William looked from one face to the next, hoping to see some glimmer of encouragement. There was none. He took a deep breath and then spoke. “You have made your wishes very plain. I am sorry that you are troubled by new converts. However, I doubt you will see them again anyway. It was very difficult to convince them that they would be welcome in a proper church, and I see they were right and I was wrong. Good day to you, sirs.”
With that William stood up and walked out. He kept walking for most of the afternoon, in fact. At first he was angry with what the deacons and the Reverend Dunn had said to him, but then he began to understand the enormity of what he had asked them all to do. Because he worked in a pawnshop, William was used to seeing the outcasts of society—women carrying smelly children on their hips, men with whiskey heavy on their breath, barely able to prop themselves up at the counter, and young boys who needed to be watched every moment to prevent them from stealing items from the shop. These were William’s people, but he had to admit they were not everyone else’s people. Somehow he would have to find a way to break down the barriers that existed between them and the rest of society. Today had been his first attempt, and although it had not gone well, he promised himself he would not give up. Somehow there had to be a way not only to reach the poorest of the poor but also to help them out of their poverty.
Chapter 4
A Full-Time Preacher
“William, come here. I need to speak to you,” Francis Eames said as he closed the ledger at the end of the day.
“Yes, sir,” William replied. “What is it?”
Mr. Eames cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “I am sure you are aware that your apprenticeship will be up at the end of the month. I have decided not to keep you on as a journeyman. I’m sorry, but I am going to have to dismiss you and take on a new apprentice. It’s much cheaper, and unpleasant decisions have to be made in these trying times. With your willingness to work hard and the way you get along with customers, I’m sure you will be able to find another job soon.”
“Yes, sir,” William said, wishing he could have thought of something more to add. But what could he say? He was about to lose his meager income and the roof over his head. And despite Francis Eames’s optimism, he knew that getting another job would be difficult. Every day when he opened up the pawnshop there were big, strong men waiting outside to pawn the tools of their trade to get enough money for a loaf or two of bread. No employer that William knew was hiring men. Only women and children were being hired to work in the textile mills throughout the area.
A week later William packed his belongings and moved in with his mother and two younger sisters. There was a spare bed in one of the rooms over the shop because his older sister Ann had just married a hatter named Francis Brown and the newlyweds had moved to London in search of work.
Life for William soon fell into a frustrating routine. He was out of the house by eight o’clock in the morning, walking the grimy streets lined with red brick row houses. He stopped at every shop and business he came across asking if they would hire him, but nobody did. At lunchtime he returned home and helped his mother with some of the chores around her tiny shop. After that he headed out again for another round of fruitless job hunting. All day long William looked forward to his evening, when he would preach at a cottage meeting or in the streets. This was the work he really wanted to do, but no one he knew was willing to pay him to do it. And the destitute of the city to whom he preached certainly did not have any spare cash to give him. Sundays William spent in church, preaching on the streets and studying the books and lecture notes of the great American preacher Charles Finney.
This routine continued on month after month. William tried not to eat too much of his mother’s food, but even so he knew he was a drain on her resources and somehow, somewhere he needed to find a job.
After a year of fruitless searching, William had to admit that it was useless waiting for a job opening in Nottingham. He would have to move elsewhere. The obvious choice was London, since he could stay with his sister Ann. In February 1849, just before his twentieth birthday, William Booth boarded a train for Coventry with a connection on to London. It was hard saying good-bye to his mother, but William comforted himself with the knowledge that he would soon be able to send money back home to help support her and his two sisters.
William had never been on a train before, and he had never been more than a few miles from Nottingham. As the train journeyed south at thirty miles an hour, William watched as grimy industrial towns and lush green pastures rolled by. He thought about what he wanted to do in London. He knew two things: He needed to earn enough money to help his mother, and he did not want to work again as a pawnbroker. To him pawnbroking was soul-destroying work. Week after week he saw the same wretched people coming to pawn their clothes or tools on Wednesday to buy food or beer and then redeeming the items on Saturday, only to return with them again the following Wednesday. It was a horrible cycle to be a part of, and William was determined to find another way to earn his keep.
Finally the train pulled into London. William could scarcely believe the number of people jammed into the city. People were everywhere. Along with horses and carriages, they clogged the streets. Children in torn, dirty clothes begged for money from passersby while men and women alike crowded into the pubs that seemed to be located at every street corner.
Ann and Francis Brown lived only a couple of miles from the train station. After asking for directions, William set off to find their home. He was stunned when his sister opened the door and let him in.
“Why, William!” Ann exclaimed as she staggered toward him and flung her arms around his neck.
William sniffed the air. He knew the smell—alcohol. His sister was drunk!
“The house is a bit of a mess,” Ann said as she scooped a half-empty bottle of liquor off the side table and stuffed it under a chair. “But sit down. I don’t have any food at the moment, but it’s my hope that Francis has sold a hat or two so that he can bring home bread and some suet for dinner.”
As William sat listening to his sister ramble on, he could hardly believe it. She and Francis were living in a hovel with no food, and she was drunk before dinner. He had no idea what he was going to tell his mother in his first letter home.
It didn’t take long for William to realize that both Francis and Ann spent most of their spare time drinking. They explained it away as a result of Francis’s business not going well and Ann’s being unable to find a job. William tried to help them understand that this was no way to live, but Francis grew increasingly angry at William’s comments. Soon Ann told William that he would have to find somewhere else to live. But where could he go? He had not yet found a job.
Eventually William came to the unwelcome conclusion that he would have to go back to being a pawnbroker. It was the only job he was qualified for, and it always came with a room above the shop.
With a sad heart William said good-bye to his sister and moved into Filmer Pawnbroker’s Shop in the suburb of Kennington, under the familiar symbol of three brass balls. The shop and his room were adequate enough. On the other side of the street from the store was a common, where rich young women paraded on Saturday afternoon while the young men played cricket.
Every night after work William would take his Bible and preach on the common or in the nearby streets. And just as in Nottingham, his Sundays were given over to attending church and running prayer meetings in the poorest areas of the city. Unlike his previous employer, however, Mr. Filmer had no tolerance for William’s religious activities. He locked the doors at precisely 10 P.M. each evening, and if William was not inside by then, he had to sleep the night on the doorstep.
Soon William’s enthusiasm for preaching was noticed by leaders in the Methodist church, and he was made an official lay preacher. This meant that he was now a recognized preacher within the church, though he received no pay for what he did. But the situation suited William. It was a step in a larger plan that was forming in his head.
After he had been in London for a year, William applied to become a full-time preacher. At the interview he confessed he was not interested in learning Latin grammar or Greek syntax. Instead he made an impassioned plea to be able to work among the very poorest people in London—the people who had never set foot in a church but who needed to hear that there was a way out of their grim daily existence.
It was a bitter day for William when he learned that the Methodist board had rejected his application on the grounds that he did not show enough interest in the intellectual aspects of Christianity. He poured out his frustration in a letter to a friend in Nottingham. He ended with the question, “How can anybody with spiritual eyesight talk of having no call when there are still multitudes around them who have never heard a word about God, and never intend to, who can never hear without the sort of preacher who can force himself upon them?”
William searched for other ways to become a full-time preacher. He considered applying to be a chaplain on a convict ship bound for Botany Bay in Australia, but he could not bear to desert his mother and younger sisters. He decided to keep working at the pawnshop and pray that God would open a way for him to give his full energies to reaching the lost with the gospel.
One Sunday in late March 1852, William preached at the Walworth Road Chapel. This was a new church that had sprung up because of a split between two groups within the Methodist church. William had never preached at Walworth Road Chapel before, but it turned out to be an event that would set him on a different path. In the congregation that day was a man named Edward Rabbits. Mr. Rabbits was legendary both inside and outside of Christian circles because he was a self-made man. Years before he had started a bootmaking enterprise with two and a half shillings of borrowed money. By the time he sat listening to William speak, he was a millionaire who owned a chain of shoe and bootmaking factories around London.
When William had finished his sermon, Edward Rabbits approached him. “Well done, lad!” he said enthusiastically. “Come to tea at my house today. There are certain matters I would like to discuss with you.”
William walked slowly up Walworth Road to Mr. Rabbits’s house. Part of him wished he had refused the invitation. He hated trying to make polite small talk with rich people. However, William soon found this was not what Edward Rabbits had in mind. No sooner had William removed his hat and coat than his host got straight to the point. “I have heard a lot about you, young man, and all of it is good. Tell me, how old are you?”
“Twenty-two years old,” William replied, watching Mr. Rabbits’s eyebrows rise.
“Well, you are young, younger than I thought; but still, you must leave the pawnbroking business and devote yourself wholly to preaching the gospel. You have a unique gift, and that gift should not be squandered on other things. Don’t you agree?”
William was taken aback. Of course he agreed! But it wasn’t as simple as that. “But,” he stammered, “there is no way for me to do that. I have applied to the Methodists and been rejected. Nobody wants me.”
“Nonsense!” bellowed Edward Rabbits. “You’ll never get anywhere with an attitude like that. A man like you should be in full-time work.”
William shook his head. “I cannot live on air. I have to work for my keep and to help support my widowed mother.”
“How much do you need to live on?” Mr. Rabbits asked.
William thought for a moment. There was board, which cost at least five shillings a week, add another two shillings for food, and five more for transport and helping his mother out. “Twelve shillings,” he announced. “I think I could get by on twelve shillings a week.”
