William Booth

William Booth was born in Sneinton, Nottingham, the second son of five children born to Samuel Booth and his second wife, Mary Moss. His birthplace is now a museum. Booth's father was a nailmaker and builder from Belper in Derbyshire but, during William's childhood, the family descended into poverty. In 1842, Samuel Booth, who could no longer afford his son's school fees, apprenticed the 13-year-old William to a pawnbroker. Samuel Booth died on 23 September 1842.

Two years into his apprenticeship Booth had a religious conversion. He then read extensively and trained himself in writing and in speech, becoming a Methodist local preacher. Booth was encouraged to be an evangelist primarily through his best friend, Will Sansom. Both Sansom and Booth began in the 1840s to preach to the poor and the sinners of Nottingham, and Booth would probably have remained as Sansom's partner in his new Mission ministry, as Sansom titled it, if Sansom had not died of tuberculosis, in 1849.

When his apprenticeship ended in 1848, Booth was unemployed and spent a year looking in vain for work. In 1849, Booth reluctantly left his family and moved to London, where he found work with a pawnbroker. Booth tried to continue lay preaching in London, but the small amount of preaching work that came his way frustrated him, and so he resigned as a lay preacher and took to open-air evangelising in the streets and on Kennington Common.

William Booth and Catherine Mumford were married on 17 June 1855 at Stockwell New Chapel, at that time part of Surrey. They had eight children:

Bramwell Booth (8 March 1856 – 16 June 1929)

Ballington Booth (28 July 1857 – 5 October 1940)

Kate Booth (18 September 1858 – 9 May 1955)

Emma Booth (8 January 1860 – 28 October 1903)

Herbert Booth (26 August 1862 – 25 September 1926)

Marie Booth (4 May 1864 – 5 January 1937)

Evangeline Booth (25 December 1865 – 17 July 1950)

Lucy Booth (28 April 1868 – 18 July 1953)