How did a Victorian pawnbroker’s apprentice come to found a church that now, with nearly 1.6 million members, functions in more than 109 countries? How did an organization that married the jolly sounds of the music hall with the jargon of the military develop into one of the world’s largest, most diverse providers of social welfare? How did a persecuted band of evangelists, who set up in 1865 to convert the roughs of East London, grow into the respected, faith-based relief agency that in recent times alone has helped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the July 7 London bombings and the Asian tsunami?

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in British Heritage magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The story of the Salvation Army is full of such fascinating questions, not least because its founder, his methods and his followers excited vehemently contradictory reactions: Polite society thought William Booth was a bearded fanatic, others saw a charismatic champion of religion and reform. His wife Catherine was both social heretic and pioneer of women’s equality. Their tale is a compelling one.

William Booth was born, the third child of Samuel and Mary, on April 10, 1829, at 12 Notintone Place, Sneinton, Nottingham (now his birthplace museum). Samuel was variously an entrepreneur and builder, but when he died in 1842 family finances were in such a ruinous state that 13-year-old William was apprenticed to a local pawnbroker to help support his mother and sisters. He also began taking the first steps in his religious career — away from the ‘formal, unfriendly services of the Church of England, into Methodism. Inspired by the fiery theatricality of the likes of controversial American preacher James Caughey, who traveled around England between 1841 and 1847, Booth felt God was calling him to some (as yet unspecified) great work. Despite ill health, which would dog him all his life, the zealous adolescent began spreading religion in the back streets of Nottingham. Then in 1849 he moved to London to continue preaching — and pawnbroking — there.

Booth’s approach to religion was instinctive rather than intellectual, and he had little time for academic or theological debate. He therefore easily moved between several churches that had sprung from the disputes that racked Wesleyan Methodism in the 19th century. Eventually, he threw off pawnbroking and became a minister for the Methodist New Connexion. More important, in 1855 he married Catherine Mumford.

If William had shown precocious teenage interest in preaching in Nottingham, Catherine’s youth was no less remarkable. She was born January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, although the family later moved back to Boston, Lincolnshire. Her father had been an occasional preacher before losing his faith; however, her mother was so zealously pious that she kept Catherine away from school lest she pick up undesirable habits from less God-fearing children. In fact, Catherine’s formal education effectively began when she was 12.

Like William, Catherine was frequently sickly throughout life, but where she differed from him was in her close study of theology. She held strong moral convictions and joined the Temperance Movement. In 1844 the family moved again, to London, and shortly afterward 16-year-old Catherine experienced the divine moment that finally convinced her of salvation while she was reading a Charles Wesley hymn. She taught at Sunday school and gave classes before meeting her future husband at a tea party in 1852.

Devotion to religion was their bond, and where William showed passion but a lack of direction, Catherine provided the iron hand to guide, including constant chiding that William should improve himself but guard against ambition. Theirs was a relationship of equals — an eyebrow-raising proposition in Victorian England. Moreover, Catherine held the heretical view (backed up by her biblical studies) that women should, with as much entitlement as men, be allowed to preach in church. William soon accepted this standpoint. For her part, Catherine lived up to the conventional bargain of wedlock, producing eight children.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to