1913 Scout Guide: On Catching Thieves, Mice, and Colds
By Angela Taylor
March 1, 1972
1913 Scout Guide: On Catching Thieves, Mice, and Colds
She wore a midi skirt and boots and was into ecology and natural foods. She was encouraged to fly a plane (not during hurricanes, however), but was warned against trying to be an imitation man. She teetered on the brink of Women’s Liberation, but was hauled back before she got too far, back on the safe grounds of a territory known as “housewifery.”
The Girl Scout of the nineteen-tens was patriotic, helpful, and as pure as the mountain streams she was warned not to pollute. In the eyes of today’s teenager, she would probably seem an endearing innocent, hopelessly square.
The heroine in her baggy green blouse, long skirt, high shoes, and campaign hat is to be found in a little blue handbook called “How Girls Can Help Their Country,” which first appeared in 1913. As part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of their founding, the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. have reprinted the manual and are selling it for $1.95.
Authorship is credited to Walter John Hoxie, a naturalist, but the voice that comes through is that of Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912. Occasionally, a note of British class snobbery is also injected. (References to speech as a giveaway of the lower classes were taken out in the second edition because of the furor here.) Mrs. Low had based her book on one written by Agnes Baden-Powell, sister of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who started the Boy Scout movement in England. His sister’s Girl Guides in 1910 inspired Mrs. Low to start the organization here.
Not Much Has Changed
The laws that govern today’s girl in green are the same as the ones laid down for her grandmother. In current handbooks, she is still required to be trustworthy, loyal, useful, friendly to man and beast, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, and “clean in thought, word, and deed.” It’s in the details of her daily life that the picture of the original Girl Scout emerges as amusingly naive. The following have been culled from the 1913 handbook:
“How to secure a burglar with eight inches of cord—Make a slipknot at each end of your cord. Tie the burglar’s hands behind him by passing each loop over his little fingers. Place him face downwards and bend his knees. Pass both feet under the string and he will be unable to get away.” (Not a word is said about how to catch the cooperative burglar.)
In order to catch mice if a trap isn’t handy, a section on tidiness suggests putting a newspaper over a pail of water and baiting it with herring or cheese.
On runaway horses: “Don’t try to check a runaway horse by standing in front and waving your arms. Try to run alongside the vehicle with your hand on the shaft… and seize the reins.”
Fresh air, in 1913, was outdoors, while homes were traps for “poisonous gases and germs.” “Sleep with your windows open summer and winter and you will never catch cold. Too soft a bed tends to make people dream which is unhealthy and weakening.
“Very late so‐called ‘fashionable’ hours will undermine… constitutions. Reading in bed brings headaches. Rubber is most unhealthy and causes paralysis. Don’t sit on rubber or oilcloth.”
Among the merit patches the early Girl Scout strove for there was Laundress (its emblem was a flat iron) and to achieve it she had to know how to clarify starch, use a wringer and do up a blouse.
The Matron Housekeeper patch (crossed keys) was hers if she could use a vacuum cleaner, polish hardwood floors and clean wire screens. The Dairy Maid (a sickle) would know how to milk a cow, make butter, and feed, kill and dress poultry.
On food: “Vegetables can scarcely be cooked too much. Tinned fish is often poisonous. If you think your brain requires a fillip, eat plenty of haricot beans, very much cooked.”
Advice on ‘Modesty’
On modesty (the word sex is never used): “Don’t let any man make love to you unless he wants to marry you. Don’t marry a man unless he is in a position to support you and a family. Don’t be afraid to say you won’t play at nasty, rude things. All secret bad habits are evil and dangerous and lead to hysteria and lunatic asylums.”
The sections on housewifery and child care warn against exposing the baby to a damp floor and that, although onions make bone and oats make brain, a baby can’t digest them. Spinning and lacemaking are suggested as useful arts—“a spinster can earn money this way.”
Under the heading of Useful Flowers, the current fad for sunflower seeds is anticipated, and it is also stated that sunflower seeds will cure whooping cough. A rather cryptic phrase states that poppies are useful for sleeplessness, but adds that they are “poisonous to eat because they contain opium.”
The chapter on careers explains that well‐educated women might become stockbrokers, architects or doctors. Others might take up nursing, teaching and typewriting. Or less crowded employments such as making ‘flowers,’ coloring photographs or gardening.
The author is vague about, but highly admiring of, “Flying Women.” This part cites a Madame Dutrieu who made “splendid flights” in her biplane. And there is also a Miss Kavanagh, “who wears a red cloth costume and a tight red cap when on her monoplane.” There is a word of caution about waiting for gales to die down before taking off.
The clichés attributed to Scouts are in the book: helping people to cross streets and rubbing two sticks together to light a fire. Actually, the writer seems dubious about the two-stick method and makes a strong point about never forgetting matches.
Scouts are encouraged to seek the frontier life. “No farther away than Florida there are some very wild places.” Present-day Floridians would certainly agree.
The book will appear on March 12 and will be available at most Girl Scout supply outlets or from headquarters at 830 Third Avenue (between 50th and 51st streets).
