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Scouting gave young Bowditch his first understanding of the immense poverty in London. Each Christmas the scouts would obtain donations of food from their parents, parcel them up and distribute gifts in wheelbarrows and billycarts to the poor and needy.
Scouting gave young Bowditch his first understanding of the immense poverty in London. Each Christmas the scouts would obtain donations of food from their parents, parcel them up and distribute gifts in wheelbarrows and billycarts to the poor and needy.
The people who received the gifts lived in deplorable slums. Most of the homes consisted of one large room with a fireplace; there was no plumbing. Communal toilets and taps were in the courtyards . The scouts , bearing the gifts, would approach the hovels blowing whistles. The object of all the noise making, in Jim’s opinion, was more to bolster the scouts own spirits than to let the unfortunate recipients of this Christian charity know they were coming.
"We used to think that these strange people we had seen emerging from these places on previous occasions might be dangerous to us, ” said Bowditch. “The real tragedy of the situation was that the people could not afford to refuse the food, but they hated us. They would emerge from their filthy rooms, snatch the bread and dripping, or whatever, from our hands and slam the door in our faces.”
The squalor of the fetid residences compared with the leafy estate upon which he lived at Sidcup made a vivid impression on young Bowditch. At home Jim used to say it was wrong that people had to live that way .From time to time , he also spoke out about other things which he thought were wrong in society , causing his parents to jokingly comment that he was “ our little socialist” .
His brother, Peter ,was also in the scouts and they went on annual camps, looking very much alike because of their hair. Jim was supposed to take care of Peter- because he was older- but never did. They performed in the annual scout concert, the Gang Show, taking part in singing, sketches and , at times , dressed as girls. The two engaged in frequent fist fights
On several occasions Jim stood up to his father over the way he treated his mother . Responding to being chipped by Jim , Captain Bowditch once chased his son who climbed a chestnut tree and spent most of the day and part of a chilly night out on a limb. It was an ignominious situation for a boy nicknamed after Boadicea, the warrior queen.
