English Boys' Brigade: Individuals

Figure 1.-- Here we have an unknown English boy wearing a Boys Brigade uniform posing for a photographic portrait. He is holding a bugle with a small black dog sitting on tree trunk to his left--surely his cherish pet. The message on reverse reads '.....we have sent Warky and Charlie to see you...'

We do not have many individuals archived on HBU. Here we will include both portraits we have found, many unidentified, as well as experiences from our readers concering the Boys' Brigade. The organization is a smaller group than the Boy Scouts. Thus we have so far collected fewer of these individual pages. One reader,

Charlie (About 1900)

Here we have an unknown English boy wearing a Boys Brigade uniform posing for a photographic portrait. He is holding a bugle with a small black dog sitting on tree trunk to his left--surely his cherish pet. The message on reverse reads '.....we have sent Warky and Charlie to see you...' We assume the boy is Charlie and the pooch is Warky. It is a photo postcard. While it is undated, we believe it was probanly tken about 1905-10.

Alan (1969)

I joined the Manchester and district battalion in Great Britain , as a young teenager in 1969. Inknwn to me at the time, the BB was undergoing some findamental changes. This explained why I was with a temprary field service cap of the old design wheras the other boys were sporting bew caps more alin to the United States military 'overseas cap' or as we called them'Thundrbirs gats' (after the popular TV show) and the attractive silver award badges were being replaced by dull bronze bdges. I rather liked the old foeld service cap with it star badge and white piping, which first appeared in 1930 and is still used by some os the oversea brigades. I began to notice other companies in my battalion were wearing variations of the uniform. There were companies in forage caps (pillbox or 'momkey hats' as some boyhs called them)nand others wearing the field service cap, worn with haversackand belt over black or dark blue schoo; blazers and caps.

Jonathan (1970s)

Jonathan has provided some information about his Boys' Brigade expeiences furing the 1970s. We didn't join the Boy Scouts. We did, however, join the Boys' Brigade. That is a youth group similar to the Scouts, but more religiously oeiented. British readers will know about the Boys' Brigade, but I don't think they are very well known in America. The church we went to didn't have any youth groups attached. When I was in the first year of the infants, about 6 years old, I went to someting called "Cabin Boys" at a local Baptist Church All four of us participated. And we all enjoyed the experience. Unfortunately we had to stoped going because they moved the meetings to a Salbatuion Army hall that was too distant.

Created: 4:01 AM 9/19/2006
Last updated: 1:36 AM 7/13/2015