William Booth was the founder of the Salvation Army, a denomination now found in 124 countries and having 800 corps (churches) in the UK.
William was born in Nottingham, on 10 April 1829. His father, Samuel, was a speculative builder who lived to make money. When 49 and a widower, Samuel Booth married Mary (33), who became William’s mother.
They rarely attended their parish church, but William was sent to Sunday school and was enrolled at Sampson Biddulph’s academy, a commercial school. Biddulph was a Methodist local preacher who became a trustee of the newly built Broad Street Wesleyan chapel in 1837.
In the summer of 1842, a downturn in the economy prevented Samuel from paying the mortgages on his rented properties. He was ruined and bound William as apprentice to Francis Eames, a Unitarian pawnbroker in the poor Goosegate area of Nottingham. William’s father died shortly after.
As William walked to work, he encountered ragged, starving children begging for bread. In the pawnbrokers, he saw women trading in their last precious possessions to buy drink for their husbands, who would beat them if they refused. This fuelled his future burning desire to help such victims of poverty and vice.
Conversion
William, now 15, had started attending the Broad Street Chapel and sat under the preaching of Isaac Marsden from Doncaster.
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