Up to 1909
Item in "The Woman at Home" Magazine, October 1900. No. 10. p. 230.
From Helen Gardener's biography -
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B-P decided that there should be a separate organisation for the girls. But how should it be run? Scouting had developed naturally; there had been the experimental camp on Brownsea Island in August 1907, followed by the fortnighdy issue of Scouting for Boys which had taken the country by storm and was already spreading overseas. Baden-Powell approached Agnes with a view to her starting things rolling. But she was unwilling: she was already in her fifties, she was leading a full life and, despite her many activities, she was shy and more used to supporting her brothers than taking the lead. Moreover, despite being prominent in public life and Vice-President of the Westminster Red Cross, she did not consider herself as cut out to be a public figure. Some years later her friend, Mrs Benson, would write in the Girl Guides' Gazette,
"Miss Baden-Powell's idea of a day's work would be a shock to most people. Domestic duties and the care of her aged mother come first, then come the girl guides, and lastly many and varied social duties. Few of the Guides realise how full and busy her life is, and how hard she works for her beloved Guides."
Being a woman of wide interests, Agnes would almost certainly have been interested in - even involved in - her brother's Scouting activities. Agnes was not unused to young people. She would have come into contact with them in her Red Cross work. In 1908 she started a Boy Scout Troop 'in hopes of finding a man to take it over'. Another venture, also in 1908, was when she mooted the idea of a Girls' Emergency Corps, something which must have been firmly based on Scouting. She wrote, many years later,
"We decided to meet on the Green on February 6th, 1909, for the purpose of such formal inauguration as might be decided at this meeting."
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