Francis Vane

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For the British peer, please see Henry Francis Cecil Vane; for the murder trial investigated by Major Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, please see Francis Sheehy-Skeffington

Sir Francis Vane (1861 – 1934) was an early aide of Lord Baden-Powell's and a Scout Commissioner of London before Baden-Powell ousted him from the Scout Association. He later founded the Order of World Scouts, the earliest multinational Scouting movement, and is counted one of the founders of Scouting in Italy.

The first schism within Scouting occurred during November 1909, when the British Boy Scouts, the first international Scout organisation, was created, initially comprising an estimated 25 percent of all Scouts in the United Kingdom, but rapidly declining from 1911 onward. It was later called the Brotherhood of British Scouts. Allied to Scouting organisations in the United States, Italy, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South America and India in 1911, it was known as the Order of World Scouts. The World organisation was formed by Sir Francis Vane because of perceptions of bureaucracy and militaristic tendencies in the mainstream movement. Initially in the United Kingdom, with several smaller organisations, such as the Boy's Life Brigade Scouts they formed the National Peace Scouts federation. The British Girl Scouts were the female counterpart of the British Boy Scouts.

[edit] See also

• ODNB article by Roger T. Stearn, ‘Vane, Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher, fifth baronet (1861–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 [1], accessed 7 April 2008.