William and Catherine Move to London’s East End
It was 1865. William and Catherine Booth had been preaching in a circus tent all over England and Wales for two years. After the birth of their sixth child, Marian, the Booth’s had accepted an invitation to speak in a 200 seat dilapidated tent in London’s East End.
Almost a million people lived within a 40 minute walk of the tent. The rows of houses were dirty and broken down. Often 40 or 50 people lived in each house. They had little or no running water and used the gutter as a toilet. Every fifth store on any street was a gin shop serving anyone who could pay. They had special steps at the bar for children. Any five year old could buy a penny glass of gin. It was not uncommon to see children drunk or having passed out.
The first night the tent half-filled but more importantly, seven people responded to the call for salvation. After the meeting William swept Catherine into a hug. “I have found my destiny!” he shouted. “I have found a place where there is so much human misery in such a small place that there is a lifetime’s work there for me. Why go farther afield for audiences when they lie at our doorstep? Now I see I was never meant to preach inside a church. Where’s the challenge in that? It’s only in keeping the congregation awake. But the people I preached to today were awake. True, they were fidgeting, heckling, spitting and arguing but they were awake!”
There was opposition to William’s preaching. The pub owners paid young boys to slash the tent and throw rotten fruit at him. The conversion of a brawny Irish boxer gave William a bodyguard who often took on whole gangs to protect him. In time the tent was irreparable and a local hall rented and the crowds increased even more. Those coming to Christ felt completely out of place in local churches and returned to the East London Christian Mission, the name William had chosen for the work.
The ministry continued to grow as workers fanned out into the worst parts of the city. They began soup kitchens to feed the hungry, night schools to teach the basics of reading and writing and reading rooms as an alternative to the pubs.
Persecution was about to increase dramatically but out of this growing furnace the Salvation Army was about to be birthed.