Boy Scout Baloney

[Jerry]

The Boy Scout centenary is upon us and we are being told over and over again that the first Scout camp was on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour.

It wasn't. That was just a trial camp with a few local boys and some public school chaps. The first Boy Scout camp was on the Tyne.

LISTEN UP! BECAUSE THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU


LORD BADEN-POWELL (1858 - 1941)

Baden-Powell’s first two names were Robert Stephenson, after the great Newcastle engineer, who was his godfather. Baden-Powell visited the Armstrong works at Elswick, Newcastle twice in the 1880s to inspect the machine-guns.


The first Boy Scout camp in England was held 22 August - 4 September 1908 on a site west of Parkshields farm, at the foot of the South Tyne valley (the much-publicised 1907 camp on Brownsea Island was a trial camp). A cairn is inscribed:

This cairn marks the site of the first Boy Scout Camp held in 1908 by B.P., later Lord Baden-Powell. The Chief Scout relit the camp fire, 9th June 1957.

The land belonged to the ‘Great White Hunter’ and naturalist Abel Chapman.

In 1908, Viscount Haldane asked BP to take over the Northumberland Territorials. In this year too Baden-Powell published his famous book Scouting for Boys in which he uses the murder of Margaret Crozier at Elsdon, and the resourcefulness of a Northumbrian shepherd-boy as an instructive tale for scouts. It is set near Winter’s Gibbet (Winter was the murderer) standing at Steng Cross above Elsdon.

Saxton Noble, son of Sir Andrew Noble, head of the Armstrong Whitworth colossus in Newcastle, had sent his own two boys to the Brownsea Island d camp in 1907, and had personally underwritten the financial loss of that camp. His brother George had served with Baden-Powell in the 13th Hussars in India and Afghanistan.

Baden-Powell wrote (actually sitting on Tourney‘s Fell):

‘I am writing this letter in the camp on top of a great hill overlooking the Northumbria moors and dales with a view of the mighty Roman Wall, an old grey castle tower where the Moss Troopers used to fight. What a country for fighting and romance we are in [where men have been] scouting for their lives many times in the last 2000 years.

I wish every Boy Scout in Britain could be with us today.’

[jimmywizz]

nice post jerry, history is full of mis-facts, christopher columbus did not discover america, he was to late as the vikings had been there 100s of years before him, capt cook did not discover australia the portuguese did

[mrp]

nice post jerry, history is full of mis-facts, christopher columbus did not discover america, he was to late as the vikings had been there 100s of years before him, capt cook did not discover australia the portuguese did

Food for thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_ ... _Australia

[Globalmyths]

Well said, have you considered publishing it the media somehow.

[Pilot]

Another historical miss fact Hitler didn't kill off the NE shipyards, Mrs Thatcher did it.

[sherri]

Jerry is one of your national treasures.
Really, i mean it!
He seems to be working hard at researching and preserving some of the everyday history of your area.
Most of the time I think we all take everyday things around us for granted, but things change and a lot of history is lost if no one bothers to record it.

[memor]

John Cabot when He got to Newfoundland and claimed it for whoever. He decided not to mention the Portugese Fishing Fleet moored in the bay.

They'd known about it for over fifty years but didn't tell anyone because they didn't want it to get out that there was a fantastic Cod Fishing Grounds.
They were frightened of foreign competition. so decided to keep stum.