William was sitting in his office when his secretary announced there was a very distraught young flower seller who wanted to see him. “Show her in,” he replied, putting the lid on his fountain pen.
In walked a tall, bony girl wearing a tattered dress, worn boots, and darned stockings. Her hair hung over her face. She looked just like the other flower sellers who hawked their wares around the fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Come, come, young lady, don’t cry,” William said. ”Tell me what is troubling you, and I’ll do what I can to help.”
This led to more sobbing. Then after a moment or two the girl recovered enough to speak. “I…I was walking down a side street when I was robbed of my flower basket. It was full, I was just going off to work, and now I don’t know what to do.” She sobbed some more. “If I go home without any money, my stepfather will beat me.”
William felt sorry for the girl standing in front of him. He knew how difficult life was for girls like her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some coins. Just then he heard laughter. “Oh, Father, don’t you know me!” exclaimed the girl.
“Eva?” William said incredulously. Eva’s costume and makeup were so expertly done that he didn’t even recognize his own daughter! He laughed heartily. “You fooled me that time,” he said. “What are you doing dressed as a flower seller?”
“I am having the most wonderful time,” Eva told him. “I’ve been selling flowers and working among the girls who work near me. They accept me as one of their own, and they let me help them and give them advice, though sometimes I get advice too.”
“What sort of advice?” William asked.
“The other day I was walking down a back alley. I was limping, and an old man approached me. ‘You don’t look well,’ he said. ‘I think you should go and get help at the Salvation Army.’ So I replied, ‘Do you think they’d be able to do anything for the likes of me?’ And do you know what he said, Father? You would have loved to hear this. He said, ‘I was worse than you. I was a real bad egg. They took me by the hand and pulled me up. You go to them straightaway, lass. They’ll help you. Don’t be afraid.’”
William grinned from ear to ear. No wonder the Salvation Army was growing so fast; the poor were recommending it to one another.
Of course, Eva was not the only one doing such things. Many of the other cadets were employing similar antics as they sought to proclaim the gospel.
A good many pastors, though, thought the cadet training program could not be considered a proper Bible training school without an emphasis on subjects like Greek and Latin. When they were brave enough to say this to his face, William always replied, “We say, teach the builder how to build houses, the shoemaker how to make shoes, and the soul winner how to win souls. We try to train the mind so that it is a little ahead in intelligence and information of the people to whom they minister. This means we teach cadets who need it reading, writing, and arithmetic and the basics of history and geography.”
William was happy to see the work in the United Kingdom growing so rapidly, but he was reluctant to be involved in anything beyond her shores. During Christmastime 1879 he found an envelope from America in his daily mail dispatch from George Railton. As William opened the letter, a newspaper clipping from the Philadelphia News Report fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read it.
The clipping told how an Amos Shirley, along with his wife, Anne, and their daughter Eliza, had set up two Salvation Army corps in Philadelphia. William was stunned as he read. The article said the Shirleys had emigrated from Coventry, England, where they had been members of the local Salvation Army corps, to work in Philadelphia. On arriving in their adopted land, Anne and Eliza soon became known in local newspapers as the “Two Hallelujah Females.” But their efforts attracted a large enough crowd to justify renting an old chair factory in which to preach and then a second preaching hall off Market Street.
Once he had read the article, William unfolded the accompanying letter from Amos Shirley. In the letter Amos begged the general to visit Philadelphia and give the work in America his official Salvation Army blessing. At the bottom of the letter George had scribbled the comment, “We must go. This news has come upon us like a voice from Heaven and leaves us no choice.”
William was not so convinced. America was a long way away, and he had tried not to open any station he could not personally oversee. However, George was sure that this was the right move, and he first convinced Catherine, and then William, of it. Once William decided to act, he was not one to waste time. He rejected the idea of going to America himself, though, as there was simply too much going on in England. When George asked to be sent in his place, William agreed.
On January 12, 1880, eight officers ready to “open fire” in America paraded outside the Whitechapel headquarters. They consisted of George Railton, six Hallelujah Lassies, and Emma Westbrook, the Booths’ red-haired cook, who had become soundly converted and joined the army. Emma went along to act as a chaperone for the young women. Catherine Booth presented the group with two flags, one for the Philadelphia battalion and the other for a New York battalion that George intended to set up after he had visited the Shirleys.
As William said good-bye to the man who had become like a son to him, he advised George, “Never forget that it is not what you do yourself as much as what you get others to do that will be the making of the army.”
Soon afterward the determined group marched aboard the SS Australia, bound for New York City.
In many ways George Railton could not have left William at a worse time. The Salvation Army was growing exponentially and attracting a lot of attention both from people who admired their work and from those who hated it. William had even been told that Queen Victoria objected to the Salvation Army on the grounds that she should have the only army in England and that all generals should belong to the British Empire. And Lord Shaftsbury—along with many members of England’s upper class—was terrified of what the Salvation Army might do. He saw it as a militant force, dressed in uniform, using fighting language, and determined to tear apart the established order of English society. On Sundays these rich and powerful people went to church and sang hymns like the very popular “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” The first verse was very cheery:
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
The second verse to the hymn went like this:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
No one questioned the implications of the verse because it was the common belief that God put everyone in his or her social class, and as long as poor people—even starving people—accepted that, all would be right in God’s England. Many people in the upper classes of English society feared that the Salvation Army was about to wage a class war in much the same way that communists were inciting peasants to rise up in other parts of Europe. This led to a strange alliance among many influential church leaders, politicians, local hoodlums, and brewery owners, all of whom wanted the Salvation Army to march right out of sight.
From the time William had first started preaching among the poor, he had been pelted with rotten vegetables and clods of dirt. But now things had become much uglier. Bands and preachers were pelted with bricks, sticks, stones, and even dead cats.
Things came to a head one Monday in January 1882. The Salvation Army was holding its annual Council of War in Sheffield, and Elijah Cadman had organized a march through town to Albert Hall, where a holiness meeting was to be held. Leading the parade was a brass band mounted on a wagon pulled by four white horses. Behind the band, mounted on a white horse, was Lieutenant Emmerson Davidson, a champion Northumberland wrestler. Behind him came William and Catherine riding in an open carriage. And behind them were scores of Salvation Army members clad in neat uniforms and arranged by rank. They carried flags and banners proclaiming who they were and what their mission was.
As the procession made its way through the streets, a large crowd gathered to watch. Among the crowd were about a thousand local hoodlums who called themselves the Sheffield Blades. Suddenly one of the hoodlums hurled a short, thick stick. The stick hit Lieutenant Davidson low on the back of his head. The lieutenant slumped forward, fighting to stay conscious and keep from tumbling to the cobbled street. Two young men from the crowd rushed forward and tried to pull him down. One pulled from the left side and the other from the right. Their efforts seemed to counteract each other, and Emmerson Davidson stayed on his horse. Finally several Salvation Army officers rushed forward and chased the two hoodlums off. They then marched alongside Lieutenant Davidson, steadying him on his horse.
At the same time, clods of mud began to hail down on the band at the front of the procession. The band tried to keep playing, but as more and more mud descended on them from the crowd, followed by rotten vegetables, eggs, and finally dead cats, they faltered.
Seeing what was happening ahead of him, William stood up in his carriage to encourage his soldiers. The same missiles were aimed at him, but William stood his ground.
By now the local hoodlums had rushed forward and were attacking those behind William’s carriage, trying to pull down their flags and banners. Scuffles broke out as Salvation Army soldiers struggled to keep hold of their banners.
“Stay near the carriage! Stay near the carriage!” William exhorted.
As Salvation Army soldiers moved in tight around his carriage, the city police joined their ranks. Members of the band, their uniforms muddied, began to pass their now battered instruments back to William’s carriage for safekeeping as abusive men hurled themselves at the marchers.
Finally, as Albert Hall came into view, Elijah Cadman made his way from the rear of the procession to William’s carriage. His nose was broken and his face was bloodied, but his spirit remained unbowed by the riot going on around him. William asked Elijah if the officers were all right. In true Salvation Army style, Elijah replied, “The officers will be all right, dead or alive!”
Eventually all those in the procession made it to relative safety inside Albert Hall as the police barred the way of the hoodlums who were intent on pursuing members of the Salvation Army inside and causing more trouble. (Now unconscious, Lieutenant Davidson was slid off his horse and taken to a nearby hospital, where he stayed for several weeks, recovering from a severe concussion.)
Inside Albert Hall, William rose to address the gathered crowd. Instead of the sermon he had planned to preach, he spoke about the riot that had just taken place. “Here, publicly, I want to forgive those who so rudely attacked me outside. They are men in desperate need of the Savior’s love, and that is what I want to extend to them.”
William also exhorted his soldiers not to lose heart and instead to wear every wound as a badge of honor and courage. They would need his exhortation and encouragement in the months ahead because the riot in Sheffield would not be the last one in England to erupt around Salvation Army rallies.
Chapter 11
The Skeleton Army
Although the police in Sheffield had attempted to protect William during the riot there, no one was ever charged in the disturbance. As the months went on, it became obvious to William that the police department’s will to protect the Salvation Army was weakening. In fact, the British Home Secretary pushed for a peace-at-any-price policy. This meant that the results of any legal Salvation Army activity that hooligans turned into a riot were blamed on the Salvation Army. The Home Secretary’s logic went thus: If the Salvation Army had not been there in the first place, the peace would not have been disturbed.
