In 1911, three years after BP visited Cambridge and one year after the recognition of the Cambridge District Scout Association, the Chief was invited to a Rally.
The following, hitherto lost, photographs were located in the Cambridgeshire Collection and are printed as Post Cards, some with the name of A J Davis of Rose Crescent Cambridge. They are undated but what they show is clearly described in the contemporary reports below. They may be further dated by BPs apparent age, as compared to the 1917 Rally, and the lack of the presence of Rev C T Wood, DC and later CC from 1919, and ever present in Scouting events.
The photographs are shown in the order they have been catalogued and are presented as printed with Post Card borders retained.
The following extracts are from Headquarters Gazette of June and July 1911. The full reports are copied below.
The Cambridge Scouts gave an exceedingly interesting and successful display on the occasion of my inspection of them on May 20th.
In the first place the arrangements had been carefully planned out in closest detail beforehand by District Scout Master Wright, so that everything ran like clockwork.
The Rally ground was marked out in a big circle and roped in, so that the onlookers were themselves in a circular rally around it. Segments were marked out, and a troop with all its apparatus was allotted to each.
In one place a troop was acting an accident with application of first aid, in another a complete meal was being cooked at a camp kitchen; here was a troop of photographers snapping, developing and printing; the next was baking bread, another was building a transporter, a two-storied tower had been built in another segment for the display of fire brigade work and life saving, while alongside it field telegraph and signaling were being carried on; camp furniture, carpentering, fretwork, hut building, mattress making, physical training, tent pitching, boxing, map making were also to be seen; what attracted most attention was a set of missions at work with a bed ridden patient who, by the way, had the best time of anybody there, for when he wasn’t being fed with junket or soup, he was having his hair brushed, or the Scout was being read aloud to him.
The circular rally itself was worked up into a very effective display. After running in and cheering, the whole ‘turned right’ and moved around singing a Scout’s marching chorus. Then they halted, sang the Ingonyama chorus, and, on the whistle, sat down as one man with staves upright; on the second whistle they dropped their staves and whistles flat and sat silent.
A fuller report on the event was re-published in Headquarters Gazette in July 1911 being taken from the Cambridge Weekly News. Not all the Troops participating are listed nor those attending. The 9th Cambridge, quoted above, are not in the report below, that acknowledges this lack.
On the circle and organised display the Chief is reported as saying ‘He would rather see that sort of work than see any amount of marching past or playing at soldiers, because what they did was useful work, and it was a great pleasure to him to see them doing it and doing it so well’.