The Antidote to 'Khaki Fever'? The Expansion of the British Girl Guides during the First World War

Abstract

When Robert Baden-Powell first established scouting, he had only boys in mind. But the fact remained that thousands of girls joined the Scouts, probably as many as 6000 by 1909. Feeling uncomfortable with this situation, Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes organized in 1910 the Girl Guides, an organization that had as its primary goal the creation of good wives and mothers for the British Empire. But the Guides in these early years did not grow at the tremendous rate experienced by the Scouts, whose membership in their first two years alone had reached 80,000. By 1914, the total number of Guides stood at no more than 40,000. Then after 1916, Guide numbers rose dramatically, reaching 70,000 by 1918, 164,000 by 1921, and 495,000 by 1932.' Clearly, the first world war contains the key to understanding the rapid expansion of this movement. This paper will therefore focus on the precise explanations for such rapid growth during the war. Indeed, by the end of the war virtually everybody in Britain seemed to favour the concept of the Guides as it rapidly became a revered British institution that would ultimately surpass the Boy Scouts in numbers. In particular, but by no means exclusively, attention will be directed toward the idea that the Guides acted as a cure, or antidote, for 'flapperdom' and 'war fever' or 'khaki fever', assumed to be dangerous social and psychological afflictions which beset the girls and young women of Britain, causing them to act in unrestrained, even bold and brazen ways, thus threatening the very moral order of the country.2 Apart from the war itself, some of the success of the Guides resulted from a new county structure that made the organization more efficient. The Guides also expanded their appeal beyond the traditional ages of eleven to sixteen to both younger girls through the Brownies, for eightto eleven-year-olds, and to older girls with the