Uniform
Uniforms are an important part of organisations, as they provide identity, membership and commonality in appearance, and the Scout Association is no different from other organisations in that their uniform has changed over the years.
We were very fortunate that for our memorabilia events the uniform memorabilia we had in our archive was augmented by donations of other items. For our displays we had 4 Rover Scout shirts (one with a Queen’s Scout badge), old belts (one being the belt worn by the first Scouts), an American Scout belt (we don’t know who owned it), a couple of Glengarry berets (which our Rover Scouts* wore as opposed to the green berets), garter flashes, Rover epaulettes, the original Scout hat (the lemon squeezer – which belonged to Douglas Killin, our Group Scout Leader from 1949 to 1967), a Beaver hat, a green beret, a Cub cap, a Cub Mistress hat, a Hong Kong Scout hat, (we managed to buy this hat (second right below) to tie in with Ronald Whitfield (a Hong Kong Scout) who is mentioned in our War Years History (War Years History is available here), umpteen different styles of woggle, and a few sporrans (one of which belonged Jack Ritchie, one of our Scouts from 1921).
(*Rover Scouts were the predecessors of the Venture Scouts, which became the current Explorer section. If you’d like more information on the history of Rover Scouts, Ventures & Explorers, click here.)
Given the importance of the uniforms and individual components, we displayed them to their best advantage, as shown in the picture below. As you’ll see, we labelled items of importance so that we could show the name of the owner and, as far as possible, the date of the item.
We knew there had been many changes to the uniforms over the years so, to let everyone see the differences, we worked through old documentation and produced ‘Uniform Details Sheets’ for each Scout Section. These were displayed at our events along with the uniforms.
To save a long read on this page, the Uniform Details Sheets are available by clicking the Section names below.
Let’s not, of course, forget about our Woggle, which keeps us neat and tidy. Some background to it is available here.
There were great stories passed on about uniforms at our displays. A particular favourite was how to look after the felt ‘lemon squeezer’ hat. It was no mean feat, as the brim had to be flat, the hat free of dust and the shape maintained. The current members are delighted they no longer have that hat to take care of!