The Life of General William Booth

Vol. 2 - Chapter 4 ~ 1883-1885
Contents

THE PURITY CRUSADE

ALTHOUGH Mrs. Booth had been greatly impressed in 1865, as the reader will remember, by the work of the Midnight Mission, she did not take any steps to make the rescue of fallen women a particular labour of the Salvation Army. Nor was there much enthusiasm on the part of William Booth when his son Bramwell, in 1884, almost forced the Salvation Army to take up this difficult work.

“For many weeks,” says Mr. Bramwell Booth, describing his first inquiries into what we now call the White Slave Traffic, “I was like one living in a dream of hell. The cries of outraged children and the smothered sobs of those imprisoned in living tombs were continually in my ears. I could not sleep, I could not take my food. At times I could not pray.”

He had seen women on the streets as he came from the East End late at night; touched by their forlorn position he had spoken to them; in cases where there was an expression of genuine disgust for the life he had effected rescues; but it was not until after a dramatic visit to his office from a poor girl who had escaped out of a brothel (she actually climbed down a rain-pipe from the room in which she was imprisoned) that he came to study the trade in women, the trade which swindles and tricks young girls into a life of debauchery, the trade which destroys the souls and bodies of quite young children.

This trade, which few people in those days believed to exist, was, and still is, a highly organized business, with its ramifications in every country, and its curse over every nation. To Bramwell Booth the discoveries he made were so appalling that he felt he could consecrate his life “to stop these abominations.”

Catherine Booth was sympathetic to his proposal. William Booth was also sympathetic, but sceptical on the question of procedure. We must remember that thirty years ago people spoke with extreme disgust of the fallen woman. No religious society cared to associate itself with a definite work of rescue. Religious people felt, and many still feel, an aversion almost like nausea at any mention of this subject. The unfortunate is most unfortunate in the universal disgust she inspires.

Men of the world invent brutal and disdainful terms for her, religious people avert their faces as they pass her in the street, and shudder even to think of her. A fallen woman seems to carry with her into the pit of perdition all the horror of humanity for the desecration of the most sacred of its ideals.

It is owing, I think, largely to the quite heroic work of Mrs. Bramwell Booth that this attitude of the public has been modified. If this book were the life of Bramwell Booth, or a history of the Salvation Army, we should tell at length the moving and dramatic story of that work; but as our concern is the narrative of William Booth’s history, we can but glance at the great Purity Campaign of 1884—85, and can tell only in brief the story of the famous prosecution which threatened at one time to end the crusade and to cripple the Salvation Army in a very serious manner.

Mr. Bramwell Booth had married, in 1882, Miss Florence Soper, the daughter of a physician practising in Wales. This lady had come under the influence of Catherine Booth, had joined the Army, and had been through some of the most stormful scenes in Paris which accompanied the Army’s first efforts to establish itself on French soil.

She was young, delicate, refined; her remarkable powers of grasp and administration had not been developed at this time; she was typical of the well-educated, rather shrinking and self-conscious girl of the English professional classes — perhaps the last person in the world to whom any one would have thought of committing so hazardous and dreadful a business as this rescuing of fallen women. But she was moved by her husband’s appeal, and, in spite of some doubt on William Booth’s part, was appointed to take charge of the Salvation Army’s first Rescue Home.

The work was now launched — the work of rescuing repentant Magdalens and educating them in habits of industry and self-respect. But Bramwell Booth was not content. He had pity — because he suspected the devilries of the trade — for the unrepentant and the hardened woman who mocked at religion, who cursed God, and who went to her death drunken, scornful, and terribly diseased. It did not satisfy him to rescue a hundred weeping Magdalens; he.set himself to attack the trade which annually ruins both in body and in soul thousands of quite innocent girls and children.

He chose for the man to help him in this work Mr. W. T. Stead, of The Pall Mall Gazette — perhaps the most enthusiastic journalist of his time. Matthew Arnold wrote to John Morley in 1884, saying, “Under your friend Stead, the P.M.G., whatever may be its merits, is fast ceasing to be literature.”

This was a just censure, but Mr. Stead would have read it unmoved. He was first and last a journalist, a man whose imagination never strayed from the columns of the passing hour to the bookshelves of posterity. He had no literary ambitions for The Pall Mall Gazette; he sought rather to give it a spirit which would permeate the national conscience. He was a Puritan who loved his fellow-men.

In those days he was narrower than he came to be, and yet more sensible. He boasted that he had never entered a theatre, but he had not fallen a victim to the most absurd delusions of spiritualism. His manner was eager, pleasant, and not without a touch of worldly humour. He made friends with men who shared none of his ideals. He sought rather to encourage those whom he met to go a step farther on their own road than to cross over and march at his side. He was fanatical, I think, in the depths of his soul, but a diplomatist on the surface.

He believed passionately in conversion and prayer, but he kept this conviction for those who were already persuaded. He never intruded his religion, and he sometimes cloaked it. Perhaps it may be said, considering his work for the Royal Navy, that no journalist of his generation rendered greater services to the British Empire.

William Booth, in my opinion, was never greatly attracted by Mr. Stead. He was more or less suspicious about this thrusting, eager, and headlong journalist, who did much to help the Salvation Army and who was a brave champion from early days of its innovating General. William Booth used Mr. Stead, and was grateful for his assistance, but he never greatly warmed to him, never wholly trusted his judgment, and was sometimes disposed to regard him as one who shilly-shallied with the great decision of Christian life.

Mr. Stead was perhaps aware of this, for in The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon he speaks of the help he received from the Salvation Army — “from the Chief of the Staff” — that is, Bramwell Booth — “down to the humblest private.” There is no mention of the General.

On the other hand, Bramwell Booth — at that time young and ardent — not only admired Mr. Stead as a journalist, but felt for him a generous affection. He thought first of all of Mr. Stead when the idea of publicly exposing the traffic in women occurred to his mind, and he never once questioned the wisdom of this inspiration.

Mr. Stead listened incredulously to the evidence presented to him. When he was persuaded of its truth he struck with his fist the table in Bramwell Booth’s room and vowed himself to destroy this most damnable work of the Devil.

A few weeks after that conversation the country was in a blaze. In the columns of The Pall Mall Gazette Stead exposed the hell of child-harlotry with a force and energy never before known in journalism. The nation was staggered. For weeks scarcely any other subject was discussed. These articles, full of heartbreaking narrations and disclosures which took away the breath of respectability, roused the whole country, but divided it into two very unequal camps.

On one side were the few selfless people, like Mrs. Josephine Butler, who passionately longed to save women from the degradation of vice; on the other, a multitude who lived vicious lives, and a still greater multitude, composed of the religious and indifferent, who wanted society to exist without disturbance. But with Stead in the field, and Bramwell Booth using the organization of the Salvation Army to create a public opinion on this subject, apathy was broken, and the conscience of the world was profoundly stirred.

A monster petition, organized by the Salvation Army in seventeen days, and bearing no fewer than 393,000 signatures, was presented to the House of Commons on July 30, 1885, praying that the age of consent should be raised to sixteen. The General, always ready to do something, announced a scheme for Rescue Homes, costing £20,000. Meetings were held up and down the country. The Salvation Army, basing itself upon the revelations of Stead, sought to lead the nation in a campaign against flagrant iniquity.

Stead, foreseeing that the disclosures of The Pall Mall Gazette would be regarded as merely sensational journalism, either grossly exaggerated or entirely untrue, conceived the idea of himself buying a young girl, ostensibly for the purposes of seduction. It was his business to prove that a young girl could be bought from her parents for a few pounds — a possibility which many absolutely refused to believe.

He went to Bramwell Booth for assistance. After considerable thought a plan was arranged. A woman who had once been a procuress, and who was then living under the care of the Salvation Army and later with Mrs. Josephine Butler, was pressed into service; a lady in France connected with the Army was linked up with the mechanism of this strategy; and Bramwell Booth stood ready to do his part.

The girl, Eliza Armstrong, an illegitimate, was purchased by the ex-procuress, Rebecca Jarrett. She was taken to a brothel, she was drugged, and Stead entered the room. She was then taken to a railway-station and sent under excellent protection to Madame Combe in France. Thus Stead’s contention was proved, and a child who might have been ruined was saved to society.

Mrs. Josephine Butler gives us a moving account of Stead’s condition of mind during the period of these disclosures.

Mr. Stead is publicly known only as a brave and enterprising reformer. But to my mind the memory is ever present of a dark night in which I entered his office, after a day of hand-to-hand wrestling with the powers of Hell. We stumbled up the narrow dark stairs; the lights were out, not a soul was there, it was midnight. I scarcely recognized the haggard face before me as that of Mr. Stead.

He threw himself across his desk with a cry like that of a bereaved or outraged mother, rather than that of an indignant man, and sobbed out the words, “Oh, Mrs. Butler, let me weep, let me weep, or my heart will break.” He then told me in broken sentences of the little tender girls he had seen that day sold in the fashionable West-end brothels, whom he (father-like) had taken on his knee, and to whom he had spoken of his own little girls. Well might he cry, “Oh, let me weep!”

But in his eagerness to prove his contention, in order to convert public opinion to his view, Stead had broken the criminal law. The purchase of Eliza Armstrong was a crime. That is to say, the reformer in his zeal for truth had technically broken the law of abduction. To the astonishment of a great many people a Government prosecution was set on foot and, with Stead and Rebecca Jarrett, Bramwell Booth was placed in the dock.

It is interesting to find that while Catherine Booth was immediately filled with an angry indignation and was ready to fight for her son’s honour to the very last, William Booth — thinking of the Salvation Army — was chiefly concerned because the action of Stead, in dragging Bramwell Booth into this business of a prosecution, had dragged the Salvation Army into a questionable position.
On the eve of the trial he convened an “All Night of Prayer” at Clapton.

“When he spoke,” says one present at this gathering, “it was evident that he was profoundly moved by the fact that his son was being put on his trial; and during the course of a long and moving speech he referred to the chief incidents in the Armstrong case and vindicated the Christlike part ‘his son Bramwell’ — it was in these terms he referred to him again and again — had taken in the interests of womanhood.

Then he referred to the forthcoming trial, which he regarded as a supreme attempt of the Arch Enemy of Souls, and the earthly enemies of the Army, to destroy our work and our fair name. Then with his whole frame quivering with holy passion he said — as well as I can remember, ‘If they imprison my son Bramwell, I will go round this country and stir up the people from one end to another.’ (I am not sure he did not say, ‘I will move Heaven and Hell.’) Then he added, and the phrase I have never forgotten, ‘But — if we win, we win, and if we lose, we win!’ There was the most wonderful outburst of enthusiasm and cheering I ever witnessed in any Army Meeting when he uttered these, the last words of his fiery peroration.”

The case itself, the whole question of white slavery, did not so much concern him as the honour of the Army, which he felt might be impugned by this incident in its career. The enemies of Stead were not so much allies of the prostitute as the foes of the Army — that is to say, foes of God and allies of Satan.

His letters at this period are of great value. They demonstrate quite clearly that however much he longed, and long he certainly did, to sweep away vice, the Purity Crusade of the ‘eighties owed little to his initiative. They also prove, I think, that he foresaw nothing of the glory which has since come to the Army for its heroic lead in this matter — a narrative which should one day be told in full; and they help one to realize how exclusively and intensely his life was centred upon the work of spiritual religion.

He was a man, as we shall see presently, who wanted to help the fallen woman, but not in the sensational manner which Stead felt was essential to a national awakening. It was a saying with him at this time that Stead must not carry the Army into sensationalism.

That the Government should move against her son and against Mr. Stead, infuriated the heart of Catherine Booth. The wicked and the adulterous hated Stead for his disclosures, the worldly-minded and the hypocrites loathed the Salvation Army and longed for its injury; these might have joined forces and sought to ruin the apostles of purity without arousing the wrath and indignation of Catherine Booth.

But that the Government of Christian England should take up the first stone, that the Ministers of Queen Victoria should seek to shut the mouth of Stead and to cover the Salvation Army with infamy, this was more than that very good woman could suffer.

The following bold and significant passage in a Salvation Army Petition to the Queen shows that Mrs. Booth had excellent ground for her indignation:

Your Memorialists desire to call the attention of your Most Gracious Majesty to the fact that a noted procuress, a Mrs. Jeffries, resides in Church Street, Chelsea. This slave-dealer has kept twelve immoral houses, which houses, the evidence showed, were mainly frequented by noblemen and gentlemen in the upper classes.

In May, 1885, this notorious woman was brought to trial; her complicity with the home and foreign traffic in girls and women was well known; twenty witnesses were ready to give their testimony, and yet because of her wealth and position the trial became a travesty of justice. Accommodated with a seat in Court, covered with sealskin robes, her brougham waiting outside to convey her to her sumptuously furnished villa, she was instructed to plead guilty, and fined £200.

Your Memorialists believe that a more grave miscarriage of justice never took place. For more than twenty years this buyer, seller, and exporter of English girls and women has carried on her criminal traffic.

One can better understand the fiery indignation of Mrs. Booth than the calm and watchful annoyance of the General. But in reading the following letters the reader will bear in mind that William Booth had gone unwillingly into the side-issue of a Purity Crusade, that he had the Salvation Army to think about, that the Salvation Army was more to him than wife or child, that he never suffered the most precious of his personal affections to come between him and the interests of this Army, and that he was sharply conscious of enemies on every side watching for an opportunity to attack and destroy his Army.

It should be clearly borne in mind that he was not without sympathy for the harlot. He was not in the least self-righteous; he had no element of that detestation for the public woman which characterizes the attitude of so many very pure people to this whole question; but he did not feel that it was the business of the Salvation Army to lay an exceptional emphasis on this matter; he did not want the Army to be mixed up with a public scare; he held that the warning of the Salvation Army to repent must be addressed indiscriminately to the whole world.

To his Wife.
ROOKWOOD ROAD, STAMFORD HILL, LONDON, N., Sept. 13, ‘85.

MY DEAREST LOVE — We have had an anxious day, altho’ I should not be anxious myself, but that it is Bramwell who I fear may worry about things. Still I believe that if they are committed to-morrow, which we all expect, he will feel much better. Rebecca [Jarrett] is all right they say, and has consented to some evidence coming out which blacks her.

The cross-examination on Saturday showed up Mrs. Broughton as a very low bad woman. But Ranger and all think they are certain to commit whether the matter ever comes to a real trial or not, very doubtful in the estimation of Russell and others.

They think that the Government has felt so be-spattered with these Revelations that they have felt compelled to discredit them before the world, consequently they have fallen upon this case. Perhaps they may never push the thing to the extremity of a trial; if they do, nothing very much can possibly come of a conviction if any Jury can be got together that will say “Guilty.”

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The cross-examination on Saturday showed up Mrs. Broughton as a very low bad woman. But Ranger and all think they are certain to commit whether the matter ever comes to a real trial or not, very doubtful in the estimation of Russell and others. They think that the Government has felt so be-spattered with these Revelations that they have felt compelled to discredit them before the world, consequently they have fallen upon this case. Perhaps they may never push the thing to the extremity of a trial; if they do, nothing very much can possibly come of a conviction if any Jury can be got together that will say “Guilty.”

My opinion is that any way the Army cannot suffer very much. We shall have after the trial, whichever way it may go, a splendid text for an appeal to the Country. If they convict, we can show up the injustice of the thing— if they acquit, we can show the infamy and groundlessness of the prosecution.

If B. goes to prison they will make a martyr of him, and this alone will make him a heap of new friends and bind the Army and him more closely together and make thousands burn to go to prison too.

Only one thing can hurt us, our own fears and worries; in other words, OUR OWN UNBELIEF.

Have faith in God, Lucy has written across her breast. Oh let us have it written across our hearts, and act it out.
Now, my darling, I do hope God will guide you to-morrow night.

I hardly see how you can be wrong in a few words bearing upon what has led up to the Revelations, and on the wisdom of the Government prosecuting those who for the national weal made them. You should not say anything that links Bramwell with STEAD in ANYTHING — any day, some more unwise timings may come out yet.

Bramwell believed this girl had been parted with by her parents in such a manner as convinced him that they had no concern to have her back under their care, and as such made Stead her natural guardian; he took her and believed he was doing her, the child, and God service in trying to keep her from going back to misery and perdition.

You must be careful — there’s some sort of a threat to bring an action for libel and damages against all concerned for asserting that Mrs. Armstrong sold her child. Now there are a lot of scoundrels who would find money for anything to get at our throats, so we must be careful. I hate this litigation. The time it consumes is awful. I can’t make out why it should be so. But it goes to the heart direct.

We must at once get up some sort of counter-demonstration in the shape of a big influential defence Committee. You will see the card Railton has got out — I enclose a rough proof —I don’t see much in it — he thinks it will attract attention and associate us with the prayers every time people read them at Church. It can’t do any harm. We shall send them to the Queen, Cabinet Ministers, Bishops, etc., etc. Our People will buy them — this is a rough proof. An effort is to be made to get some down to Bradford.

My darling. If I could always be assured of your welfare and that you don’t worry or care, I should be comparatively reckless about the other things. Let us cast our care on Him who cares for us -- all our care -- our care for those who are dearest and nearest and weakest in our circle.
All seem well here. Florrie [Mrs. Bramwell Booth] has done well to-day. I do think she helps Bramwell much. I am sure she will prove a great power for good and a helper of our joy and usefulness beyond what some have feared.

My heart’s love to Herbert. His telegram cheered the Chief. Could you get a simple vote of sympathy with the Chief of Staff [Bramwell Booth] and Stead in this prosecution on Monday night and wire it in time for War Cry on Tuesday morning? Indeed, there must be a Press telegram if you have a good go.

Keep within the law, and we will have counsel’s advice as to how far we can go when the Committal has taken place.
Good-night. Jesus Christ is a Brother born for adversity. We suffer in the Name for His sake and through His Spirit in us. Let us bear it like the Saints: be strong; “we’ll be Heroes.” Now is the time. God bless and keep my beloved.
— Your affectionate husband, W. B.

P.S. — Since writing the above I have had a talk with Railton about expressions of sympathy with the Chief in meetings, and about explanations of the matter altogether; and he argues with a good deal of force that anything like votes of sympathy of Soldiers or anybody else with Superior Officers is unwise and prejudicial to discipline.

He thinks that explanations are beneath us; but would advocate the pushing forward of our Rescue Work, the showing up of what we are doing in this direction, bringing out the Case, and then remarking that this is the sort of thing for which they are attacking our Chief of the Staff.
There is something in all this. Anyway it does not seem dignified for an Army meeting to sympathize with the Army. The proper thing to do is to get up a great Defence Committee outside of us and let them speak.

I am sure the best answer we can make to the whole affair is to go on with our own work, keep our heads up, and keep on with the song of victory.

The lasses went past here this morning from Tottenham, singing “Victory.” They had had a quiet meeting, sold 200 War Crys, and had a collection of 15s. in the open air.
To be explaining yourself until the trial is over Railton thinks is humiliating.

Consider the matter carefully, and God give you wisdom.
W. B.

We have always had safety and success in going on with our own work. If you and the friends make a spiritual impression on Bradford it will do more to answer the slanderous lies than any explanation that can be given at this stage of the affair.

The Holy Ghost is our Power and our Defence.

ROOKWOOD, STAMFORD HILL, N.,
Nov. 9, ‘85.
MY DEAREST LOVE — I have yours proposing Meeting at Exeter Hall, but I must say that I am heartily sick of the whole affair. The enclosed is Stead’s account of things, which appears in to-night’s Pall Mall Gazette. It is such a throwing up of the sponge and leaving us all in the lurch that I cannot go any further on in the agitation.

To soap anybody down in that fashion is to me disgusting. I understand all the way through that the Attorney-General was hard upon our people, and on Sat., all said that the Judge was quite a partisan. And here is Stead, abandons poor Rebecca, and said that the verdict is just, etc., etc., etc., according to the evidence, etc.

Let us go back to our own work. I could say much more, but I never feel sure that my letters will reach you or not, or be seen by others after I have sent them. If I could only be assured of this I should write much more freely.

However, I am moidered up with a thousand things, and matters have been so neglected of late that I must go back to my own work and look after the Army.

We shall see what is done to-morrow. Stead won’t be put in prison, in my opinion, but will drop back into his old role of journalist, and leave us smeared with the tar of this affair to tight it out with blackguards and brothel-keepers all over the world.

I am sure the S.A is the thing, and our lines are all right. We shall see tremendous things. We are deciding for our International Council in June next, and shall have Soldiers from all parts of the world and 2,000 Officers. This will wipe out the very memory of Eliza Armstrong.

Bramwell is not quite out of the wood yet. We will wire you to-morrow how things go.

ROOKWOOD ROAD,
Nov. 9, 1885.
MY DEAREST LOVE — I have yours this morning. I like the telegram to Her Majesty. They will have wired you the Queen’s reply, which I think is very good. Of course the torpid people will say you should have waited until the trial was concluded. Altho’ I have not heard any say so yet. I don’t think so! You have let them see beforehand what they have to expect. It will no doubt have a salutary effect.

I don’t believe they intend to send Stead to prison. We shall see! Surely the next trial will not last long. Somebody said they thought it would be over in two or three hours. You will have seen something of the papers this morning, I suppose. The Daily News is bitterness itself, only a sentence or two against Bramwell; but of course we are implicated in its sweeping, scathing sarcasm.

The Standard I hear is bad, and I fully expect they will all be alike. I have not a hope from any newspaper in the land except the religious ones, and only partially from them. However, this is just what we expected, and although I feel it at the moment, our turn will come by-and-by.

We are not doing any meetings until after the trial. God must help us, and so He will!

It is no use anticipating evils. I shall not allow myself to do so. The matter will for the season drop out of sight in consequence of the election strife, and it is quite possible the verdict may be reversed on appeal, the thing will work round. . . Do be restful and get some strength. We have a lot of fighting yet before we go to rest, I hope.

101 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET,
Nov. 10, 1885.
MY DARLING — . . . You will have got our wire with reference to the trial this morning. So far as we are concerned now the trial is at an end. I understand that the Judge remarked this morning that Mr. Bramwell Booth was justified in believing that Mrs. Armstrong sold her child. Why didn’t he say so on Saturday? Perhaps he has had some new light.

The trial of Stead and Jarrett and she or theirs for the indecent assault is now going on. Bramwell is in court—of course wanting to be as near Stead as he can when the sentence is pronounced.

But I don’t believe that Stead will go to prison; and I don’t think that very much will be done to Rebecca. If there is, I think we can get a remission of the sentence. We will try, but beyond that I don’t see any way clear of fighting on those lines; I am sure our work has materially suffered by our attention being taken from it to give the other; we may have been paid back to a certain extent, and in the long run much good may be done, but I thoroughly believe in “Salvation” being a panacea for the world’s sins and sorrows, and that while there are other medicines that look in the same direction, the largest amount of good can be accomplished, with the least expenditure of time and money, by simply getting the people’s souls saved and keeping them saved.

I had a long talk with Mr. Railton’s brother last night, and so far as I can see from what he says, and my own observation, the hope of the nations is really in the S.A. Let us spend our strength upon it.

I hope you won’t strongly object to it. but I propose that we are content with Thanksgiving Meetings throughout the country on Monday next. . . . I have been writing a column for the Cry this morning, and have made a very decent flourish. Of course, with what the Judge said this morning, we come out of the thing with flying colours. And if (as I fully expect) some further evidence will be got in vindication of Rebecca the tables will be turned altogether yet.

Mrs. Butler is fast at Winchester with bronchitis, working on a pamphlet on Rebecca Jarrett. When the thing is quite over, the probability is that Stead will kick out again, and renew the fight Anyhow, we can lend a hand, along with our other duties, to the good cause. . . You rest — there’s a darling. They will take care of Stead — of course it will make him.

Just got the sentences we have wired you:

Stead 3 months
Jarrett 6 months (not hard labour)
Jacques 1 month
Mourey 6 months’ hard labour

We must do something now. I am woke up again and in for fighting. Still I am sure it is not our business.

ROOKWOOD ROAD,
Nov. 11, ‘85.
MY DEAREST LOVE — I have your letter and Herbert has yours also. I am sorry the matter should so grieve you, although I expected you would be very much disappointed with Stead’s article, as I was myself; but we can’t expect people to go beyond themselves, although we are always doing it! After mature deliberation on the subject, I have come back to my impression formed before I heard the sentence, that we ought not to involve the Army in any great struggle on the subject.

To begin with, Stead has innumerable friends who worship him, and who will agitate the country, and do so far better without us mixed up in it, than with us. Indeed, it is a great relief to them, I have no doubt, for us to be out of it, so that they can ask for a favour to Stead, or justice, if you like to call it, without having to ask for us at the same time. We shall therefore embarrass them by mixing ourselves up with it, so that on his account it will be better for us to remain separate.

Again, there are things in the thing that are very discreditable to us, that is in the way the thing was done. The jury have absolved us from blame, and all the Judge could rake up to say was, “that we ought to have given up the child,” which had we known what he knows now we would have done. If we could help Stead we ought to do so, and we will help him by petitioning or holding meetings on our own lines.

Then as to Jarrett, the sentence is not a heavy one; she has no hard labour, her disease will get her all manner of attention; it is possible that she will be treated as a first-class misdemeanant, and on the whole it may really be better for her to be in than out.

Then again, she has behaved badly in some respects, perhaps we could not expect anything else from her; still when we remember what she was, and the notice that has been taken of her, she was under very great obligation to us. It may do her soul good; she says it will, and that she will come out and spend the rest of her days working for God.

I know what can be said with regard to a great deal of this, and will talk it over with you. You say there is nothing to be done. Well, the independent party will have a meeting in Exeter Hail and try and get a Bishop in the chair; but they won’t want us there, and we can have our meetings, send up our petitions; and with regard to Jarrett, I think we may use some private influence. A letter from you to the Home Secy., for instance, might have weight; but I am hardly inclined to our troubling the Queen on the matter. I shall see you tomorrow.

The following letters from Mr. W. T. Stead, addressed from prison to his friend Bramwell Booth, reveal in a rather remarkable way the influence of religion upon his mind, and in particular the influence of the Salvation Army. William Booth never understood, perhaps, the ambition of Stead to work for the salvation of the State. He did not believe in saving humanity by machinery or in the lump; he was unfalteringly convinced that salvation is a single and individual transaction:

HOLLOWAY,
Nov. 19, ‘85.
DEAR BRAMWELL — You are down in the dumps.
Don’t be down in the dumps.

I tell you my imprisonment is a great blessing and will be a greater. It would be a thousand pities to get me out. Don’t be savage or indignant or contemptuous or anything, but joyful and grateful and willing to do God’s will.

Poor ‘Becca, I would offer to change places with her, but it would be no use and the people would think that the proposal was merely made for theatricality, so I must just hope and pray that God may be with her where she is.
It is no use you troubling to come up to Holloway. The rule is in cast-iron. Waugh, Mrs. Fawcett, George Russel, and Bunting have all been peremptorily refused. I see no one, only Wife, Talbot, and Stout.

I am very sorry to see that the Glasgow bailies have sent the Freethinker seller to gaol for six days for your caricature. It will do harm, and I wish I could get him out.— I am, yours truly, W. T. STEAD.

HOLLOWAY PRISON,
Dec. 13, ‘85
DEAR BRAMWELL — I more and more come to the conclusion that I am a very spoiled child of Divine Goodness; I have far more than my share. I am happier in prison than ever I have been out of it, and you poor people who are free are plagued with ill health and all kinds of afflictions.

I am in a little Heaven 15 feet square, wonderfully uplifted and jubilant. A wonder with all who came to see me for my exceeding high spirits and almost riotous joyfulness.
I am working like a slave, in first-rate health and full of themes and plans and hopes and faiths.

I wish you could come and see me for half an hour. It would do you good, only it might make you envious and sad that you were not in gaol.

I have never in all my life felt such a strong presentiment and conscious foreknowledge of coming power and influence all over the world. How it is to come to pass I don’t know. But it is coming soon. Then I shall be glad to get to gaol again to be saved from a mob that will try to kill me, and then after a further period the mob will clutch me before I can get to such a safe shelter as this; my work being done, the mob will kill me and my memory and death will raise up far more workers than my life has done, so the good work will go on.

All this is very present to me. But altho’ I am as ever strongly drawn to the Army and more than ever penetrated by the thought that I am not fit to tie the shoe-laces of the humblest of your cadets, I am not going to join the Army. My work lies otherwhere. A great idea and luminous has dawned upon me in the solitude here that my work, that is to say the work of God wants me for, is to raise up a band of men and women who will labour to save England and collective humanity and the kingdom of this world with — say a tenth part of the same zeal and devotion that you Army people show in saving individuals.

We want a revival of civic virtue, of patriotic religion, of the Salvation of the State and its political and collective action. You look after the individual. It is right, it is the root of all. But I look after the composite and collective individuals. I want to organize a Salvation Army of a secular sort with a religious spirit in it, and if God wants it done and He thinks that I am the man for the job “I’m game,” as the saying is.

I have just read The Salvation War for 1884 through at a sitting. I think you had better send me all your “Wars.” My chapter on you and your work must necessarily bear largely on the Woman side of it.

Pray for me — not in generalities — there are lots doing that, but that in writing about the Army in the third Chapter of the Episode about the new Crusade I may say just the right thing to help you in the right way. . . . — I am, yours in great peace and joy, W. T. STEAD.

P.S. — Report how Leoni is getting on. Is she saved yet? Is there anybody you know who could do anything for Norral’s daughter — that policeman, you know, who seduced his daughter? Was going to drown herself, and Mrs. Butler had her. The man has bolted and the woman is hanging aimlessly on P.M.G., threatening to go to Lloyds and tell them how the P.M.G. has exposed and ruined her husband, Gibbons, etc. She is thirty-two and very helplessly useless.

Chapter 5

Contents