Olave Baden-Powell

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Olave Baden-Powell bigraphy, stories - World Chief Guide

Olave Baden-Powell : biography

22 February 1889 – 19 June 1977

Olave St Clair Baden-Powell, Baroness Baden-Powell, GBE (22 February 1889 – 25 June 1977) was born Olave St Clair Soames in Chesterfield, England. She was later known as Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, or The Dowager Lady Baden-Powell, having outlived her husband, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting and Girl Guides, by over 35 years.

Olave became Chief Guide for Britain in 1918. Later the same year she was presented with a gold Silver Fish, one of only two ever made. She was elected World Chief Guide in 1930. As well as making a major contribution to the development of the Guide / Girl Scout movements, she visited 111 countries during her life attending Jamborees and national Guide and Scout associations.

Legacy

The Olave Centre for Guides was built in north London in Olave’s memory. This has the World Bureau and Pax Lodge in its grounds. Pax Lodge is one of WAGGGS’ four World Centres.

Scouts and Guides mark 22 February as B.-P. Day or Thinking Day, the joint birthdays of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World. On that day in 2011, a Blue Plaque was unveiled near the site of the house in Chesterfield where she lived, by Derbyshire County Council following an Internet poll in which she received 18,026 votes out of 25,080 (72%), cf. 1,231 (5%) for George Stephenson (runner-up).

The Olave Baden-Powell Bursary Fund was set up in 1979 from voluntary contributions in memory of Olave B-P. Annually awarded bursaries aim to allow girls in Girlguiding UK to further their interests and hobbies and realise their dreams.

As a child, Olave learned the violin; her first violin she called Diana. It was a copy of a Stradivarius made by Messrs. Hill for the Paris Exhibition and many years later it was presented to the Guide Association. It is still available on loan to Guides who are seriously learning to play the violin prior to them acquiring their own instrument. See "The Derbyshire Childhood…"

Works

1973: Window on My Heart

Early life

Olave Soames was the third and youngest daughter of brewery owner and artist Harold Soames (who was himself descended paternally from a landed gentry family, and maternally from a self-made man, Joseph Gilstrap Gelthorpe, who had been Mayor of Newark, Nottinghamshire).

She was educated by her father, her mother Katharine (née Hill), and a number of governesses at home. She lived in seventeen homes in the first 23 years of her life. Olave became keen on outdoor sports including tennis, swimming, football, skating and canoeing, and also played the violin."The Derbyshire Childhood of Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, G.B.E." by Jill E. Armitage, B.A., F.I.P.D., M.I.D.D.A., Storforth Publications, 1994, ISBN 0-9524820-0-2

Adult life

Marriage and children

In January 1912, Olave met Second Boer War hero and founder of the Scouts, Robert Baden-Powell on an ocean liner (RMSP Arcadian) on the way to New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours. She was 23, he 55, and they shared the same birthday. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation. They married in secret on 30 October 1912 for privacy. "Baden-Powell: Two lives of Hero" by William Hillcourt, Heineman, 1964, p. 335.

The Scouts and Guides of England each donated a penny to buy the Baden-Powells a wedding gift of a car. (Note that this is not the Rolls-Royce they were presented with in 1929). Olave’s father assisted financially with the purchase of Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire as a family home where she lived with her husband from 29 January 1919 until 25 October 1938. "Baden-Powell: Two lives of Hero" by William Hillcourt, Heineman, 1964, p. 356 & 412.

The Baden-Powells had three children — one son and two daughters (who took the courtesy titles of Honourable in 1929; the son later succeeding his father in 1941):

  • Arthur Robert Peter, later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (30 October 1913 – 9 December 1962), who married Carine Boardman (1913–1993), and they had two sons and a daughter; at Peter’s death the elder son Robert succeeded him as 3rd Baron Baden-Powell;
  • Hon. Heather Grace Baden-Powell (1 June 1915 – 3 May 1986), who married John Hall King (1913-c. 1990), and they had two sons; and
  • Hon. Betty St. Clair Baden-Powell, CBE (16 April 1917 – 24 April 2004) who, like her mother, met her future husband on board ship, an older man (by a decade) who shared her birthday. She married, on 24 September 1936, Gervas Charles Robert Clay (16 April 1907 – 18 April 2009). They had a daughter and three sons. Betty Clay was also prominent in the Guide Movement until her death (see ).