William and Catherine Booth Found the Salvation Army

William Booth was a minister of the Methodist New Connexion (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 5). When its Conference refused to release him for work as a travelling evangelist he left it, and, in words quoted by his biographer George Railton, went out with his wife and four children not knowing who would give him a shilling (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 5). His wife, Catherine Booth, had begun to speak in his services (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 5). In a pamphlet, Female Ministry, she argued that the public ministry of women is not merely unforbidden but “absolutely enjoined by both precept and example in the word of God” (Catherine Booth, Female Ministry pp. 4–5). She appealed to the prophecy of Joel that sons and daughters would prophesy, which Peter applies to Pentecost, and to Galatians 3:28, which she quotes as “there is neither male nor female” (Catherine Booth, Female Ministry pp. 9–10, 19) (Acts 2:16–18; Galatians 3:28).

In July 1865 Booth began work in the East End of London (Railton, Life of William Booth table of dates). He had been asked to take services in a tent on an old burial ground in Whitechapel when the expected preacher fell ill (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 7). Railton quotes his recollection of walking home that night and telling his wife that he had found his destiny, and hers of answering that they had trusted the Lord once for their support and could trust him again (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 7). The work was called first the East London Christian Revival Society, then the East London Christian Mission, and then simply the Christian Mission (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 8).

A deed enrolled in the Court of Chancery on 7 August 1878 fixed its constitution (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 9). At the end of that year, in which its stations grew from thirty to eighty, the mission was described as a “Salvation Army” (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 9), and Booth took the title of General (Railton, Life of William Booth table of dates). Women held command in it: Booth appointed a Swedish woman, Major Ouchterlony, to open the Army’s work in her own country (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 13).

Catherine Booth died on 4 October 1890 (Railton, Life of William Booth ch. 19). That year William published In Darkest England and the Way Out, dedicated to her memory, and wrote in its preface that the usual remedies of Christian philanthropy were “lamentably inadequate” (Booth, In Darkest England dedication and preface). He reckoned the destitute at three million, a “submerged tenth” of the population, and asked for them what every London cab horse had: shelter, food and work (Booth, In Darkest England part 1, ch. 2). He proposed three kinds of self-supporting community, a City Colony, a Farm Colony and a Colony Over-Sea, governed on the principles of the Salvation Army (Booth, In Darkest England part 2, ch. 1).