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.
Early life
Olave was the third and youngest daughter of
brewery owner and artist
Harold Soames (himself descended paternally from a
landed gentry family, and maternally from a self-made man, Joseph Gilstrap Gelthorpe, who had been Mayor of
Newark in
Nottinghamshire). She was educated by her father, her mother Katharine (née Hill), and a number of governesses at home. Home repeatedly changed, as her father searched for the perfect home, leading Olave to live 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.
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. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on 30 October 1912.
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 1918 until 1939.
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 (30th Oct 1913 – 9th Dec 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 (1st June 1915 – 3rd May 1986), who married John Hall King (1913-1990?), and they had two sons; and
Hon. Betty (St. Clair) Baden-Powell, C.B.E., (16th Apr 1917 – 24th Apr 2004) who, like her mother, upon meeting on board ship, a man who shared her birthday, married 24th Sept 1936 Gervas Charles Robert Clay (16th Apr 1907 - 18th Apr 2009), and they had a daughter and three sons. Betty was also prominent in the Guide Movement until her death. See www.spanglefish.com/bettyclay
In addition, when Olave's sister Auriol Davidson née Soames died in 1919, Olave took her three nieces, Christian (1912-1975), Clare (1913-1980), and Yvonne, (1918-1995?), into her family and brought them up as her own children.
War work
During 1915 and 1916, with
World War I in progress, Olave assisted directly with the war effort in
France. Robert had seen the usefulness of the
YMCA's recreational huts for the soldiers and persuaded the
Mercers' Company to pay for such a hut at Val-de-Lievres,
Calais. It was to be staffed by adults connected with Scouting. In June of that year, the 1st Ewhurst Scout Troop was inaugurated. After the reorganisation of the Girl Guides in 1915, she offered again to help, this time successfully and started organising Guiding in Sussex. During this period she organised a great number of women in other parts of Britain to take up roles in Guiding. When she stopped travelling, the BSA asked her to use the card for 'keeping in touch'. Her ashes were taken to Kenya to be buried in the same grave as her husband's remains. She was survived by her two daughters, her son having predeceased her.
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 February 22 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 is to be 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
See also
References
External links
Olave Baden Powell — The World Chief Guide including a timeline
Family details (from ePeerage)
Robert Baden-Powell
Photographs
Olave's ancestry — one line
Awards
Category:Guiding
Category:International Scouting leaders
Category:Recipients of the Bronze Wolf Award
Category:Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire
Category:Deaths from diabetes
Category:1889 births
Category:1977 deaths
Category:People from Chesterfield
Category:Scouting pioneers
Category:Scouting and Guiding in the United Kingdom
