Because they knew they could get away with it, many angry and restless young men began organizing themselves into groups whose stated aim was to destroy the Salvation Army. They called themselves a Skeleton Army, after the skull-and-crossbones flag they adopted as their banner. Some branches of the Skeleton Army even held special sessions to teach their members how to more accurately hurl projectiles at Salvation Army soldiers as they gathered in the street. And they didn’t confine their harassment to Salvation Army groups they encountered in the streets. They attacked buildings the Salvation Army owned or used or the homes of anyone who sympathized with the organization, smashing windows and hurling dead cats and rats, bricks, stones, vegetables, and sticks inside. On one occasion at Weston-super-Mare, a group of Skeleton Army men smashed the windows of the Salvation Army citadel during a service and let a flock of pigeons inside. The Skeleton Army had placed red pepper under the pigeons’ wings so that, as the frightened birds fluttered around, the pepper rained down on those inside the hall. Gasping for air, their noses and eyes running, those inside ran out, right into the arms of the waiting Skeleton Army, who savagely beat them.
To make matters worse, the Skeleton Army was often financially supported in its efforts by breweries and pub owners, and magistrates outraged by the Salvation Army’s unorthodox approach to proclaiming the gospel were also sympathetic to its cause.
When scuffles broke out, it was always the Salvation Army officers who were arrested for disorderly conduct. Things continued to deteriorate until, in 1882, six hundred sixty-nine Salvation Army soldiers were badly hurt in assaults, many of them while they were preaching in their own halls and citadels, and sixty buildings were torn apart. All of this happened under the disinterested gaze of the British police, who in some instances joined in to help the Skeleton Army.
In the midst of this, William received terrible news. One of his first converts from the East End of London, Susannah Beaty, had been killed. She was a captain in the city of Hastings, and during a procession she had been pelted with rotten fish and rocks. One of the rocks knocked her off her feet, and as she lay in the street, a thug kicked her hard in the stomach. She died from internal injuries.
William needed all the help he could get in fighting this threat to the existence of the Salvation Army. He wrote to George Railton to ask him to return from the United States and help at headquarters in London. He also wrote many letters to members of Parliament and other government leaders, urging them to set aside the peace-at-any-price policy. Next he called for the police to protect all citizens who were acting in a legal manner, especially since the death of Susannah Beaty only seemed to embolden the Skeleton Army in their attacks.
Finally the tide of apathy about protecting members of the Salvation Army turned in Worthing, Sussex, where Ada Smith, a petite Salvation Army captain, faced vicious opposition. Undeterred, Ada encouraged her corps of twenty men and women to stand firm in the face of the onslaught of a Skeleton Army of over four thousand thugs. To make matters worse, the local newspaper had inflamed public opinion by calling Ada Smith and her soldiers “excitable young men and hysterical young women who mistake a quasi-religious revelry for godliness.” As well, Worthing’s police surgeon had offered a twenty-pound reward to the first person to throw one of the Hallelujah Lassies into the sea. When William heard of the persecution the Worthing corps was enduring, he wrote to the British Home Office asking that the Home Secretary insist the police protect them from the hooligans. The Home Secretary replied that he did not have the necessary power over local governments to order the police to do so.
Eventually four thousand angry men descended on the small band of Salvation Army soldiers, pelting them with rocks and tar. When a few police officers arrived at the scene, the leader of the Skeleton Army assaulted one of the officers. The man was immediately arrested. It was one thing to attack a nineteen-year-old Salvation Army girl, but quite another to assault a policeman. As the leader was dragged away, the Skeleton Army turned its fury on the police force, throwing rocks into the police station and taunting the officers to come out. Finally the Worthing police saw the truth of the matter. It was impossible to ignore the rights of one group of people and allow thugs to roam the streets without putting everyone’s liberty at risk. They began a crackdown on the Skeleton Army, and soon other police forces followed their example, not wanting four thousand rioting thugs in their districts.
In the midst of these trials, the Salvation Army kept growing, until it needed a larger home. In 1882 it entered negotiations to buy the old London Orphan Asylum. The original cost of the building had been sixty thousand pounds, but William was delighted when the price was reduced to fifteen thousand pounds so that the Army could purchase it. He renamed the building Clapton Congress Hall, and it became the National Barracks or Training Garrison.
During this time the Booth children grew more useful in their service to the Salvation Army and its general. Twenty-three-year-old Kate was sent to Paris to “open fire” there. This was a difficult task, especially since Paris was a hotbed of communism and the main religion was not Protestantism but Catholicism. But William was convinced that his fiery, auburn-haired daughter was the right person to send to establish the Salvation Army’s beachhead in Europe. When people came to him asking if he thought it was wise to send a single woman into such a rough situation, he always offered the same reply, “Kate knows the Lord.” He knew that out of all his children, Kate was the one most like him in determination and courage.
On October 12, 1882, Bramwell Booth married Captain Florence Soper before a crowd of six thousand members of the Salvation Army. William led the marriage service and listened to the couple’s promise, which was made to the Salvation Army. It came straight from the “Articles of Marriage,” which he had recently drawn up for his troops. The promise stated, “We promise never to allow our marriage to lessen in any way our devotion to God and the Army and to regard and arrange our home as a Salvation Army officer’s home.”
Thinking of the Salvation Army first, William had insisted that the wedding guests pay a one-shilling admission fee, the money going toward the purchase of a pub called the Eagle Tavern. This pub was so notorious that a children’s rhyme had been made up about it:
Up and down the city road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.
The word pop was slang for pawning something, and weasel was slang for a watch. So the rhyme was really a reminder of how many times men and women pawned their earthly goods to drink at the Eagle Tavern.
At the end of 1882, William surveyed the Salvation Army reports. There were now 440 Salvation Army corps worldwide, with 1,019 officers. Also, ten thousand copies of The War Cry were printed and distributed each month. More astonishing was the fact that the Salvation Army now “occupied” five continents. An Australian corps was established in much the same way the United States corps had been established. Harry Saunders, a butcher from Bradford, had immigrated to Adelaide and joined with a few others, including John Gore, “the happy milkman,” to set up a corps. The work grew rapidly, and soon they were writing to William to introduce themselves and ask for reinforcements.
A colonial judge named Fredrick Tucker had begun the work of the Salvation Army in India. He was an Indian language scholar, and while serving in Amritsar, India, he had read a copy of The War Cry and decided to join the organization. He and his wife traveled to London to meet William, and then in 1882 they, along with several other Army officers, “opened fire” in India.
With so much growth, the money to pay officers their meager salaries and fund the work always seemed to be lagging. One day, in a conversation with Major John Carlton, a chance remark gave William an idea about raising more money for the work of the Salvation Army.
“If I go without my pudding every day for a year,” John said, “I calculate I will save fifty shillings. And I will remit that money to the army.”
William’s face lit up. “Now there’s an idea,” he said. “It might be a bit much to ask our soldiers to go without pudding for a whole year, but I can see no reason why we shouldn’t ask them to unite in going without something every day for a week and give the money they save to the work of the Salvation Army.”
And so Self-Denial Week was born. Members of the Salvation Army in Great Britain were asked to forego something for a week and give the money they saved to the army. Even William, who by now existed on a diet of soup, cheese, baked apples, and rice pudding, made his own diet still more scant. Penny by penny money rolled in, until at the end of the week, 4,820 pounds had been raised.
Many opponents of the Salvation Army criticized William for asking his workers to deny themselves to save some portion of their meager income to give back to the army. They predicted it was an act of desperation and that the Salvation Army would soon be out of business. These critics were soon proved wrong as the Salvation Army continued to grow and Self-Denial Week went on to become the army’s major fundraising drive each year.
On a crisp spring morning in May 1885, William walked into the Salvation Army headquarters on Queen Victoria Street. He was drinking his first cup of tea for the day when Bramwell burst into his office. “General, we have to do something. The most extraordinary thing happened this morning, and I don’t think we should let it rest. It’s time for war!”
“Wait a minute!” William replied. “Slow down and start at the beginning.”
Bramwell paced as he spoke. “A seventeen-year-old girl was waiting on the doorstep this morning. She said her name was Annie Swan, and she came from Shoreham, Sussex.” He sat down, then promptly stood up again and kept pacing. “She told Major Fenny and then me that her parents had arranged for her to come to London to work as a parlor maid for a family. But when she went to the address, she was taken inside, given a red blouse and skirt to put on, and locked up. Can you believe that? What a dreadful trick! Thankfully she’d been to a Salvation Army meeting back in Sussex and still carried with her the songbook she had been given there. At two o’clock this morning she took the songbook and managed to escape. Using the address on the back, she found her way here and waited for the door to be opened.”
“What do you think, Bramwell? What should we do?” William asked.
Bramwell’s eyes were burning like firebrands. “General,” he said, “we have read the debates that have been going on in Parliament about situations like this, but nothing has happened. Someone was on our doorstep asking for help. Now it’s time to act! Besides, it’s outrageous that girls as young as thirteen can enter this horrible trade if they choose. Parliament must change the law to protect them!”
William stroked his beard. “If we are going to take on something as big as this, we are going to need some good people on our team. Call W. T. Stead. He’s the best news reporter in London, and better yet, he is a staunch supporter of our work. Get with him, and see what he suggests.”
A week later W. T. Stead, Bramwell and his wife, Florence, and William and Catherine were all sitting around a large table in the “war room.”
“And worse still, many of these girls are shipped overseas like cattle to work in foreign lands,” W. T. said.
“How can that be?” Catherine asked. “Surely someone would notice and say something.”
“Not the way they do it,” W. T. continued. “It’s appalling, but thousands of innocent girls, nearly all of them under sixteen, are kidnapped off the streets or sold by their parents or guardians. They are drugged and nailed into coffins that have air holes drilled in the bottom and are shipped to Brussels, Paris, and Antwerp.”
