BOOTH, WILLIAM founder and "general" of the Salvation army, was born at Nottingham on April io 1829, the son of a speculative builder. He was apprenticed to a pawn broker. At 15 he underwent the experience of religious conver sion, and he became a revivalist preacher. In 1849 he went to London, where he worked in a pawnbroker's shop at Walworth, hating the business, but bound to it by the necessity of sending money home. At this period he met Catherine Mumford, his future wife and lifelong helpmate. In 1852 he had become a regular preacher of the Methodist New Connection, and in they were married. After nine years of the ministry Booth broke loose from the Connection and began his career as an independent revivalist. Booth held the simple belief that eternal punishment was the fate of the unconverted. Coupled with this was a pro found pity for the outcast, and a hatred of dirt, squalor and suffering. In 1864 Booth went to London and continued his serv ices in tents and in the open air, and founded at Whitechapel the Christian Mission, which became (in 1878) the Salvation army and which made every convert a daily witness for Christ, both in public and private. Booth modelled its "Orders and Regula tions" on those of the British army. Its early "campaigns" ex cited violent opposition, a "Skeleton army" being organized to break up the meetings, and for many years Booth's followers were subjected to fine and imprisonment as breakers of the peace. After 1889 these disorders were little heard of. The operations of the army were extended in 188o to the United States, in 1881 to Australia, and spread to the European Continent, to India, Ceylon and elsewhere, General Booth himself being an indefati gable traveller, organizer and speaker. His wife died in 189o. By her preaching at Gateshead, where her husband was circuit minis ter, in 186o, she began the women's ministry which is so promi nent a feature of the army's work.
In 1890 General Booth published In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which he had the assistance of W. T. Stead. He proposed to remedy pauperism and vice by ten expedients : the city colony; (2) the farm colony; (3) the over-sea colony; (4) the household salvage brigade; (5) the rescue homes for fallen women; (6) deliverance for the drunkard; (7) the prison gate brigade; (8) the poor man's bank; (g) the poor man's lawyer; (io) Whitechapel-by-the-Sea. Money was liberally sub scribed and a large part of the scheme was carried out. The opposition and ridicule with which Booth's work was for many years received gave way, towards the end of the 19th century, to very widespread sympathy as his genius and its results were more fully realized. The active encouragement of King Edward VII., at whose instance in 1902 he was invited officially to be present at the coronation ceremony, marked the completeness of the change; and when, in 19o5, General Booth went through Eng land, he was received in state by the mayors and corporations of many towns. In the United States also and elsewhere, his work was cordially encouraged by the authorities. The fiery old man had become a great figure in English life. He found it hard to witness his wife's sufferings, and he was saddened by the differ ent views of theology taken by some of his children, and by the loss of his eyesight. His fame lives as the man who believed that the outcast may be restored to society if he can be made to feel that a decent member of that society cares whether he rises or not. The real strength of the man lay in his intense religious conviction and his wide humanity.