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No radio, no postage stamps, not even a railway engine, when William Booth was born on April 10, 1829, in a small house in Nottingham, England!
As a young man he worked in a pawnbroker's shop. There people poorer even than himself left their best clothes on Monday morning in exchange for a few shillings, hoping to be able to buy them back again before Sunday. William learned to love these people.
He was converted at fourteen in the Wesley Chapel, Nottingham, [at the age of fifteen he had resolved: 'God shall have all there is of William Booth'] and soon began taking ragged boys with him to the services. Many of the lads learned to pray for themselves.
After he had become a Methodist minister and married Catherine Mumford, one night he saw a group of men preaching outside 'the Blind Beggar' public house in London's East End. He joined them, and a few days later, on Sunday, July 2, 1865, in a tent not far away on a disused Quaker burial ground in Whitechapel, he conducted what proved to be the first meeting of the many that led to the birth of the Salvation Army.
Converts were organised and gave their testimonies, and helped William Booth to reach multitudes who had no contact with the churches, for a that time only the rich, who could pay for their seat in church were able to attend. [Those of the lower class who did go, had to sit behind a tall barrier, so as not to be seen by the upper class]
After this beginning William Booth wrote books, travelled the world, housed homeless men and women, preached thousands of sermons and led crowds of people to God. When he died, at Hadley Woods, near London, on August 20, 1912, he left behind him nearly sixteen thousand officers of the Salvation Army to carry on the work he had established in many lands.
During the first four years if its history the Army had at least three different names. Then for nine years it was known as The Christian Mission.
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