Off to guide camp '“ and there's 19 rabbits to skin!

The first ever scouting rally was held at Crystal Palace two years later and, to the surprise of many, a number of girls turned up at this meeting wanting to join. This was in the days when women wore ankle-length skirts and education for young ladies was based on preparing them to become good wives. Camping, making fires and drill parades were thought to be far too unladylike.

The girls however persisted and in 1910 Baden-Powell formed the Girl Scouts which his sister Agnes agreed to lead. It was thought that boys would be opposed to girls also being called 'scouts', so soon after the name was changed to Girl Guides. At this time of course the suffragettes were struggling for women's rights and it cannot have been easy for Agnes Baden-Powell to work against the Victorian conventions of the time. The Great War changed many of these preconceptions and women began to take a more prominent role in society. Agnes helped the cause by publishing a book called How Girls Can Help the Empire.

In 1912 Robert Baden-Powell married Olave Soames. She worked tirelessly to promote the Girl Guide movement and had a particular interest in Sussex where Guiding packs had been formed in Brighton and East Grinstead. In 1916 she was appointed county commissioner for Sussex and at the end of the war in 1918 she was appointed the Chief Guide.

An early Sussex guiding pioneer was Mrs A Martley who had established a Girl Guides pack in Crawley as early as 1911. When she moved to Seaford she helped to arrange a meeting at the Downs School for girls (now the Downs Leisure Centre) At this meeting, on November 30, 1918, a committee was elected and a week later two Guide troops were established in the town. The 1st Seaford troop was led by Mrs Burke and the 1st Blatchington was run by Mrs Martley herself.

In 1914 a guiding section known as the Rosebuds was formed for girls between the ages of eight and 11 but these were later renamed The Brownies. The first Brownie pack in Seaford was established in 1919.

Much of this information in this item comes from Seaford resident and former district guiding commissioner Mrs Margaret Wilkie and I would like to thank her for the photograph which shows the 1st Seaford Girl Guides in 1920. Miss Croft was the captain and Miss Powell and Joyce Riley were her lieutenants. These are presumably the ladies with the dark hats. The pack leaders, M Morton, W Synge, K Matthews and J Affee can be identified by the white ribbons on their uniform. The other guides were J Morton, J Riley, T Pegg, L Philbrick, F Height, F Waggstaffe, J Wigan and M Downes. The girls are wearing their school uniform and hats with guiding badges attached.

In 1972, Elsie Waugh, one of the first Blatchington Girl Guides, recalled her time with the troop. She said that Mrs Martley was a tremendously keen captain and also remembered one camp which took place in the grounds of Firle Place just after the Great War. Canadian troops, who were still stationed in Seaford at that time, had donated sleeping bags and the girls slept in them on bales of hay in a large barn on the estate. During the camp, Viscount Gage sent over his gamekeeper with 19 freshly killed rabbits for the girls' lunch. Mrs Waugh remembered how the young guides had to skin the animals and chop them up for a tasty rabbit stew.

Next week I will continue this item with details of the girl guides' headquarters and how the girls took part in some interesting events.

KEVIN GORDON