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Monday 1st January
From The Archives

Centenaries

Grammar School Scouts, Oswestry, 1915

Over the past few days, at the start of Oswestry School's 600th year, it has been hard to avoid the news that the Scouting movement will also be celebrating a centenary on August 1st this year.  Scouting began in 1907 when R.S.S. Baden-Powell, Lieutenant General in the British Army, inspired by the young messengers of the Siege of Mafeking during the Boer War, held the first Scouting encampment at Brownsea Island, England.  Its popularity endures; it is a fact that July’s World Scout Jamboree in Essex will draw together more participants from more countries than the 2012 Olympics in London.

This picture shows the Grammar School Scouts, Oswestry in 1915 outside the steps at the back of School House.  At this time, the school was too small to maintain a Cadet Corps and a Scout Troop was started by the Rev Dermod Ross Milner, Chaplain and an Assistant Master at school from 1914 to 1916, who is probably the Scout Leader seated in the centre of the picture.  The Rev Milner, was a well liked and respected member of the school, and after he left, to take up a Naval Chaplaincy, he maintained his connection with the school by contributing several articles to The Oswestrian magazine, on life at sea during wartime.

Tragically, in 1919, aged 29, while attached to the hospital ship HMHS Garth Castle, Rev Milner was accidentally killed by the explosion of a bomb on board ship at Archangel, Russia during the Allied Intervention in Russia after the October Revolution.  The Rev D R Milner is remembered in the Roll of Honour in the School Chapel.

Whilst there are no names listed with this photograph, comparison with other sports photos of this time shows that the boy to the right of the leader is Charles Moses who left school in 1917.  Graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1918, Moses emigrated to Australia in 1922.  After a few years farming and selling cars, he joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1930 as a radio sports announcer.  In 1935 he was promoted to General Manager. With the arrival of television in Australia in 1956, he oversaw the ABC's move to become Australia's first national television service with ABC-TV in time for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.

Moses retired in 1965, was made a Commander of the Order of British Empire in 1954 and was knighted in 1961.  The Charles Moses Stadium in Sydney is named in his honour.

Find out more about Sir Charles Moses by clicking here.