William Booth

Sitter in 39 portraits
Booth was apprenticed at thirteen to a Nottingham pawnbroker. Having converted to Methodism, he joined a group of revivalists who conducted religious services in the streets of the city. In 1849 he moved to London. He devoted his leisure to religion and became a lay preacher. Here, he met and married the like-minded Catherine Mumford. In 1865 he and his wife started the Christian Revival Society, later the Christian Mission, in the East End of London. They held evening and Sunday meetings to offer repentance, salvation and Christian ethics to the poorest and most needy. In 1878 the organisation was reorganised as the Salvation Army, with military titles and uniforms and its own flag and music. Central to the Salvation Army’s approach was the belief that evangelical work among the poor must be accompanied by well-organised social relief work. In 1890, Booth published In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890), which set out a number of these social schemes.