Centenary Dinner - Chairman's Remarks

Richard Cavaye, Group Scout Leader and Chairman for the evening, spoke as follows:

Ladies and Gentlemen

When Sandie Somerville walked into the Headmaster’s office in Archibald Place sometime in early 1908, to ask if he could follow the craze that was sweeping the nation and set up one of the new-fangled Scout Groups in the school, do you think he could possibly have imagined that 100 years on we would be sitting here tonight celebrating a Centenary of uninterrupted Scouting at Watson’s?

It truly is a magnificent achievement and I can tell you that we are one of only 40 Scout Groups in the entire world who were founded in 1907 or 1908 and are still in existence today.

However, we are not trying to suggest that the 9th is better than anyone else – we don’t mean to imply that we might be the oldest in the world in Scotland or even in Edinburgh. This was also the view of Sandie Somerville himself when, later in 1908, a meeting of all the Scout Groups who had been formed in the Edinburgh area was held and this meeting led to the first Edinburgh Scout District which at the time was called the Midlothian Boy Scouts’ Association. Up till then, Scout Groups had not been designated a number, and at the meeting many Scout Leaders present wanted to claim that their Group was the oldest and that they should be called the 1st Lothian Scouts.

Sandie, who could clearly have laid claim to leading the oldest group, watched this debate take place and once it had subsided he quietly stood up and said: “We don’t mind, we’ll be the… Ninth!”. And the Ninth we became, and have been ever since.

Out of the 40 Scout Groups still in existence from 1908, none other than ourselves bears the number 9, so tonight ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you that we are quite categorically “the oldest Ninth in the world!”.

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