming signs of membership, see: Eugene Rochberg-Halton, Meaning and Modernity: Social Theory in the Pragmatic Attitude, Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
105. Smartness was inculcated in a variety of institutions, including the military, the nursing establishment, schools, and some workplaces. For example, on military nursing, see: Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, London: Routledge, 1988.
106. Molly Weir, Shoes were for Sunday, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1970, pp. 162-163.
107. Wally Horwood, A Walworth Boy: Looking Back on Growing Up 1922-1939, TS-282 pgs., Local Studies Library, Southwark, 1977, p. 83.
108. 1 June 1925, Logbook of the 1st Chislehurst Company, 1924-1929. GTA London.
109. Information on special handshakes, rituals, songs, and maxims may be found in any edition of Scouting for Boys and Girl Guiding.
110. Coeur de Lion Patrol Logbook, 2 (31 January 1930); 1st Holborn Rovers Troop Logbook, 1 (31 March 1931 and 2 November 1932), pp. 80, 235. These are references from a series of logbooks kept by Anthony Heap of the 1st Holborn Rovers from 1927-1936. TC/239, SA London.
111. Gang Show - General and Gang Show - History folders. TC/173, SA London.
112. A rich literature on youth subcultures emerged from the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, for example: Phil Cohen, Subcultural Conflict and Working-class Community, Birmingham: CCCS, 1972;
113. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds, Resistance through Rituals, London: Hutchinson, 1977;
114. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen, 1979;
115. and Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava, eds, Gender and Generation, London: Macmillan, 1984.
116. For good studies exploring the question of youth and politics in interwar Europe, see: Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992;
117. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985;
118. Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life, Newhaven/London: Yale University Press, 1987;
119. Susan Whitney, 'The Politics of Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France', PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1994.
120. See Violet Synge, Royal Guides: A Story of the 1st Buckingham Palace Company, London: Girl Guides Association, 1948. Incidentally, Queen Elizabeth is still one of the major patrons of the organization, and Princess Margaret serves as Guide Association President.