LOVE LETTERS OF GENERAL BOOTH

Shannon News, 3 August 1926, Page 4

LOVE LETTERS OF GENERAL BOOTH

fr" — PAWNSHOP START IN LIFE. The fact that General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, at one time earned his living as a pawnbroker’s assistant in the Walworth road is disclosed by Mr Hai - old Begbie in his two volume “William Booth.”. The Booths were a Belper family before the days of Queen Elizabeth, and a couple of them became Archbishops of York, so that preaching seems to have been hereditary with them.

Young William Booth, who spent his early days in Nottingham, was "trained to regard himself as a gentleman's son, but v his father came on hard times, and put him to work in a pawnshop in the poorest part of the town. Young Booth became a Methodist and removed to L on don, where he 'secured a job in the Walworth road. He was dismissed ofr refusing to work after midnight on Saturday, but was taken back after a week, and left in charge of the shop. It was Rabbits, the boot manufacturer, who used to have a large shop at the Elephant and Castle, who induced William Booth to drop the pawnshop and become a Methodist minister. He heard Booth preach his first sermon as an evangelist in the Walworth road Wesleyan Chapel, took him home to dinner, and afterwards offered to pay him £l a week if he would leave the shop and devote himself to the Gospel. The general recorded three things concerning the change:— “The first day of my freedom was Good Friday.

“It was also my birthday, the 10th April. “The • third, and most important of all, was that on that day I fell over head and ears in love with the precious woman who afterwards became my wife.” William Booth met Catherine Mumfofd at a religious meeting in City road. This was their second meeting. He escorted her home to Brixton, and they both realised that they were in' love with one another. Mr Begbie prints some of their love letters, which he calls “Puritan love letters.” William began writing to Catherine as “My Dear Friend,” but it soon became “My o,wn Dear Catherine,” then “My Own Loving Kate,” and afterwards “My Dearest Love,” “My Own Darling Katie,” “My Dearest and Most Precious Sweet,” "My Own Sweet and Precipus Treasure.”

He \yrites: “I will make the night shirts do. I shall try to manage now until I come to town if I can. . . Have you two shirts? I want them worse; mine are all in tatters. Bless you, farewell, look forward to the future with a trusting and hopeful soul.” When they are going to be married he writes: —

“Write me per return how much black silk you will want for a flounced dress, and whether you would prefer that to a satinet or satinture —I intend having a firstrate one. If I buy it without your letter I shall get black silk and sixteen yards.”