William Booth and the Mile End Mission

A worldwide religious-and-social-welfare movement is rarely founded by a single Methodist preacher on a wet July evening on the Mile-End-Waste open ground outside a London public-house. Booth had been on the Methodist-evangelical preaching-circuit for the previous fifteen years across the English-provincial-Methodist-circuit, had moved his family to London in February 1865 on the Methodist-circuit-failure provincial-evangelist-retirement period, and was, on the evening of the second of July 1865, an unemployed Methodist evangelical preacher who had been given the Mile-End-Waste-mission as a small temporary-engagement on the East-London-Special-Services-Committee invitation.

THE SNEINTON BOY

William Booth was born at 12 Notintone Place in the Sneinton-village outside Nottingham on the tenth of April 1829, second son of Samuel Booth, a Sneinton-builder of declining-financial standing on the 1820s-Nottinghamshire-economic-depression circuit, and Mary Moss, a Nottingham-Jewish-convert-to-the-Church-of-England daughter. He was raised in the Sneinton declining-family-finances household, was schooled at the small Nottingham-Methodist-circuit school to the thirteen-year-old 1842-school-leaving age, and on the father's death in 1842 took the apprentice-pawnbroker position with the Nottingham-pawnbroker Francis Eames on the standard-Nottingham-apprentice arrangement to support the family-income.

He converted to Wesleyan Methodism in 1844 at fifteen on the Methodist-revival service at the Wesley Chapel Broad Street Nottingham, took the Wesleyan-evangelical-laypreaching role at sixteen in 1845 on the Nottingham-Methodist-circuit, and worked across the 1845-to-1849 period as the evangelical-lay-preacher to the Nottingham-and-Yorkshire-pit-village circuit while continuing the pawnbroker-apprenticeship. He moved to London in 1849 in his twentieth-year on the Wesleyan-Methodist-rejection of his lay-preaching-recommendation, took the pawnbroker-position in Walworth, and worked across 1849-to-1851 in the Walworth-and-Kennington Methodist-evangelical-lay-preaching circuit.

THE METHODIST NEW CONNEXION

He took the Methodist-New-Connexion ordination at the Methodist-New-Connexion conference of 1858 in his twenty-ninth year on the strength of the Methodist-New-Connexion conference-recommendation of his lay-preaching record, served as the Methodist-New-Connexion ordained-minister across the Brighouse-and-Halifax-and-Gateshead provincial-Methodist-circuit 1858-to-1861, and on the Methodist-New-Connexion conference-decision of 1861 to refuse his full-time-evangelist-application took the personal-decision to resign from the Methodist-New-Connexion ministry and to work as an independent evangelical-itinerant preacher.

He worked across 1861-to-1865 in the independent-evangelical-preaching circuit across Cornwall, Wales and the south-west of England on the personal-resources of the Booth-Catherine joint-evangelical-preaching family arrangement (Catherine had married William in June 1855 in his twenty-sixth year on the Methodist-New-Connexion arrangement, and was the evangelical-preaching partner of the Booth-evangelical-mission across the full Booth-evangelical-career from 1855 onwards). The Booth-Catherine joint-evangelical-mission moved to London in February 1865 on the cumulative-evangelical-circuit-failure of the South-West-England circuit and on the East-London-Special-Services-Committee invitation from the Reverend William Carter and the East-End-evangelical-Methodist-network.

THE MILE END WASTE

The East-London-Special-Services-Committee was a 1865 East-End-Wesleyan-Methodist evangelical-organisation that coordinated the tent-and-open-air evangelical-revivals across the East-End-poor districts of the mid-1860s London. The Mile-End-Waste was a open ground at the junction of the Mile End Road and the Cambridge Heath Road in the East-End-of-London, in the East-End-poor district known for the Blind-Beggar public-house and the East-End-Whitechapel-and-Stepney working-poor population. The Committee invited Booth to open a tent-revival on the Mile-End-Waste on the evening of the second-of-July 1865 on the five-evening-mission engagement.

Booth opened the tent-revival on the Mile-End-Waste at the seven-thirty-of-the-evening-of-the-second-of-July 1865. The tent (a large-canvas-circus-tent that the East-London-Special-Services-Committee had hired from a London-circus-supplier for the five-evening engagement) accommodated approximately five hundred people on the open-bench seating. The evening-congregation was approximately three hundred to five hundred East-End-poor East-Enders across the five-evening tent-revival period (Booth's diary preserved the attendance-figures from the five-evening engagement).

Booth preached the evangelical-Methodist conversion-message across the five-evening tent-revival on the standard-Methodist-revival pattern: the opening-hymn, the Booth-sermon-text from the Methodist evangelical-tradition (the second-evening sermon was on Revelation 22:17, the Spirit-and-Bride invitation, the foundational Salvation-Army biblical-text that has carried the Salvation-Army-mission identification continuously since), the mourners'-bench altar-call for the personal-conversion decision, and the closing-hymn-and-benediction. The five-evening tent-revival produced approximately two hundred personal-conversion-decisions across the five-evenings.

THE EAST LONDON CHRISTIAN MISSION

Booth committed at the close of the five-evening tent-revival to remain in the East-End on the permanent-mission basis on the strength of the East-End-poor evangelical-receptivity to the tent-revival. He renamed the Mile-End-Waste tent-revival the East London Christian Mission on the July-1865 organisational-decision, established the mission-headquarters at the 220-Whitechapel Road Eastern Star public-house (a disused-public-house that the East-London-Special-Services-Committee had acquired for the mission-operation), and across the late-1865-and-1866 period built the East-London-Christian-Mission into the permanent-East-End evangelical-mission organisation.

The mission expanded across the 1866-to-1878 period from the East-End-of-London base across the wider-London-and-southern-England circuit. Booth renamed the organisation The Christian Mission in 1869 on the expansion-decision, and renamed it The Salvation Army in 1878 on the quasi-military-organisational-restructuring decision (the Salvation-Army-quasi-military-rank-and-uniform-and-flag system that he and his son Bramwell developed across the 1878-and-1879 organisational-redesign).

THE WORLDWIDE GROWTH

The Salvation Army grew across the Booth-lifetime (1865-to-1912) from the Mile-End-Waste single-tent revival of the July-1865 opening to a worldwide Salvation-Army organisation of approximately fifteen thousand officers and approximately a million members in over fifty countries by 1912. Booth was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1905, was received in audience by King Edward VII in 1904 (the King's monarchical-recognition of the Salvation-Army-mission to the East-End-poor), and was the first commoner to be given the Westminster-Abbey funeral-service-with-state-honours arrangement on his death in August 1912.

He died at his Hadley Wood home in Hertfordshire on the twentieth of August 1912 in his eighty-fourth year, and is buried at the Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, the non-conformist cemetery of the East-London-evangelical-tradition. The Salvation Army continues today as the international Christian-and-social-welfare organisation operating in over 130 countries with approximately 1.7 million members; the Salvation-Army Christmas-kettle collection-and-uniform public-presence has been a universal-feature of the modern-Anglophone-and-international urban-civic landscape continuously since the 1880s Christmas-kettle innovation. The Booth name in modern English-language religious-and-social history carries the weight of the evening at the Mile End Waste on the second-of-July 1865.