How we began in Birmingham
Girls wanting to be Scouts!
In Birmingham a group of girls, pupils at King Edward VI High School, wearing a uniform similar uniform to the early Boy Scouts, walked from Harborne to a Scout Rally in Warley Woods in 1909.  On arriving at the Rally they found themselves to be among only 12 girls in a crowd of a thousand Boy Scouts.
Their leader was a girl of 15.  "We did not see why the boys should have all the fun" she wrote later, "so we started a patrol of Girl Scouts in Harborne.  We had no clubhouse, but met every Saturday in a little wooden hut at the edge of the golf links, cooking our lunch, practicing first aid and playing Scouting games from Scouting for Boys".  By 1909 those girls had become the first group of Girl Scouts in Birmingham, the 1st Birmingham unit, which continues to meet to this day in Harborne.  Baden-Powell subsequently handed responsibility for the girls' organisation to his sister, Agnes, and the Girl Guides Association was formed in 1910 with Agnes as its President.  The 1st Birmingham reluctantly become Girl Guides instead of Girl Scouts