Vera Barclay

Vera Charlesworth Barclay (1893-1989) was a British pioneer of Scouting and an author.

Early life

Vera was born on 10 November 1893,^[1] one of eight children of the Reverend Charles W. Barclay, a Church of England clergyman and his wife, Florence Louisa Charlesworth, a successful novelist. The family lived in the village of Hertford Heath in Hertfordshire to the north of London, where Reverend Barclay was the vicar from 1881 to 1920.^[2] The family were frequent visitors to St Moritz in the Swiss Alps; Vera was an enthusiastic tobogganist and one of the few females to tackle the Cresta Run, often dressed in skirts or riding jodhpurs.^[3]

Scouting

Vera joined the Scout movement in 1912 and at the outbreak of World War I, Vera took charge of the village Boy Scout Troop; their male leaders having left for the armed forces. In 1913, the founder of the Scout movement, Robert Baden-Powell, had launched a provisional scheme for boys who were too young to join the Scouts at 11 years-old. Originally called "Junior Scouts", it had been renamed "Wolf Cubs" by January 1914. Vera was regularly pestered by younger village boys wanting to join the Troop, so she opened the 1st Hertford Heath Wolf Cub Pack and persuaded her younger sister Angela to lead it. Vera realized that there would be many women willing to run Cub Packs and wrote an article entitled "How a Lady Can Train the Cubs"; it was published in the official Scout magazine, the Headquarters Gazette, in January 1915.

In June 1916, Vera attended Baden-Powell's relaunch of Wolf Cubs at Caxton Hall in London. The article had obviously caught Baden-Powell's attention, because he approached her to become the Wolf Cub Secretary at Imperial Headquarters. She accepted Baden-Powell's offer as her war work with the British Red Cross at a hospital in Netley in Hampshire was becoming impossible due to a pre-war knee injury incurred whilst skiing. One of her first tasks was to help Baden-Powell to edit the drafts for The Wolf Cub's Handbook, which was published in December 1916. She devised many of the tests and badges that appeared in the second edition. In 1920, she organized a Grand Howl by 500 Cubs at the 1st World Scout Jamboree at Olympia, London; at the end of the ceremony, she was presented with the Silver Wolf for services "of the most exceptional character" to Scouting.

A recent convert to Roman Catholicism, Vera spent a brief spell as a nun with the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul. She later lived in Edgebaston in Birmingham, where she resumed her Scouting activities and was a leading member of the Catholic Scout Guild who ran a campsite at Hall Green for Cubs and Scouts from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In the early 1920s, Vera was a frequent visitor to France, where she encouraged the development of Les Louveteaux or Wolf Cubs in the Scouts de France. In 1923, she was at the first French Wolf Cub Wood Badge course at the Château de Chamarande and was later awarded the Cross of St Louis by the Scouts de France. Her connection with Scouting ended in 1931, when she emigrated to France and then Switzerland.^[4]

Writing

Vera Barclay was a prolific author, mainly of books for children, but also about Christianity and Scouting. Perhaps her best known works are the "Jane" series of stories for girls. She wrote some books under the pen names Margaret Beech and Vera Charlesworth,^[5] and some detective stories were written under the name of Hugh Chichester..^[6]

Later life

Vera returned to England at the start of World War II and lived in Bognor Regis on the south coast. After living in London and the Isle of Wight where she began to lose her eyesight, she ended her days at Sheringham in Norfolk, being cared for by her niece Betty. She died in September 1989 at St Nicholas' Nursing Home, Sheringham, and is buried in Sheringham Cemetery.^[7]

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References