The Salvation Army's founder, William Booth: his life and times
William Booth
In Nottingham, on 10 April 1829, Samuel Booth’s wife, Mary, gave birth to William. According to William, his father, who was an ambitious but illiterate man, only got into heaven by ‘the skin of his teeth’. When William was thirteen, Samuel’s financial misfortunes were such that he took his son from school and made to work for a pawnbroker. Shortly after, his father died, leaving his mother with young children to an increasingly poverty-stricken existence. In 1844 he ‘converted’, taking up his calling with evangelical zeal.
East London Christian Mission
At the age of twenty William Booth moved to Walworth in South London, where he worked as a pawnbroker’s assistant and, in his spare time, an itinerant and unpaid preacher. William met Catherine Mumford the following year. They were both members of a rebellious group of Methodists, and on 16 June 1855 they were married in Stockwell New Chapel. Eight children were born to them in thirteen years as they preached their way around England, and in the summer of 1865, having decided on an evangelical life, they started the East London Christian Mission, from which the Salvation Army grew.
The Salvation Army
Although it had informally borne the title for several months previously, with the first War Cry issued on 27 December 1879, the Salvation Army acquired its formal name on 24 June 1880. Booth ran the organisation with scant regard for committees and democratic principles. As a leader of an army engaged in a war against sin, there was little time to confer with junior officers, and he turned his attention to address the fact, as he saw it, that ‘hot sin’ could only be fought with ‘hot religion’. Thus, the Salvation Army equipped itself with bright uniforms and banners and drums and tambourines to join in noisy combat with the Devil. Booth’s brand of genial fundamentalism attracted many followers.
George Scott Railton
One such follower was an earnest young Scot called George Scott Railton, to whom Booth gave the job of claiming America for Christ. Railton, who was the first educated man to give up all he had to work for Booth, later became the Salvation Army’s first Commissioner. The Salvation Army’s popularity was now increasing worldwide, and although Queen Victoria frowned upon Booth’s military style, King Edward later received him at Buckingham Palace.
Last Days
On 4 October 1890 Booth received a devastating blow when Catherine succumbed to the cancer that she had endured for two years. As she lay dying, she called William to her, and, with her lips on his, she breathed her last. As William’s health declined, his son Bramwell, took over many administrative duties for the Army. On 20 August 1912, at his home in Hadley Wood, near Barnet, William Booth died. His last words to Bramwell were, ‘I’m leaving you a bonnie handful …’
