Children
Text below in purple was recovered from the Internet Archives; text in black has been added. The originall photographs have not been recovered, but their captions remain.
Olave had three children, Peter, Heather and Betty:-
Peter
Arthur Robert Peter Baden-Powell, was born 30 October 1913. Peter married Carine Crause-Boardman, daughter of Clement Hamilton Crause-Boardman, in 1936, and had two sons and a daughter:
Robert Crause, born 1936 married Patience (Helen Mary) Batty
David Michael, born 1940 married Joan Berriman; they have three sons.
Wendy Dorothy, born 1944
1922
Peter & BP at home 1923
1932
Peter Baden-Powell was, like his father, educated in Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey, England and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Berkshire. He served in the British South African Police between 1934 and 1937. He was in the Native Affairs Department, Southern Rhodesia between 1937 and 1945. He succeeded to the title of 2nd Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, Essex on 8 January 1941. He was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He died in 1962 aged 49, and was succeeded by his son Robert Crause Baden-Powell, 3rd Baron Baden-Powell.
1940 Peter and his wife Carine and son Robert
from World Adventure
Peter Baden-Powell 1913 - 1963
It is no easy task to be the only son of a famous father, and as one who had known Peter Baden-Powell from early infancy I had often wondered what would be his reaction to the total Scout/Guide atmosphere by which he was surrounded. So perhaps I had more cause than most people to rejoice when, a few months ago, the Boy Scouts Association conferred upon him their highest honour for outstanding work for Scouting - the Silver Wolf.
From delicate babyhood Peter grew into a fine healthy specimen of manhood, capable of roughing it in the wilder parts of Southern Rhodesia, where he served first in the Mounted Police and later in the Colonial Administrative Service. His letters to me at that time spoke always of work with Scouts and Rovers in his spare time, and later of his happy marriage to Carine Boardman and his joyous family life with their three children.
When, on his father’s death in 1941, he returned to this country, Peter bought a house near Farnham, within a few miles of his childhood home at Pax Hill; and with a name like that he was immediately seized upon for Scout work both locally and at Headquarters. From his earliest days as a Wolf Cub to the post which he held at the time of his death of Guildmaster to the B.-P. Guild he may be said to have given his life to Scouting. He had other interests of course. He took his seat in the House of Lords and was a useful member of Committees there. He served as a Special Constable in East London’s busiest streets; he was a member of the Mercers’ Company, his father’s old City Guild. As a keen and practised marksman he shot at Bisley for the House of Lords, and he was always ready to help any worthwhile cause whether local or national.
Peter’s main interests continued to be his family and his Scouts and what he most regretted in his severe illness was the number of Scout engagements that had to be cancelled.
To his mother, far away on a Guide tour, and to Carine, his devoted wife, and their three children, all Guiders will extend their loving sympathy.
Rose Kerr
Heather
Heather Grace Baden-Powell, born 1913
Heather with BP
Family Album, Heather Baden-Powell
1923
1925
1931
1933 Heather's Coming-out
Family Album, Heather Baden-Powell
21st Birthday
Family Album, Heather Baden-Powell
'Orduña' Cruise, 1938 Lord & Lady BP were accompanied only by their daughter Heather, who had had a key role in the venture as secretary to the organising committee. She was a very lively and popular participant in all that went on and was no stranger to shipboard life, as she had often accompanied her parents on their world tours and had acted on these occasions as her father's secretary.
1938 With mum & dad
The Guider1977
Heather and John (King), 24 June,1940
Family Album, Heather Baden-Powell
Heather, Olave's oldest daughter, was born in 1913. She shares her 'family album' with us until the time she married John King in 1940, six months before the death of her father. The 'Album' is organised on a year-by-year basis and if it consisted of only the collection of family photographs and water-colour illustrations, some of BP's, some of her own, then the book would still be a worthwhile tribute to Baden-Powell, the family man. But it is so much more than this. There is a substantial narrative that covers life in the various Baden-Powell family homes and set-piece events such as the presentation of 'Jam Roll' (a Rolls-Royce motor-car bought by the Scouts of the world) at the 1929 World Jamboree, World Tours on which Heather and her sister Betty often accompanied their parents.
Heather grew up in a loving environment and seemed, like many daughters seem, to have had a special relationship with her father. He always wrote to her as 'My very dear old Heatherum', and signed himself 'Your loving DAD'. Despite living life somewhat in 'a goldfish bowl', often on show, often in guide uniform, life, from what Heather tells us, seems never to have been very 'normal', but certainly very happy. The book is full of poetry, colour and gaiety.
Heather's skill
Bronze statue of a Knight based a drawing by B-P
Bronze Polo player
Heather passed away in1986.
Heather (Grace) Baden-Powell was born on 1st June 1915, and died on 23rd May 1986 On 24th June 1940 she married John (Hall) King, born 4th Nov 1913.
They had two sons:-
Michael (Robert Hall) King, b: 26 SEP 1942, d: 8 DEC 1966 aged 24 in the wreck of the "Heraklion" ferry.
Timothy (John) King, b: 22 FEB 1946 (his grandparents' joint birthfay), d: 21 JUL 1995. He was married 28 AUG 1971 to Marion, and they had a daughter.
Betty
1923 Born on April 16, 1917, Betty was their third and youngest child and was closely involved in both Scouting and Guiding all her life. She acted as assistant to her mother and father on many of their world tours but her personal contribution to both Movements went far beyond the demands of family connection. Perhaps her greatest role, as well as her pride and pleasure, was to keep alive in the thoughts of successive generations of members of the Scout and Guide Movements the memories of her parents. How many hundreds of times must she have heard after one of her talks ‘It was just like hearing your mother speak’, for she had the same mannerisms, enthusiasm and inflections of voice. But she was in her own right ‘Betty’, loved and admired for herself and the dedication she brought to her varied work for both Movements through the years and in many places.
1925 Her own childhood was full of ‘ordinary’ happiness - picnics, learning to ride, swimming, looking after pets, all in the company of Peter and Heather, her older brother and sister and the ever expanding number of people who visited the Chief Scout and the World Chief Guide. She trained in secretarial work. In 1934 -1935 she joined her parents on a world tour visiting Scouts and Guides in the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America, having already travelled with them in previous years on the Goodwill Cruises.
In May 1936 while returning by ship with her parents from South Africa, she first met Gervas Clay. It was a scenario strikingly similar to her parents’ first meeting on a boat sailing to America in 1912. Like her parents, Betty and Gervas also shared a birthday. So when Betty met a man on a boat, also born April 16, it was as though fate was calling to her. Betty and Gervas married in the village church near her parents’ home at Bentley on September 24 1936.
Family Album - Heather Baden-Powell & The Boy Man
Her Guide training and the Scout motto ‘Be prepared’ must have constantly stood her in good stead, living in the African bush and bringing up four children in hard conditions. And, like so many parents before her and since, she was a Cub Scout Leader for a time following the anguished appeal from her own son who was afraid the Pack would close because the current leader was leaving. In Guiding she served as Acting District Commissioner, Division Commissioner and Commissioner for African Guides and finally as Colony Commissioner. She was a Guider in all three sections. She held a Camper’s Licence, a Guide and Camp Training Certificate and, for the last two years of her time in Northern Rhodesia, she was adviser for Training in that country.
1940 Betty, Grevas and their first two children, Gillian and Robin
from World Adventure
When they returned to England in 1964 she continued her work for Guiding becoming Division Commissioner for Taunton and Deputy Chief Commissioner for England.
In Scouting’s 60th year she unveiled the memorial stone on Brownsea Island to her father’s experimental camp.
When Guiding in England was divided into Regions in 1970 she became President for South West England, a position she held until 1991 and in 1978 she was appointed a Vice-President of The Guide Association. In addition she was President of the Trefoil Guild from 1989 to 1994 and a founder member of the Olave Baden-Powell Society in 1985. Because of her unique and valued place in Guiding, The Guide Association presented her in 1995 with a special gold version of its Silver Fish award in the form of a brooch.
Betty and her daughter Gillian 1999
Betty lays a wreath on her parent's grave
Memorial Service 1999
She was awarded the Silver Wolf in 1984, The Scout Association’s highest award for good service, became a Vice-President of the Association in 1989 and in 1993 became only the second person ever to have been awarded an honorary Gilwell wood badge (the first being her mother). World Scouting recognised her with its only and prestigious award, the Bronze Wolf in 1999.
In 1997 her unique services to Scouting and Guiding were recognised with the award of the CBE in Her Majesty the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
Camp, events, meetings, Jamborees - Scouting and Guiding were Betty’s life. She was as much at ease chatting with the King of Sweden as she was with the youngest Brownie. In an article on ‘Thinking Day’; for the ‘Guider’ magazine in 1978, Betty wrote: It can be given to very few families to be loved by millions of people of many nations’, looking back to the days of the Founder and the World Chief Guide and of herself, Peter and Heather, as they grew up in that unique family, sharing Scouting and Guiding with the world. Betty continued that completely unselfish, warm-hearted sharing all her life and through the link with her parents kept them ‘alive’ for millions of young people and adults who had never seen them.
adapted from Pinetree webste
The last direct link to Chief Scout Robert Baden-Powell was lost on April 24th, 2004, when his last surviving child, Betty Clay, died.
On 24th Sept. 1936 Betty married Gervas (Charles Robert) Clay, see www.spanglefish.com/GervasClay.
They had a daughter Gillian, and three sons, Robin, Nigel and Crispin.
Betty has her own tribute at www.spanglefish.com/BettyClay
