He died 28 November 1916 at his home, Gracedieu Manor, Whitwick, and was buried at Thringstone, Leicestershire. A tablet to his memory, the work of Sir Charles Nicholson, Bart., was unveiled in 1920 in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral by (Sir) Austen Chamberlain.
[Booth’s published works; Charles Booth, A Memoir, anon., 1918 (by his widow); private information.]
BOOTH, WILLIAM (1829-1912), popularly known as ‘General’ Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was born at Sneinton, a suburb of Nottingham, 10 April 1829. His father, a speculative builder, was of a dark and taciturn nature; his handsome and dignified mother (Mary Moss) was obviously of Jewish descent. The boy, who was the only son, never stayed long at any one school, and at thirteen years of age, on account of family poverty, was apprenticed to a pawnbroker in a squalid part of Nottingham. In after years he spoke of this experience with great bitterness; but it is clear that he proved himself an admirable assistant to his employer, who soon singled him out for special confidence. Before he had been a year in this shop, his father, whose business undertakings had gone from bad to worse, died rather suddenly, and Mrs. Booth and her daughters moved into a small fancy-shop in Goosegate, Nottingham, where their struggle with penury made a dark impression on William’s mind. He always spoke of his ‘blighted childhood’.
The boy drifted out of the Church of England and into Wesleyan circles, but was not at the outset affected by this change of religious atmosphere. His heart seems to have been stirred for the first time by the fervid oratory of Feargus O’Connor [q.v.], who visited Nottingham during the election of 1842. That election witnessed a collision between chartists and soldiers, and William ranged himself on the side of the chartists. He was deeply affected, he tells us, by the daily spectacle of ragged children crying for bread at that time in the streets of Nottingham. But methodism was creeping into his blood, and two years later, with his conscience tortured by a small piece of sharp-practice in which he had overreached some of his fellow assistants at the pawnbroker’s shop, he made public confession of his sin and underwent the experience of conversion (1844). Had it not been for this burden of conscience, and the lightening effect of confession, it is possible that he might have become an orator of radicalism; as it was, religion made him, from a political point of view, one of the hardest conservatives of his generation.
Two years after his conversion, on recovering from a fever which brought him to death’s door, Booth joined a group of youthful revivalists who conducted religious services in the streets of Nottingham. He was then seventeen years of age, distinguished by his height, his pale face, his black hair, and his passionate voice. In 1849 he went to London in search of better-paid work. He tried to escape from the business he hated, but no one wanted him, and he was at last obliged to go as assistant to a pawnbroker in Walworth. He took at this time several vows which witness to great earnestness of mind and a certain grimness of spiritual intention. His letters of this period are likewise full of fiery zeal. He almost starved himself in order to send money back to his mother and sisters. His scanty leisure was devoted to religion, and he began to attract the attention of some local methodists, one of whom, a rich boot-manufacturer, persuaded him to become a lay-preacher. It was this boot-manufacturer who introduced him into the family of a carriage-builder living in Clapham, where he discovered the woman who was so powerfully to influence his subsequent career.
Catherine Mumford [see Booth, Catherine], daughter of the carriage-builder, was an invalid who spent most of her life on a sofa. She had cultivated her mind to a degree unusual among people in suburban circles. She saw the greatness of Booth’s nature, but deplored his lack of culture. She criticized his sermons, recommended him books, and tried to steady the wild flame of his religious aspiration. But her religion at that time was stamped with the respectability of suburbanism. She was a true child of the dissenting chapel. Booth gave her a wider outlook and gradually weaned her mind from its subservience to public opinion. He admitted his lack of learning, but nothing, not even her persuasions, could tame his ‘love for souls’. That was the master passion of his life. The suburban blue-stocking took fire from the provincial ignoramus whose mind was as inferior to hers, as her spirit was inferior to his spirit. They became engaged, and Booth, who in 1852 had become an itinerant preacher of the Methodist New Connexion, consulted her by letter about his sermons, sent her his linen for mending, and constantly exhorted her to widen her
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