Firstly I have to apologise for not posting for so long, it's been a hectic few weeks!
A few years ago I read what soon became one of my favourite books. "How the Girl Guides Won the War" by Janie Hampton is a true story about the amazing actions of Girl Guide troops during World War II. I was astonished to read about how they kept morale up in bomb shelters and concentration camps where there was little or no hope.
Since reading this I've been inspired to search for and collect anything to do with the Girl Guides and Brownies dating back to WWII and before. The collection started off slowly but recently I've been really lucky to find a few gems which inspired me to write this post.
 |
| My trusty tiny suitcase which holds my Girl Guides treasures. |
This little gem is a lovely paper weekly publication called "The Guide" and dates back to October 24th 1938. It's in amazing condition for it's age! There's a wonderful article in there about making and decorating lampshades and at the back there is a page full of classified advertisements. The advert that caught my eye was an advert for Hospital Vacancies in which applicants are invited to undergo training in Chronic Sick Nursing with a starting salary of £30 a year. How monetary value has changed!
My next little gem is this double layered "Be Prepared" girl guides fabric badge. When I had the shop I bought a job lot of scout and girl guide badges at an auction. There were quite a few so, as per usual, I nabbed a couple of them for myself and sold the rest on. This was the start of my collection before I knew I even wanted to collect these things!
Here's another one I kept. It's a knitting badge so very apt with my love of wool.
One of the first pieces I bought, once I decided to start hunting for Girl Guide memorabilia, was this super cute Patrol Roll and Subscription Book. I bought it at an antiques fair in Bromsgrove for just £2.50. What a find!
Inside the first page you can see that the Patrol was called Kingfisher and the first entry dates to April 1940. Such a piece of history and I love the fact you can see the names of all the girls in that patrol and when they had attended. What's so interesting about this little book is that the Second World War had started 8 months earlier and it just shows how determined those young ladies were to keep on going.
 |
| A couple of Girl Guide badges. |
We come lastly to the piece de la resistance of my collection. My lovely friend bought me this whistle with built in compass for Christmas last year and I absolutely adore it! It has "Girl Guides" engraved onto it and looks like it comes with the original string too. The whistle even still works! This has pride of place in my collection.
