We often get messages about things we write. Today I got a claim that Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting, was a Freemason. However, there is no such evidence.
Here is what a Masonic writer states: "...there is no evidence that Major-General Lord Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell was a freemason under the English, Irish or Scottish Constitutions. It is remotely possible, but unlikely, that he was initiated under some other jurisdiction.
Bro. George Kendall, in his paper 'Freemasonry during the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902' (AQC 97), makes no mention of him. Paul Butterfield’s Centenary: The First Hundred Years of English Freemasonry in the Transvaal (1978) is similarly devoid of reference.
Had Baden-Powell been a member of the Craft it would surely have come to light during the war in South Africa, during which masonic activity is well documented."1. . Frederick Smyth, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum: Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, vol. cii. London: 1990. p. 264.^
2. Ars Quatuor Coronatorum: Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, vol.
