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The Booths
Commissioner Wesley Harris
by Commissioner Wesley Harris
In a modest
house in
Nottingham,
England,
William Booth was born in 1829.
He was not the first to bear the name for his father,
Samuel Booth, married twice and by his first wife had a son
called William who died at 24.
Then the same name was given to our William, the third
of five children by second wife, the former Mary Moss.
The family was
not wealthy despite some pretensions.
Samuel Booth was variously described as a nailer (that
is, a maker of nails) an architect and a builder.
But he may have been largely illiterate and almost
certainly without professional qualifications.
Our founder thought his father had come down in the
world economically and lost his wealth,
but riches could have been more in his imagination than
in any bank. His son thought that his father was a ‘grab and
get’ merchant but when he died his total assets were worth
less than a hundred pounds.
It has been
suggested that the founder’s mother may have been of Jewish
extraction but apart from her long nose, which her son
inherited, and her Jewish maiden name there is no further
evidence of this.From age six to 13 William attended a
‘school’ run by a Methodist minister.
Then, with Samuel Booth’s death the family’s financial
problems cut short his formal education and left him with an
academic lack of which he became very conscious.
However, he learnt much in the ‘university of
experience’ when apprenticed to a pawn broker and had contact
with many of the poorest of the poor.
At 15 William
Booth knelt in the schoolroom of the
Broad
Street
Methodist
Church
in
Nottingham
and was truly converted.
Many years later, when asked the secret of his success
he replied, “I decided as a boy of 15 that God should have all
there was of William Booth”
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The
remarkable woman who became William Booth’s wife and
co-founder of the Army was Catherine Mumford.
She was born at Ashbourne in Derbyshire later moving
with her family to
Boston
in
Lincolnshire
and then to
South London.
Born in the same year as William she too was one of
five children three of whom died in infancy as was not
uncommon at the time.
Her earliest recollection was of being taken to see her
dead brother. Another brother eventually moved to
America
and so Catherine grew up like an only child and very much
under the influence of her mother.
Mrs Sarah
Mumford was a puritanical and probably somewhat neurotic
woman. She was
Catherine’s mentor in everything and especially in religious
matters. But despite the extreme narrowness of her views
Catherine loved her dearly and, in fact, replicated many of
her mother’s methods in bringing up her own children.
Catherine’s
father, John Mumford, was a coach builder by trade and had a
somewhat broader view of life.
He and Catherine had some spirited debates on political
and other matters.
At one stage he was a speaker at temperance meetings
but later took to drink much to the sorrow of his wife and
daughter.
Catherine was a great
lover of animals and a rift came between father and daughter
over a pet dog to which Catherine was much attached.
The dog was waiting outside a door when Catherine on
the inside struck her foot against something.
She cried out in pain whereupon the dog rushed to its
mistress crashing through a glass window in the process.
For this John Mumford had the dog
shot and almost broke his daughter’s heart. As a child
Catherine was precocious.
She could read at three and had read the Bible through
eight times before she
was 12. Although
for a time Catherine attended a school directed by a friend of
her mother, much of her education took place at home.
A sickly child with a vivid imagination, she believed
that God might throw her into hell if she played with her
dolls on a Sunday.
She was very compassionate particularly toward the poor
and needy.
At 16 and after
a time of torment about her state of soul she received
assurance of salvation through the lines of a hymn by Charles
Wesley:
My God I am
Thine, what a comfort divine!
What a
blessing to know that Jesus is mine!
Following his
apprenticeship as a pawnbroker William Booth was unemployed
for a year. He would have understood the politics of
indignation and desires to improve the material conditions of
the poor. He kept
busy with preaching and other church activities but
desperately needed emplopyment in order to support his widowed
mother and his two sisters
Eventually he
went to
London
for work and managed to get employment in pawn
broking, but his heart was not in it.
Evangelism drew him.
He considered travelling to
Australia
as a chaplain on a convict ship and it is interesting to
wonder how his life might have turned out had he done that.
Providentially, his preaching attracted the attention
of a wealthy boot manufacturer, Edward Harris Rabbits, who
suggested that he should give himself full-time to evangelism
and offered to fund him at a pound a week for three months.
Even more importantly, he introduced William
to Catherine.
William was
invited to a meeting organized by the Methodist Reformers.
Catherine was there too but didn’t feel well enough to
stay to the end.
William was asked to take her home in a cab which apparently
did wonders for her health!
Animated conversation in the cab continued until they
got to the Mumford home.
Thereafter they met nearly every day until after a few
weeks they knelt together in prayer and pledged themselves to
each other and to God.
Even before she
met William Catherine had written down her requirements
concerning the man she would marry.
Firstly, his religious views had to coincide with her
own. Secondly, he
had to be a man of sense for she wouldn’t respect a fool or
one much weaker mentally than herself.
Thirdly, she was emphatic about his being accepting of
the position of women as God intended it to be. Fourthly, he
had to be a total abstainer.
At the time William was inclined to take a port or a
brandy but Catherine quickly put him right on that point!
The love
letters exchanged during their courtship were unique. There
was an unusual mixture of passionate endearments, practical
advice and theological exchange.
Catherine was certainly intent on helping William
realize his full potential.
She wrote, “God is glorified in the full consecration
of what we have…All we have is all he wants…Be not anxious
that you have not as much talent as this man or that but only
to have what you have fully sanctified”.
Wise words!
Catherine was a
natural student but William was not. He was undecided as to
what should be his denominational allegiance but eventually he
undertook studies under Dr.William Cooke and entered the
ministry of the
Methodist
New
Connection
Church
engaging in notably successful circuit ministry and in the
conducting of very successful evangelistic campaigns.
In 1855 William
and Catherine were married in the Congregational Stockwell New
Chapel where apart from the officiating minister only two
others were present as witnesses – William’s sister Emma and
Catherine’s father. The event was a hinge on which swung a
huge door of complementary ministry.
In 1861 the
Conference of the New Connection denomination, understandably
perhaps,decided that it could not go along with William’s
desire to engage in revival campaigns rather than being
confined to a particular district.
From the gallery Catherine called ‘Never!’
A resignation was submitted and the young couple s
stepped on an unknown way.
Most church
pulpits were closed to them but regardless they conducted
campaigns in
Cornwall,
Wales
and elsewhere and were a very effective ‘duo’.
Catherine came out as a preacher in her own right –
something very unusual for a woman at the time,
She was able to draw great crowds and later there were
business men who would have erected a church building
comparable to the huge Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in
London
if she would become the minister.
She refused the
offer feeling that she should support her husband in ministry
and for thirty years, she not only defied convention by
preaching but bore eight children and adopted a ninth. She
published many books and pamphlets and helped in the formation
of the Christian Mission and later The Salvation Army. Unlike
all her children she never had a military style rank.
She was simply known as the Army mother.
In the village
of Ninfield in Sussex, England I photographed outside a
Methodist Church where once stood a Christian Mission Station
a plaque dated 1871.
It declared that the stone was laid by Mrs Booth
assisted by the Rev.William Booth co-founders of The Christian
Mission. So her
role as a founder is set in stone!
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