Newspaper

COUNTY GIRL GUIDES ASSOCIATION

STEADY PROGRESS REPORT

In the Divinity Lecture room, Palace Green, on Saturday afternoon the first annual meeting was held of the County of Durham Girl Guides Association, when the Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry, County President, presided over a large gathering of commissioners and other officials. All the officers present were in the smart navy uniform which signifies the girl guides, and the proceedings were conducted in quite a business-like style.

Miss NP Pemberton, the county honorary secretary, read the report, which disclosed gratifying progress. The movement, she said, had gradually grown until they now had no less than 1,138 guides within the county boundaries, an increase of 588 on 1916. There were 121 brownies, an increase of 85 on 1916. A great deal of war work was done by the guides, Durham being one of the first counties to obtain war service badges. 52 companies had been registered since 1910, four of which had been disbanded from various causes, and one at Thornaby had been handed over to the Yorkshire authorities, this leaving 47. There was an increase of 12 companies on 1916. There were 39 captains and 42 lieutenants. The great need was more guiders for then more companies could be raised. The work had been wonderfully steady during the year considering the difficulties under which many companies were working. Several were being run by the leaders and seconds as their guiders were doing war work of various kinds. Eight companies had collected about 5 tons 7 cwts of waste paper. Several companies send parcels to local men serving with the forces, many helped at VA hospitals, war hospital supply depots, fleet vegetable depots, and St John workrooms; Croxdale collected eggs, Chester-Le-Street firewood and Lumley hope to collect chestnuts.

The report was adopted as satisfactory.

Miss L Cadle, treasurer, presented the balance sheet, which showed the receipts amounted to £53 15s 4d and the balance in the bank amounted to £6 12s 2d.

The dowager Marchioness, in an interesting address, stated that the method of the guide movement was, through games and practices such as appealed to a girl, and cheery, healthy enjoyment and happy comradeship, to encourage the individuality of the girl and to teach her self-reliance. There seemed to her at that moment an idea as if the World had begun with the war. They must remember that women throughout the ages were not the dressed-up dolls kept in durance vile that so many young people nowadays would have them believe. There had been in every age clever, capable, strong women able to take their part in the World and to organise as well as they did now. Perhaps there was not so much training or specialising. Personally she was a great advocate of training, as she never believed anything came naturally.

Mr AJ Dawson, Clerk to the County Education committee, thought the boy scouts and girl guide movements were perhaps two movement which at present were most pregnant with vitality and most likely to be successful in dealing with our boys and girls in the very unusual and strenuous times through which we were passing, and which times, so far as he could see, would be most unusually important from now onwards. He thought every school in the County should establish a patrol of scouts and guides, but he did not want them to be run exclusively by teachers and to remain therefore only a school question. It was a question for everybody, and therefore, outside help would be sympathetically received. As to elementary schools he could do a great deal to help these, and he would be only too glad to give all the help he could.

A vote of thanks was recorded to the President, on the motion of Mrs Pemberton, seconded by Lady Havelock Allan, and her ladyship briefly replied.

[From a scrapbook kindly loaned by the archives of Girl Guiding Durham North]

Date: 05-Oct-1917

Author: Durham County Advertiser

Reference: D/WP 1/78 (Microfilm M1/64)

Where to find this: Durham County Record Office

Contributed by Fiona Johnson - Durham