A few months after the opening of the Scout Training Camp in Gosforth Park, Newcastle upon Tyne, the official opening of the new swimming pool also drew a crowd and enthusiastic Scout leaders and young recruits were happy to christen it with a leisurely crawl and a belly flop. Interestingly, the Scout leaders are not dressed in the baggy woollen swimsuits of old but in more figure-hugging all-in-one designs in synthetic rubber, possibly the latest Lastex yarn, but men’s swimwear still erred...

A few months after the opening of the Scout Training Camp in Gosforth Park, Newcastle upon Tyne, the official opening of the new swimming pool also drew a crowd and enthusiastic Scout leaders and young recruits were happy to christen it with a leisurely crawl and a belly flop.

Interestingly, the Scout leaders are not dressed in the baggy woollen swimsuits of old but in more figure-hugging all-in-one designs in synthetic rubber, possibly the latest Lastex yarn, but men’s swimwear still erred on the side of modesty and a bare torso was not publicly acceptable. It wasn’t until 1937 that men were legally free to swim bare-chested if they wished but the general public were slow to accept topless men on the beach. The American Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller (most well-known for playing Edgar Rice Burroughs' ape man Tarzan in films of the 1930s and 1940s and creating the distinctive Tarzan yell) is credited with helping to design the first swimming trunks for men through his star endorsement (and input into the design) of the B.V.D company’s swimsuits in 1933, first released in France.

This footage is thought to have been shot by filmmaker Harry A. Soloman, an early member of the Newcastle & District Amateur Cinematographers Association (ACA), which has been making cine stories and capturing the north east on film for nearly a century (and still operating in 2020). It is the sole survivor of the five original ACA organisations in Britain, first set up in 1927. The other four were based in London, Manchester, Sheffield and Edinburgh. James Cameron (Senior) was the group’s first chairman and his son and daughter were involved in some of the first fiction films made. Newcastle & District ACA were storytellers, entertainers and documentarians – recording simple or sophisticated drama and comedies, travelogues and individual home movies, as well as local reportage. The focus was on non-commercial filmmaking, but the skill of these amateurs also attracted commissions, from businesses to the local council. Newcastle ACA footage has also found its way into early Tyne Tees Television documentary work.

On 22 February Scouts’ associations across the world celebrate Founder’s Day, the birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, born in 1857 and a lieutenant-general in the British Army during the Second Boer War in South Africa, the founder of the Scout Movement.

Baden-Powell was in Newcastle upon Tyne on 1 May 1932 to officially open the Gosforth Park Scout Training Camp, where, he noted approvingly in a letter to the Northumberland Scouts County Commissioner Sir Ralph Mortimer, the boys could practise woodcraft and pioneering “under actual backwoods conditions” and hoped that “parlour scouting” would be a thing of the past in Newcastle.

George Carter was the Assistant Commissioner for the Newcastle Rovers (scouts in their early 20s) and was in charge of the camp, which covered an impressive 43 acres of the park. John William ‘Jack’ Dorgan, a former pit pony driver at Ashington Colliery and British NCO serving with the 7th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers on the Western Front during World War I, was the Camp Chief.

Baden-Powell got a big welcome from the North East’s Boy and Girl Scouts troops as thousands attended an hour long militaristic march-past at Gosforth Park Racecourse – certainly a Grand Howl for the ageing Chief Scout.

Baden-Powell noticed that many boys in troops at the rally were too “under-age or physically unfit to stand the work of minor hardship” and worried that small boys would strain to keep pace with the bigger ones, and should have been in Cub Scout packs. But with a nod to the Depression in 1930s Britain, he celebrated the opportunity “to bring the poorer boys under good influences in this critical time for them when, under the cloud of unemployment, hundreds of them are lapsing into unemployableness [sic] and crime.”

A newspaper called the training camp a “Boy’s Paradise” but a fair few Girl Guides were practising their survival skills in the Gosforth Park woods. The girls also wanted in on the act. Early unofficial “Girl Scouts” self-styled themselves into patrols with names like the “Wildcats” or “Nighthawks”. Along with his sister Agnes, Baden-Powell’s wife Olave, with a birthday coincidentally on the same date as her husband, helped to develop the Girl Scout movement and later became Chief Guide. She later recalled in her autobiography Window on My Heart: “When the Scouts held their first big Rally at the Crystal Palace in 1909, the “Girl Scouts” turned up [two dozen or so amongst 11,000 boys at the rally] and demanded to be inspected by my husband. So he decided to organise them into a sister movement which he called “Girl Guides”. To his credit, Baden-Powell first stated in the Headquarters Gazette that "Girls must be partners and comrades rather than dolls." Yet, he mildly capitulated to Establishment (and his sister and mother's) concerns that toughness should not be a quality that applied equally to the girls. The Girl Guides, for their part, enjoyed the chance to escape restrictive, rule-bound home lives and embrace the outdoor life.

Other related NEFA films:

The Northumberland Boy Scouts Permanent Camp, Gosforth. Scenes at the Opening (1932)

Boy Scout Camp Gosforth Park. Official Opening 1st May 1932 by Lord Baden-Powell (1932)

Northumberland Boy Scouts Gosforth Park 1957-1961

References:

Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts, Tim Jeal (Yale University Press, 2001)

https://www.tynemouthscouts.org.uk/tynemouth-scouts-district-history/

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/gosforth-scout-camp-newcastle-nov-13.85857/

https://www.simplyswim.com/blogs/blog/the-history-of-men-s-swimwear