French Youth Group Uniforms: Local Groups


Figure 1.--This photograph is unidentified, but we are fairly confident that the boys are French. They do not wear uniforms. Most of the boys wear suits, although there may also be some smocks. They are wearibg what look like large uniform berets. This looks like a group that the parish priest pictured with the boys has organized. They are about to set out on a camping expedition which you can tell feom the bed rolls the boys are wearing and the hinking sticks (very popular with Scouts and other early youth groups).

We note some local French youth groups that do not seem to be associated with any national group. We think that these groups may have been loosely organized, often by a Parish priest, before Scouting was established. We do not know know much about these groups. As far we can tell,they were esentially curch based. We have not yet noticed secular groups. While church-bsed, we do not notice any central organization. Here ome parish priests seemto have taken an interest in organizing challenging activities for boys. We do not know just when this began, but we see groups in the very early 20th century. There was initially some suspicion in France about Scouting, especially within the Church. First Scouting was an English creation. Second, England was a Protestant country. The ideas was so compelling, however, that Scouting soon took over from these local groups.







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Created: 12:16 AM 6/19/2008
Last updated: 12:16 AM 6/19/2008