Did you know that RNOH used to have its own dedicated Scouts Troop? Former member Jonathan Lewis shares his memories of the 1st Brockley Hill Boy Scout Group (RNOH).
"In the 1960s, young patients were sometimes at the RNOH for very long stays — for months or even years. At one point, a scout group was formed to enable them to take part in whatever scout activities were possible. It was named the 1st Brockley Hill R.N.O. Hospital Scout Group.
I was a pupil at Harrow County School for Boys and a member of its 4th Harrow (County School) Scout Group. In the 1960s, a group of its senior scouts, aged from 16 to 18, started to visit the young people’s ward on some Sunday mornings to arrange activities. I did so from 1962 until 1965, cycling up Brockley Hill and then sometimes sitting down for a cup of tea! I remember one winter morning so cold that when I arrived - of course in uniform and wearing shorts — I was so chilled through that I had to sit for a while with my head between my legs until a feeling of light-headedness had passed.
We gave individual attention to each of the young patients. Some were able to move around the ward and some were not. We helped them to prepare to be invested as scouts and then to work towards the various elements of what were termed the Second Class and then the First-Class badges. Some also worked for proficiency badges. An article in a scout magazine about scouting for the handicapped (as it was then referred to) spoke about a boy who had been a patient in another hospital for so long that he had almost completed his path towards the coveted Queen’s Scout badge when he was discharged. I hope that he was able to join a local group to complete the badge.
A scout friend and I both had Hornby-Dublo OO gauge model railways. One Sunday morning my father drove us, together with our model railways, to the hospital. We laid out the track around the ward and ran the trains, which everybody loved.
In a therapeutic clear-out of the accumulated papers of a lifetime, I have come upon my uniform badge for the 1st Brockley Hill R.N.O. Hospital Scout Group and some photographs and papers. I have given them to the hospital for the archives [and hope that they may come to be displayed].
The photograph on the left and below show a rather younger me — I am 80 now — unpacking the model railway and talking with one of the boys.
I went through the Scout Movement, becoming a Queen’s (now King’s) Scout, attending the international Scout Jamboree at Marathon in Greece in 1963 as a member of the 40‑strong Middlesex (when it really was Middlesex!) Troop, and then, years later, serving as a parent helper and being awarded the movement’s Thanks Badge. The motto of the Scout Movement is Be Prepared, and its ethic is service. Perhaps those of us who came on Sunday mornings were able to be of some very small service to some disadvantaged young people two-thirds of a century ago."
Jonathan Lewis (far left in scout uniform, speaking to a young patient, from the Scout magazine 1962)
Uniform badge for 1st Brockley Hill R.N.O.Hospital Scout Group