Sir Francis Fletcher-Vane, 5th Baronet

Vane was born at 10 Great George’s Street,[4] Dublin 1861 to an Irish mother and English father. His grandfather was Sir Frederick Fletcher-Vane, Bt.[5]

Vane was raised in Sidmouth, Devon, England and educated at Charterhouse School.[8] In 1876, Vane enrolled at the Oxford Military College.[5]

After military college, Vane was assigned to the Worcester Militia, Scots Guards[9] and for a stint with the Submarine Mining section[10] of the Royal Engineers over the period of 1883-1888. In 1886, he began residing at Toynbee Hall in East London. That same year he started a 'Working Boys Cadet Corps'. He became a captain in the 26th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers in 1888. While serving in the Second Boer War (1899–1902), he was appointed a magistrate in 1902. He was removed from that position for supposedly being too "pro-Boer".[5] He wrote "The War and One Year After" pamphlet in 1903 criticising the British method of war. With his follow up pamphlet, Vane was "retired" from the military.[4]

Daily News, Manchester Guardian, Westminster and Truth employed Vane from 1902 to 1904 as a reporter for South Africa. He was the unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Burton in the 1906 United Kingdom general election. Following that he became active in antiwar and suffragette campaigns from 1907-1912.[5][4] He published two more items: Walks and Peoples in Tuscany (1908) and On Certain Fundamentals (1909).

By 1909, Vane was the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts' London Commissioner. He felt that Scouting should be nonmilitary and, through mediation, reconciled the British Boy Scouts (BBS) with Baden-Powell organisation by having the BBS as an affiliated organisation of the Baden-Powell organisation. The BBS had formed as the Battersea Boy Scouts (BBS) and registered with the Baden-Powell Boy Scout organisation but soon left the Baden-Powell organisation over perceived militarisation and nondemocratic nature of the national headquarters. The BBS had renamed and reconstituted itself as a national organisation. Vane briefly reconciled the two organisations. With Vane pushing for Baden-Powell's organisation to be more democratic, his position was eliminated by Baden-Powell's headquarters staff. In a protest meeting, the London area Scoutmasters voted overwhelming in support of Sir Francis, however Baden-Powell never reinstated him. Members of the National Service League, a pro-military group, were appointed to Baden-Powell's headquarters. On 3 December 1909, Vane accepted the presidency of the British Boy Scouts taking most London area Troops with him. The Quakers' Birmingham and Midland Troops also followed as Vane was key in having Quakers sponsor Scouting Troops.[14]

Vane got the Boy's Life Brigade (BLB) to join the British Boy Scouts in a loose federation called The National Peace Scouts in February 1910.[14][15] At the merger the BBS had 45,000 Scouts and BLB had 40,000 members. With Vane having an Italian summer home, he was able to launch the Scouting Movement in Italy with the Ragazzi Esploratori Italiani in 1910.[5][14] In 1911, Vane assisted Augustin Dufresne, a shipowner, to organise a French Scouting organisation.[16]

With the spread of the alternative British Boy Scouts programme throughout the world, Vane informally aligned the various groups as the Legion of World Scouts, the first international organisation, in 1911 then more formally as the Order of World Scouts on 11 November 1911.[15][16] Vane became the Grand Scout Master of the Order of World Scouts.[15]

Vane put his wealth behind the organisations: providing a London headquarters and financed the organisation, even the manufacture of BBS uniforms. This overburdened his finances to the point of having to declare bankruptcy in 1912.[17] Thus the British Boy Scouts lost their headquarters, source of equipment and uniforms and their leader. Vane continued his involvement with the remnant BBS, as he inspected the Troop of the London Commissioner Percy Herbert Pooley in 1915.[14][16]

Vane returned to Italy after World War I to find that the Italian Boy Scouts he founded had been mainly absorbed by the National Scouts Corps (Corpo Nazionale Giovani Esploratori Italiani - CNGEI). Some joined in with the creation of the Catholic Association of Scouts (Associazione Scautistica Cattolica Italiana - ASCI) in 1916, later named AGESCI. He began working with the latter group. He tried to get Baden-Powell to accept the ASCI as a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement. He also try to get the BBS back together with the Boy Scouts Association. Both of these efforts were without success.[14] In 1927, he left for the United Kingdom as the Fascists quashed the Italian Scouting Movement,[5] in favour of the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), an Italian Fascist youth organisation. Despite a private letter to Sir Francis Vane 24 April 1933, sympathising with Vane’s worries, the Balilla was an organisation that was publicly highly praised by Baden-Powell,[18] as the application of scouting as part of national education.

He succeeded his cousin Sir Henry Ralph Fletcher-Vane as baronet in 1908.

His first wife, Anna Oliphant da Costa Ricci, daughter of the Baron Anselmo da Costa Ricci of Portugal, whom he married in 1888, died in 1922. Vane became a Knight Commander of the Order of Christ (Portugal) in 1889. He married his second wife, Kathleen Crosbie in 1927. Sir Francis died in 1934 aged 72, after spending his last year of life in ill health at St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth.[19]

• Francis Fletcher Vane, Agin the governments: memories and adventures of Sir Francis Fletcher Vane (London, Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd., 1929)

• ODNB article by Roger T. Stearn, ‘Vane, Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher, fifth baronet (1861–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006 , accessed 7 April 2008.
• Biography at irishidentity.com