BOOTH, WILLIAM. – Social reformer and founder of the Protestant sect “Salvation Army,” born in Nottingham on 10 April 1829, died blind in London on 20 August 1912. The son of a poor family, from the age of 13 he had to work for a living. At 15 he experienced a first impulse toward conversion and felt attracted to the revivalist movement. In 1849 he moved to London, where he worked in the large workshops, an experience that left a profound impression on him. During this period he met Caterina Mumford, his future wife and collaborator. In 1852 he undertook a travelling course of preaching as a follower of the Methodist New Connection. Meanwhile, his religious convictions were moving away from Methodist doctrine and taking on a new and personal direction, especially with regard to a certain movement of social redemption that he was developing in favor of the humblest and most wretched classes of the London suburbs. At his wife’s urging, he founded a Christian mission in Whitechapel, a district of the destitute, which would constitute the first cell of the future worldwide organization called Salvation army (v. ESERCITO DELLA SALVEZZA), conceived by him with the aim of drawing workers, the derelict, and the outcasts of society to Christianity through new means and methods, including certain choreographic forms of propaganda, restoring to them a sense of life and hope in moral and social rehabilitation. After providing the new association with rules and statutes, in 1878 he modeled it on a military hierarchy composed of rank-and-file members and officers, proclaiming himself its “general.”
At the beginning, his demonstrations, considered eccentric and disruptive of the peace, were not taken seriously; public opinion was hostile to him, and some of his followers were fined and imprisoned. Nevertheless, he succeeded in giving ever greater impetus to his work. The results achieved among the proletarian classes, besides winning him the admiration of the disinherited, also attracted the attention of the most skeptical and earned him the esteem of various figures in the political world, who wished to meet him and support his work.
In 1890 he lost his wife, who had always assisted and followed him as “generaless” in reaching female circles, and he felt her absence keenly. That same year, in collaboration with the journalist W. T. Stead, he published the volume In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which, after highlighting the tragic conditions of the English working classes, exploited by capitalists and excluded from every form of economic and religious assistance, he proposed remedying the immense scourges of pauperism through a program of reforms. The book’s great success (approximately 10 million lire from 200,000 copies in a few weeks), the favor of King Edward VII himself, who in 1902 personally invited him to the coronation ceremony, and the sympathies that he gradually won within wealthy London society procured him a substantial fortune, which enabled him to implement much of his program in a short time and extend the new military order to every continent, proving himself an indefatigable organizer and an effective orator.
His eldest son, William Bramwell, born in Halifax (Yorkshire) in 1856, succeeded his father as general of the association. Already an officer of the “Army” in 1874, in 1880 he was placed in charge of organizational work and distinguished himself in the struggle against the “white slave trade,” revealing to public opinion the insidious methods by which the victims were recruited; through his agitation he succeeded in having an amendment to the penal code approved in 1885. His able collaborator was his wife Florence, an officer in the army. In 1929, however, having been judged inexperienced and unsuitable for the position he held, he was dismissed by the order’s council and replaced by Edward J. Higgins. When the latter retired in 1934, the rank of general was assumed by Evangelina Booth, the founder’s fourth child, who remained in office until 1 November 1939, when she was succeeded by the Australian George Carpenter.