The Boys Brigade was founded in October 1883, at North Woodside Mission Hall, in Glasgow by Sir William Alexander Smith. It was the first of all the uniformed organizations for boys and girls which have since spread all over the world.

ABOUT OUR FOUNDER

          William Alexander Smith was twenty-nine years of age. He was born on 27th October, 1854 at Pennyland House, near Thurso. William Smith had moved to Glasgow at the age of fifteen. While he was still in his teens he enrolled in the 1st Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, and a year later he became a member of the Free College Church.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

            William Smith filled every hour of every day of the week with work, drill parade, and church meetings. He then became a teacher in the Sabbath School which was held in a mission hall in North Woodside Road, not far from the church. It was the in the Sabbath School that he struck a snag, and had an idea. The snag was that the older boys were bored and restless. No one seemed able to interest or control them. They felt they were too old for the Sabbath School and they were suspicious of 'do-gooders' and teachers who told them to sit still, make less noise, and generally behave themselves. In short, they were typical teenagers.

             Smith thought a lot about it. On a Saturday afternoon, he had no difficulty in making a hundred men obey his every word of command on the nearby drill ground. Yet on a Sunday he could do nothing with a small group of lively boys. It was then he had his idea: 'Drill and Discipline'. Why not turn the Sabbath School boys into a volunteer band or brigade, with the same military order, obedience, discipline and self-respect as any well trained corps of the Army of the Queen? Religious instruction was the core of Sabbath School work, but why should the boys not enjoy games as well as discipline, gymnastics and sport as well as hymns and prayers?

HIS VISION

            William Smith discussed his ideas with two of his close friends in the YMCA, the brothers James R. Hill and John B. Hill who taught in the Sabbath School with him and who were fellow Volunteers. Nothing was left to chance. The program was talked out with care for every detail and, with their plans, they asked God's blessing on it. Later, William Smith was to sum up his aims in these words:

"The aim was to devise something that would appeal to a boy on the heroic side of his nature - something that would let him see that in the service of God there is as much scope for all that is brave and true and manly as in the service of King and Country."

OUR BADGE & MOTTO

            On the 4th October 1883 the three leaders invited the boys of North Woodside Mission Sabbath School to join The Boys' Brigade. The badge was to be and anchor and the motto: 'Sure and Stedfast'. William Smith took the words and the spelling and the crest from the authorized Version of the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 19: 'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast'. Name, badge and motto have remained throughout the Boys' Brigade history.

OUR OBJECT

The Object was also quite clear from the beginning:

"The advancement of Christ's Kingdom among Boys and the promotion of habits of Reverence, Discipline, Self-respect, and all that tends towards a true Christian Manliness."

            It was typical of William Smith's serious purpose, and true to the sprit of the times, that he put down all the important words with a capital letter. Throughout its history the most important person in The Boys' Brigade has always been, and will always be The Boy.

            The brigade at North Woodside Mission became known as the 1st Glasgow Company. It started off with a handful of boys in 1883. Within three years the number of boys had swelled to 2 000 and the movement had bases in Glasgow, Edinburgh and from Ayr to Inverness. The Boys' Brigade has grown from strength to strength, spread across the border to England and from there to the rest of the world where Christianity if freely practiced. In the year 1914; the year of the Great war, Sir William Alexander Smith; he had been knighted by Queen Victoria in 1909, died. Thousands of boys and girls own William Alexander Smith a dept. of gratitude for their lives that have been enriched. From a small idea in North Woodside Mission Hall grew a movement that has circled the world.