BOOTH, William. - Social reformer and founder of the Protestant sect “Salvation Army.” Born at Nottingham on 10 April 1829, died blind in London on 20 August 1912. Son of a poor family, he had to work to support himself from the age of thirteen. At fifteen he experienced his first impulse toward conversion and was drawn to the revivalist movement. In 1849 he moved to London, where he worked in large factories, from which he drew a deep impression. During this period he met Catherine Mumford, his future wife and collaborator. In 1852 he conducted a travelling preaching course as a follower of the Methodist New Connexion. Meanwhile his religious convictions moved away from Methodist doctrine and took on a new and personal direction, especially with regard to a certain movement of social redemption which he was developing on behalf of the most humble and unfortunate classes of London’s suburbs. At his wife’s instigation he founded in Whitechapel, a district of the wretched, a Christian mission which would constitute the first cell of the future world-wide organization called the Salvation Army (v. Salvezza), devised by him to attract, by new means and methods, not excluding certain theatrical forms of propaganda, workers, the destitute and the outcasts of society to Christianity, restoring to them a sense of life and hope in moral and social rehabilitation. After endowing the new association with rules and statutes, in 1878 he directed it along the lines of a military hierarchy composed of privates and officers, of which he himself proclaimed himself “general.”
At the outset his methods, considered extravagant and disturbing to 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 destitute, forced even the most sceptical to take notice and earned him the esteem of various political figures who wished to meet him and support his action.
In 1890 he lost his wife, who had always assisted and followed him as “general” in reaching out to women’s circles, and he felt her absence keenly. In the 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 England’s working classes, exploited by capitalists and devoid of any form of economic or religious assistance, he proposed to remedy the immense sores of pauperism through a plan of reforms: the great success of the book (about £100,000 from 200,000 copies in a few weeks), the favour of King Edward VII himself, who in 1902 personally invited him to the coronation ceremony, and the sympathies he had gradually won within London’s wealthy society, procured him a considerable fortune which enabled him to implement, in a short time, much of his programme and to extend the new military order to every continent, proving himself an indefatigable organizer and an effective orator.
His eldest son William Bramwell, born at Halifax (Yorkshire) in 1856, succeeded his father as general of the association. Already an officer in the Army in 1874, in 1880 he was put in charge of organizational work and distinguished himself in the fight against the “white slave trade,” exposing to public opinion the subtle arts by which victims were recruited, and through his agitation he succeeded in having an amendment to the penal code approved in 1885. He had as a valuable collaborator his wife Florence, an official of the Army. However, in 1929, judged inexperienced and unfit for the position he held, he was dismissed from the council of the order and replaced by Edward J. Higgins. When Higgins retired in 1934, the rank of general was assumed by Evangelina Booth, fourth daughter of the founder, who remained in office until 10 November 1939, after which the Australian George Carpenter took over.