Elijah looked nervous, an expression William had never seen on his face before. “I…I…didn’t put it up, Reverend Booth. Really, I didn’t. It was just that I got carried away with calling myself a captain and all, and I decided you should be called the general.” He gave William a sheepish glance. “But then I thought better of it.”
“Why?” William asked, warming to the idea. “A Hallelujah Army should have a general, and after all, my title is already General Superintendent of the East London Christian Mission. Go right ahead and put the poster up if you think it will draw a crowd. I would be honored to lead the troops right into the devil’s encampment! And while you are at it, send a copy of the poster to George Railton. I think he would enjoy the idea of me being a general. Let me see; that would make him my lieutenant.”
“Are you sure?” Elijah asked.
“Positive!” William replied. “Drawing a crowd, that’s the first thing. If calling me General Booth helps you do that, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s my name.”
And so it was. Word quickly spread that William Booth had taken on the mantle of general, and many other mission workers followed Elijah Cadman in billing themselves as captains in the fight for God. This change in title was just the first of many important changes that were to take place over the next eighteen months.
Around 7 A.M. one morning in May 1878, William was holding a meeting in his bedroom. He had the flu, and he did not feel well enough to go downstairs. However, he needed to go over the proofs of the mission’s annual report and had invited George Railton and Bramwell to his bedroom to do so.
From his bed William read the front page of the document aloud over George’s shoulder. “The Christian mission, under the superintendence of the Rev. William Booth, is a volunteer army.”
“Volunteer!” Bramwell exclaimed. “I am not a volunteer. I am a regular or nothing!”
William lay silently in his bed. If volunteer was not the right word, what was? A thought flashed through his mind, and he plucked the pen from George’s hand and crossed out the word volunteer. Then he wrote in big, bold letters: “SALVATION.”
“We shall be known as the Salvation Army,” he said.
At his word Bramwell and George leaped from their chairs and yelled in unison, “Thank God for that.”
Chapter 10
“Unbecoming and Extreme”
The Salvation Army was born in May 1878. News of its founding fired the imagination of many of the old East London Christian Mission workers, and soon military words and phrases were popping up everywhere. Captain Cadman had often called his Bible a “sword,” and now many others followed his example. Large mission houses were referred to as “citadels” and smaller ones as “forts.” Groups of workers called themselves “troops,” who together made up a “corps.” Everyone wanted a rank: Part-time workers over fifteen years of age became soldiers, and full-time workers became officers. When they preached, the captains opened with shouts of “Fire a volley,” which meant for the audience to shout out a stirring hallelujah, and when it was time to pray, everyone was to do “knee-drill.” Bible reading became “taking rations.” The Christian Mission Magazine was renamed The War Cry, and a second magazine was published for children and called Little Soldiers.
Any army had to have uniforms, and soon the men were wearing plain blue serge suits with a brass letter ‘S’ on the collar and a bold red shirt underneath. The women wore a discreet navy skirt and jacket with a black straw bonnet. Catherine Booth designed the bonnet with a tilted brim to deflect flying missiles. This quickly became known as the Hallelujah Bonnet. William Booth took to carrying an umbrella and wearing a black top hat and a long frock coat that made him look like a veteran of the American Civil War.
William came up with the pattern for the Salvation Army flag. It had a red background, representing the blood of Jesus, a blue border, representing the holiness of God, and a yellow sun that represented the fire of the Holy Spirit. The new motto, “Blood and Fire,” was emblazoned across it. The flag was often carried into “battle” while the troops sang, “Onward, Christian soldiers, / Marching as to war, / With the cross of Jesus / Going on before: / Christ the royal Master / Leads against the foe; / Forward into battle, / See, His banners go!”
All of these changes captured the imagination of the poor, who flocked as never before to hear the gospel preached. One year after the Salvation Army was born, the number of army units had risen from twenty-nine to eighty-one. There were now 127 officers, where there had been only thirty-one full-time workers in the old East London Christian Mission. Best of all, as far as William was concerned, these new officers were “homegrown.” Over one hundred of them had been converted through the work of the mission and were now eager to serve others. And there was plenty of work for them all to do, as an estimated twenty-seven thousand soldiers and seekers came to Sunday night meetings in citadels and forts around the United Kingdom.
William’s children were a part of the Salvation Army from the very first day. Thirteen-year-old Eva even recruited Little Jeannie, their pet monkey. She made her a tiny army uniform, complete with insignia. When Catherine saw it, she quietly took the uniform off Little Jeannie and looked sternly at her daughter.
“Why can’t she wear it?” Eva asked sullenly.
“Because she doesn’t live the life!” Catherine replied. “A man may be changed, but once a monkey, always a monkey.”
William laughed heartily when he heard of this escapade. There was no doubt his family revolved around this new army. In fact, his children sold more copies of The War Cry than anyone else. They developed a system that always “pressed the advantage,” as William’s father used to say. Before they took to the streets, the children would read the current issue through carefully. They then made a list of all the counties and towns mentioned in its articles and committed the list to memory before heading to Liverpool Street Station. When a train came in, they took note of where it was from and yelled out some piece of news reported in The War Cry that had occurred there. Inevitably a traveler’s interest would be piqued by news of the place the traveler had just come from, and wanting to know more, the traveler bought the paper.
As the converts poured into the Salvation Army, many of them expressed their new faith in strange and wonderful ways. A converted drunk who did a show that involved Houdini-like escapes now donned the army uniform and drew a crowd by combining his contortionist talents with a sermon entitled “Trap Doors to Hell.” Captain Lawley got so worked up during one of his sermons that he dived off the platform and landed belly-first on the floor, where he did the breaststroke and continued preaching on the boundless sea of God’s love. Another soldier, who had been in the Royal Navy, wore an outfit that reflected both his past and his present life. The outfit was sewed down the middle, with the left side of his body dressed as a sailor and the right side in the Salvation Army uniform. Anyone who asked about his peculiar attire got a minisermon on the spot.
Soldiers and captains competed for the best way to draw a crowd. Bramwell Booth sometimes climbed into a coffin and was carried along the streets to St. Paul’s by six men. Once they reached the steps of the great cathedral, he popped out of the coffin and preached on the text “O death, where is thy sting?” Another man, who lacked any kind of acting talent, decided to lie silently in the snow near a local marketplace. After doing this for five evenings, many people came to look at him. This provided him with the crowd he needed to preach to about how God could thaw the coldest heart.
William did not worry about what the “respectable” newspapers were calling “unbecoming and extreme” behavior. He was happy to see almost any method used to attract the attention of potential converts. Surprisingly, about the only attention-getting device he did not consider proper was music. William believed that using loud instruments, particularly when the gospel was about to be preached, undermined the sacred atmosphere. Somehow he failed to see that music was not nearly as distracting as many of the other antics that went on!
However, in July 1879 William traveled to Salisbury to speak in a series of open-air rallies. There he was introduced to a local builder named Will Fry. Will had three sons, Fred, Ernest, and Bert, who along with their father had volunteered to act as bodyguards for Salvation Army officers during the meetings, since hooligans had threatened to disrupt them. The Frys were all talented musicians, and since they did not know that William objected to musical accompaniment, they brought their brass instruments along to the rallies to help boost the singing.
William was astonished at how many people the brass quartet attracted, and he knew it was time to rethink his ideas on music. He hired the Frys to play each night, and William had some of the best ever results from his preaching during this time. That settled it in his mind. He gave the brass band concept official approval, and soon corps all over England were tuning up their instruments.
To the musically trained ear much of what the early Salvation Army produced sounded awful. Old beat-up instruments were dragged out of attics or bought from pawnshops. Many of these instruments were held together with wire or had leaks plugged with soap. However, they all had one thing in common—they all made noise. Many soldiers who could not read words learned to read musical notes. To give them clues as to the name of the tune, the sheets of music had pictures instead of titles at the top of them. A person wanting to play “Out on the Ocean Sailing” merely had to look for the sheet with the boat on it.
It seemed that everyone wanted to play something—even those with no obvious talent. Tambourines with ribbons flailing became an early favorite, as did bells borrowed from dustmen. Within a year there were four hundred Salvation Army bands crashing and blowing their way along the streets of England’s industrial cities.
Along with the band music came a flurry of new songs. Most of them were adaptations of popular pub songs, and William once again was not sure of this trend. But when he heard George “Sailor” Fielder sing “Bless His Name, He Sets Me Free” at a theatre in Worchester, William found himself humming along to the catchy tune. When the song was finished, he turned to the officer beside him and said, “What a rousing song that is. What is the tune?”
“Oh,” the officer replied, “that’s ‘Champagne Charlie Is My Name.’”
William thought for a minute or two and then turned to Bramwell. “That settles it. Why should the devil have all the best tunes?”
An army needed training barracks, and these came in the form of the Booths’ home in Hackney. The family moved into a sixteen-room house on the edge of Clapton Common in East London, and their Gore Street home became a place to train “cadets.” Thirty young women were taken in to be trained under Emma Booth, who was herself only twenty years old. Soon another house was rented in Hackney, and a men’s training barracks was set up under the command of Captain Ballington Booth.
Both the men’s and the women’s courses lasted for seven weeks, and the training was one hundred percent practical. Cadets rose at dawn to a meager breakfast of bread and weak tea, and then they scrubbed the barracks and polished their boots. By eight o’clock they were visiting the slums, where they picked lice out of children’s hair, scrubbed filthy rooms clean, and hand-fed senile men. As they worked, they sang or shared the gospel message.
One by one, each of the younger Booth children went through the cadet training course, and the creativity with which they shared the gospel inspired many others. Of course, they had lived with the general all their lives and watched his many innovations. But one day Eva managed to confound even her father.
