SAMUEL DUNN AND WESLEY CHAPEL NOTTINGHAM

HAVE SAMUEL DUNN AND
 WESLEY CHAPEL, NOTTINGHAM,
BEEN GIVEN A RAW DEAL?
 
By
David Malcolm Bennett (PhD)

 Introduction

Wesley Chapel Nottingham (aka Broad Street Wesleyan Chapel) and its minister Samuel Dunn feature in most biographies of William Booth. It is through the ministry of this chapel that William Booth was converted, so it is rather hard to ignore it and its pastor.

It is common to paint Samuel Dunn and his church as conservative and set in their ways and unable to cope with the dynamic and energetically evangelistic William Booth. The evidence suggests that some of these negative descriptions originated with Booth himself. However, Booth’s comments about Samuel Dunn and his congregation were far from consistent. They were not, by any means, always negative. We need to see both sides of the story.

To do this we will first examine a number of biographies of William and Catherine Booth and other documents to detail the problem.[i] We will then sketch the life of Samuel Dunn, including his ministry at Wesley Chapel, Nottingham, to see the real man. As we proceed we need to note that though William Booth made a great General, he must have been a terrible private, headstrong and with a tendency to believe that he was right and anyone who disagreed with him must be wrong. In other words, he would have been a difficult man to handle, particularly when infected with the impetuosity of youth. It also needs to be borne in mind that some of Booth’s thoughts about his teenage years were written late in life, so his memory may have coloured the relevant events. Booth also seems to have freely used hyperbole. In one address late in life he said, “my conversion made me in a moment, a preacher of the Gospel.”[ii] However, that “moment” may have stretched out over two years.[iii]

In addition, at times in later life Booth did have the tendency to paint himself as the hero who had overcome great opposition to found and govern a mighty army. This was true up to a point, but it was not as true as Booth implied. He had had many helpers throughout his life, including during his time at Wesley Chapel.

Wesley (Broad Street) Chapel
 
Harold Begbie called the Wesleyan building in Broad Street, Nottingham, a “cold barrack of a chapel”, with “bare chilling walls”.[iv] Richard Collier echoed him in calling it “the vast cold barracks”.[v] These descriptions immediately cast the chapel (and perhaps what went on in it) in a negative light. However, while it is true that nineteenth century Methodists did not usually build beautiful buildings, Wesley Chapel was far from being undistinguished in appearance. It was a “large building with wide front, ornamented with [four] massive Corinthian columns.” It had plenty of windows and inside were “roomy” galleries. What is more it was built in 1837,[vi] so when Booth started to attend there in the early 1840s it was new and unlikely to have been drab.

Booth said that he thought that at that time Wesley Chapel was “one thousand members strong.”[vii] Begbie said that its congregation for the evening service in the mid-nineteenth century was about 1,800.

Begbie also stated that the congregation was made up “chiefly with working-class members”.[viii] Charles Bateman said that through his efforts to win the lost at this chapel Booth “disregarded the conventionalities of middle-class, easy-going Methodism.”[ix] To what degree Wesley Chapel was “working-class” or “middle-class” is a little uncertain. Nottingham seems to have been more working-class, and had been ravaged by unemployment in that era. In his preface to In Darkest England Booth said, “When but a mere child the degradation and helpless misery of the poor Stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-stricken through the streets … kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor”.[x] Nottingham was a major town for the manufacture of stockings. It seems likely, therefore, that the makeup of that congregation was more working-class. And, as shall be seen below, Dunn and his church were not always conventional.

In addition, the phrase “easy-going Methodism” would seem to be a little unfair. However, A Christian movement such as Methodism is inclined to become more respectable, less rough and ready, as its congregations change over the decades from people brought into the church to people brought up in it. First generation Methodists were mainly new converts. Subsequent generations of Methodists were mainly the children or grandchildren of converts. The same has happened to The Salvation Army.

Booth-Tucker said that “the truths” of Scripture were “tersely and powerfully expounded” from the pulpit in that church, presumably most often by Dunn.[xi] Begbie said, “Conversion was preached in Wesley Chapel, and this conversion was the conversion that turned a radically bad man into a radically good man, a miracle visible to all, provable by all.”[xii] Bearing in mind the impact the ministry at that church had on Booth there is good reason to believe that this was so.
 
Booth at Wesley Chapel

George Railton quoted Booth’s own words about his conversion and the period immediately after. These comments were uttered late in his life, so time could have coloured his memory. Booth said that after his conversion “No one at first took me by the hand and urged me forward, or gave me any instruction or hint likely to help me in the difficulties I had at once to encounter in my consecration to [Christ’s] service.”[xiii] Translating Booth’s comments into modern terms, he is saying the follow up at Wesley Chapel was very poor. Whether it was quite as bad as he made it sound is, however, unlikely. He was a member of a Methodist class from probably before his conversion and one would have expected that his class leader and other class members would have given him some support. But if he did receive support from them or anyone else, then he clearly thought it inadequate.

Railton also quoted Booth as saying, “The leading men of the church to which I belonged were afraid I was going too fast, and gave me plenty of cautions, quaking and fearing at every new departure; but none gave me a word of encouragement.”[xiv] While there would seem no doubt that some at Wesley, including Samuel Dunn, reined Booth in, it would appear to be untrue that “none” gave Booth “a word of encouragement.” Indeed, Booth mentioned that Dunn did at times help him along the way. In fact, Booth said that Dunn suggested that he offer himself for the Methodist ministry and Dunn gave him some help in that direction[xv] (see below). Perhaps the issue was that none gave him a word of encouragement with regard to the outdoor evangelism that he was engaged in. Booth also called that church “literally my heaven on earth”,[xvi] so it could not have all been bad and non-supportive.

However, Dunn did definitely discipline Booth on one, probably two, matters. According to Begbie, Dunn was on the lookout for a young man to do some preaching in the surrounding villages. He approached an elderly man named Sammy Statham, the chapel-keeper, and asked him whether he knew of a suitable person.  Statham recommended William Booth. So Dunn approached Booth and asked him whether he thought that he could preach. Booth said yes and told him that he was already preaching in the streets. There is no doubt that Dunn was not pleased with this piece of news. “By whose authority?” he asked. “Have I given you leave?”[xvii] It would seem that Dunn did not like things being done without his approval. Hattersley said that Booth “never forgot or quite forgave [that] crushing retort.”[xviii] Booth certainly did not seem to forget it, hence our record of it.

If Dunn’s action seems harsh and perhaps even wrong, it could be argued that Booth should have first reported his plans to his minister to gain his support and the support of the church. This is a point Roger Green makes too. However, such a thought is unlikely to have crossed Booth’s mind. Green adds that Dunn would probably have refused permission anyway.[xix] Dunn may have been afraid that Booth and any other such activists would become lone wolves and perhaps form a breakaway movement. In the first decade of the nineteenth century the Wesleyan leaders had opposed some of their preachers in Staffordshire for holding Camp Meetings, which were really prolonged open-air meetings. This had led to a breakaway movement, later known as Primitive Methodism.[xx] That could have been in the back of Dunn’s mind.

In relation to that outdoors preaching, Booth-Tucker gives the impression that the little band of enthusiastic young evangelists that William Booth associated with were the only folk from Wesley Chapel interested in winning people into the kingdom.[xxi] It is most likely that he gleaned this idea from Booth himself. But there is more than one way of evangelising and if people do not use one method (in this case Booth’s method), they may be using another.

As was seen above, Wesley Chapel was “one thousand members strong”,[xxii] with an evening attendance of about 1,800.[xxiii] In other words, it was a large church and it would be impossible for any one person to know what everyone else was doing.

On one occasion Booth brought a “ragged regiment” of boys from the streets into the chapel and seated them in prominent pews. There seems to be two different records of this event that can be regarded as authentic. The first is presumably by William Booth, relayed to Booth-Tucker and others. The second is by Rev J.E. Page, who lived in the same street as the Booths and witnessed it as a child and reported his story briefly in an edition of the War Cry in 1919. Page, who said his family’s pew was near where the boys were seated, estimated that there were “over fifty” of them. Other estimates give 40. Either way, it says a lot for Booth’s “pulling power” that he could round up so many and get them into church. Page says that “the trustees” refused to allow the boys to enter through the front door on future occasions, so Booth had to bring them in through the back door.[xxiv]

According to Booth-Tucker, Dunn, probably on behalf of some in his congregation, instructed Booth to take his guests to a part of the building where they “would be less conspicuous and disagreeable to the more respectable members of the congregation.” These words are Booth-Tucker’s not Dunn’s, so while Dunn does seem to have approached Booth on this matter and ordered amendment, his words and attitude may not have been quite as Booth-Tucker suggests.[xxv] Ervine says that the church’s leaders’ “noses [were] offended as deeply as their sense of decorum”, as they probably were.[xxvi]

Richard Collier’s account of this incident is colourful, imaginative, rather unfair and in some respects probably just plain wrong.  He said that as Booth marched these boys in Rev Samuel Dunn watched, “seated comfortably on his red plush throne”. Collier claims that the service was well on its way when Booth and his troops arrived, for he says that the “fourth hymn” was being sung. Collier continued, “To his dismay the Rev Dunn saw that the young Booth was actually ushering his charges … into the very best seats; pewholders’ seats … whose occupants piled the collection-plate with glinting silver”.[xxvii]

That’s all very dramatic and colourful, but it does not make sense. If the service was well on its way, having reached the “fourth hymn”, it seems highly unlikely that “the very best seats” (enough for 40 or 50 visitors) were still unoccupied. In fact, it would seem unlikely that there were that many seats available that late in the service, at least in any one prominent section of the church.
Whether Dunn’s pulpit seat was quite as “plush” as Collier says is also unlikely. And surely he would not have been seated on it while they were singing a hymn. Methodists stand to sing in worship. This would appear to be no more than an uninspired guess on Collier’s part for dramatic effect.

All the early accounts of this event that I have seen are limited in detail. Collier’s record is by far the most detailed that I have encountered, and he was writing well over 100 years after the event, thus his account appears to be mainly fiction. And in Collier’s opinion all this shows that “Methodism had become ‘respectable’.”[xxviii]

The main problem with regard to this issue appears to have been the matter of pew rents. In this pew rent system certain families paid a weekly rent to hire a specific pew for their family, though there were also “free” seats available, which could be used by anyone.[xxix] Booth seems to have “borrowed” some of these rented seats for his band of ragamuffins. Page confirms that the pew rent system was in operation at Broad Street at that time.[xxx] It was not a good system as it favoured the richer members of the church over the poorer and must have intimidated visitors and newcomers. It was certainly not in line with James chapter 2. However, it was a major source of income for many churches in the nineteenth century and was not a fault unique to Wesley Chapel.

It is also probably true that Booth’s band of young boys was neither clean nor well behaved, and this would have been disapproved by some. However, it should also be remembered that some in the regular congregation may not have been much better dressed.

A Call to the Ministry?

Dunn recognised something special in Booth and he approved of him becoming a local preacher and in 1848[xxxi] suggested that he offer for the Wesleyan ministry. It is clear that Dunn did not have a poor view of the energetic tyro.

The different accounts of the first time Booth considered entering the ministry vary a little, but Dunn has a positive role in all of them. According to Booth-Tucker, when Booth was about 19, Dunn “urged him to offer himself for the ministry”. Booth protested on the grounds of his “health and youth.” So Dunn sent Booth to his own doctor. The doctor examined the young man, and made his diagnosis. Booth said that he “pronounced me totally unfit for the strain of a Methodist preacher’s life, assuring me that twelve months of it would land me in the grave”. However, Booth “implored” the medic not to say that to Dunn, for his “whole heart was set on ultimately becoming a minister” and one bad report might put a stop to that. Eventually the doctor agreed to suggest a delay of a year before application and Booth and Dunn accepted that.[xxxii]

(It needs to be noted here that Frederick Booth-Tucker did not always quote accurately.[xxxiii] He would at times add or subtract words and even change meanings. Therefore, when Booth-Tucker is the only or original source of some of Booth’s words, a doubt may hang over them.)

Begbie’s account of this is a little different. Begbie confirms that Booth was already a local preacher when Dunn suggested that Booth apply to become a Wesleyan minister. However, according to Begbie (and he seems to be claiming here that Booth told him this), Booth’s main concern was the support of his mother and two unmarried sisters, and that up until that time Booth had not considered entering the fulltime ministry because of them. So, according to Begbie, Booth “pleaded ill health” for that reason. Dunn sent him to a doctor and the doctor advised Booth that a man with a “nervous system” like his would soon “break down” under the rigours of pastoral ministry. So that move went no further.[xxxiv] Ervine gives just a brief summary of Begbie’s account of this.[xxxv]

It could be argued that Booth’s working long hours at the pawnbrokers, fulfilling his duties as a local preacher (and often walking long distances to do so) and evangelising in the streets was just as likely to cause a breakdown. However, Booth was tougher than he and the doctor thought.

Hattersley suggests that Booth’s “reluctance to accept the intellectual discipline” necessary to study for the ministry may also have played its part in his refusal. This cannot be discounted, for a few years later Booth repeatedly frustrated his fiancée because he would not dedicate enough time to study.[xxxvi] And later still when he was preparing to enter the ministry of the Methodist New Connexion he was clearly more interested in evangelising than studying.[xxxvii] However, if his immediate ambition was to be a Methodist minister, at that time he is unlikely to have rejected a period of study.
 
The Writers on Samuel Dunn

Begbie called Dunn “autocratic, hard, obstinate,” but he also acknowledged that “William Booth spoke always well” of him, “saying that [Dunn] was kind to him, encouraged him, helped him.” Begbie then proceeded to limit Dunn’s kindness with so many qualifications that it sounded more like duty than kindness. For example, he said, “there was nothing of warmth and generosity in this kindness; it was always cold, formal and aloof.”[xxxviii] Begbie did spend some time with Booth on his travels around Britain and it is possible that he gleaned these thoughts from the General. However, bearing in mind Booth’s positive comments, it is more likely that the negative thoughts are Begbie’s creative and inaccurate guess work.

St John Ervine called Dunn “icily cold and so aloof”, which sounds as though he is copying Begbie. He also described him as an “arrogant and autocratic” man, who “rigorously ruled his congregation”, which are words probably also influenced by Begbie. Ervine also criticised Dunn for being so slow to become aware that Booth was preaching in the streets.[xxxix] However, as Dunn’s congregation was 1,800-strong and Booth was a relatively new member it may be unfair to have made that criticism. Dunn had a lot on his plate.

Roger Green quotes Begbie’s “autocratic, hard, obstinate and incurably radical’ comments about Dunn, and assumed that Dunn and Booth did not have “a warm or loving relationship, but one of an authoritarian teacher and passive student.”[xl] This is probably true, but in fairness to any clergyman with a congregation approaching 2,000 it is hard to expect him to get close to more than a few of that number. One also has to wonder whether William Booth, the future General, was ever entirely passive.
 
The Real Samuel Dunn (1797-1882)

Samuel Dunn was born in Megavissy in Cornwall in the far south-west of England. His father was a sea captain and a smuggler who became a Methodist. John Wesley had strong views about smuggling, which he passed on to his followers: if you wanted to engage in smuggling then you could not belong to a Methodist society. So, presumably, Dunn senior gave up the practice.
It is unclear when and how Samuel was converted, but he entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1819, under the influence of the scholar Adam Clarke, whom Catherine Booth later admired.

In 1822 Clarke asked for volunteers to take the Methodism Gospel to the Shetland Islands in the far north of Scotland, as far as one can get from Cornwall and still be in Britain. Samuel Dunn took up the challenge and teamed with John Nicolson, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, in the Shetlands. In 1823 there was a Methodist-led revival in those islands. On one occasion Dunn preached to about 250 fishermen sitting on the beach in Stenness and to an even larger crowd later that same day. In one district of about 70 families more than 80 people met in Methodist class meetings. So effective was their work in those islands that by 1828 there were four Methodist circuits in Shetland, with about 1,000 members. Methodism remained strong in Shetland until well into the twentieth century. Dunn then moved back to England, serving in a circuit in Rochdale in Lancashire in the north,[xli]  before moving to Nottingham.

Hattersley also mentions that in November 1847, so when Booth was still attending his church, Dunn preached three sermons entitled, “The Preparations for a Revival”, “The Time for a Revival” and “The Symptoms of a Revival.”[xlii] These sermons do not sound particularly traditional or conservative. Here he was most likely influenced by James Caughey, the Irish-American evangelist, who first visited England in 1841.[xliii] Caughey preached to large crowds in Dunn’s church in 1846.[xliv] In one of Caughey’s books he had chapters “On Revival Preaching”, “Of Methods to Promote a Revival” and “Revival Excitements”. While this book may have been first published after Dunn’s sermons, it is likely that the American preached or lectured on these themes in England before the book was published.[xlv]

Charles Grandison Finney was almost certainly another influence upon Dunn. Finney’s Lectures on Revivals was published in Britain in 1837 and it made an immediate and big impact upon many British preachers of different denominations.[xlvi] Its lecture titles included “What a Revival of Religion is”, “When a Revival is to be expected”, “How to Promote a Revival” and “Measures to Promote Revivals.”[xlvii]

It would seem almost certain that Caughey influenced Dunn, and Finney probably did. Neither of these two visitors could be called conservative and they each made a practice of not toeing the party line. As shall be seen, Dunn also refused to toe that line.

The fact that Dunn invited Caughey to preach at his church, also suggests that he was progressive rather than conservative. As Richard Carwardine said, “Wesleyan Methodists gave Caughey a mixed reception.” Some, like Dunn, supported him. Others were strongly opposed to him. This opposition was partly because of new methods that he was introducing and partly because, though he was a Methodist, he was under no denominational control.[xlviii]

Isaac Marsden was another travelling Methodist evangelist who preached at Wesley Chapel, and, as far as is known, in Dunn’s time there. Marsden was born in the north of England, where he was converted and faithfully ministered, but his methods were unorthodox and not always approved.[xlix] William Booth, who was a teenager when he first heard Marsden, thought he was terrific. He said, “no one could hear him who had any belief in the great truths of the Bible without being deeply impressed and stimulated.” Marsden certainly “impressed and stimulated” Booth, and his preaching appears to have been a factor in Booth’s conversion.[l]

Catherine Mumford had a very different opinion of Marsden. She told her fiancé, “As to that Isac Marsden, he might be sincere, but [he is] exceeding injudicious & violent. I would not attend one of his prayer meetings on any account. I don’t believe the gospel needs such roaring & foaming to make it effective, & to some minds it would make it appear ridiculous & bar them against its reception forever.”

But what needs to be noted here is that Wesley Chapel appears to have invited a man to preach in its pulpit, who at least one reasonable person thought used “exceeding injudicious & violent” methods. With that in mind, that chapel again does not sound conservative, and if Dunn was the minister at that time, then it is another factor that suggests he was progressive rather than conservative.

In the mid- and late 1840s there was a great crisis in Wesleyan Methodism that saw a Reform movement emerge, which resulted in a staggering 100,000 leaving that denomination, with many, probably most, joining other Methodist bodies. (In fact, both William Booth and Catherine Mumford, independently of each other, were amongst those who left the Wesleyans and joined the Methodist Reformers.)

The crisis was about the government of the denomination, with the Reformers rebelling against the control exercised by the powerful elite of London clergy, led by Jabez Bunting. A number of “Fly Sheets” criticising these leaders had been published and distributed amongst the Methodists. Dunn was not involved in producing these Fly Sheets, but he did edit the Wesley Banner and Revival Record, which supported them. He was asked to cease publishing the Banner, which he refused to do, so he was dismissed from the Wesleyan Methodist denomination in 1849.[lii] A number of Booth biographers have referred to Dunn’s dismissal from the Wesleyan Church.[liii] Begbie said that Dunn was “incurably radical” and so he was.[liv]

For a time Dunn moved around, promoting the Reform movement. He then returned to Cornwall, taking up ministry in Camborne.[lv] Catherine Bramwell-Booth points out that William and Catherine had contact with him in 1861, soon after they had become independent evangelists. They began their first mission in the Cornish town of Hayle in August 1861. While in Hayle Catherine told her parents in a letter, “William went by invitation to see the Rev Samuel Dunn at Camborne, four miles from here, the other day, and he [Dunn] wants us to go there. He will be away from his chapel next Sunday, and I am to preach for him, and to stay for two or three evenings, as my strength serves.”[lvi] In other words, Samuel Dunn, a man often regarded as conservative, was willing to allow a woman to preach from his pulpit.

Eventually both Catherine and William evangelised in Camborne. The Wesleyan Times, a Methodist Reformers’ publication, reported that they conducted campaigns in Camborne and nearby Redruth for a total of 18 weeks, and “at least 3,000 souls were brought to Jesus.”[lvii] Samuel Dunn must have been well pleased.
 
Conclusions
 
The early Booth biographers say a number of negative things about Samuel Dunn and his church, which have been copied, and even exaggerated by some later writers. How true are these negative comments? Harold Begbie called Dunn “autocratic, hard, obstinate,” and he boiled down Dunn’s kindness, that Booth had spoken of, to something akin to duty, saying “there was nothing of warmth and generosity in this kindness; it was always cold, formal and aloof.”[lviii] St John Ervine called Dunn “icily cold and so aloof”, and here he was probably copying Begbie. Ervine also described him as an “arrogant and autocratic” man, who “rigorously ruled his congregation”,[lix] which are words probably also influenced by Begbie. These writers and others also imply that Dunn was very conservative.

The evidence we have does suggest that Dunn was autocratic and he may have “ruled his congregation” with some rigour and been formal in his relationship with Booth. But where is the evidence to suggest that he was “hard, obstinate”, “always cold … and aloof” and “arrogant”? I must argue that no evidence has been given to support the use of these terms, and they would seem to be prejudiced guesses. It is possible that these negative thoughts may have originated with Booth, but no evidence has been found that they did. It must also be remembered that Booth also made positive comments about Dunn, such as his kindness and the help he gave, which often seem to be forgotten. In fact, a 1901 edition of the War Cry quotes “one of William’s friends” as saying that Dunn helped “him more than any other minister.”[lx]

The evidence we have overall shows Samuel Dunn to be a good man, a positive preacher of the word, a keen evangelist and a reformer, but with some flaws in his character. Thus Samuel Dunn and the church he led in Nottingham have often been unfairly treated by writers over the years. It is time that the man and his role in the development of William Booth were reassessed.

Endnotes

[i] The first major biography about either William or Catherine Booth was Frederick de L. Booth-Tucker’s The Life of Catherine Booth (2 vols. London: Salvation Army, 1892). (There was also a three volume edition of this book. It has the same text, but larger print.) In my judgment there were three probably four major sources for this biography.  The first was Catherine’s Reminiscences, the first half of which has since been lost. The second source was William Booth’s diary that he kept spasmodically. This unfortunately was destroyed in WWII. The third main source is the collection of letters that William and Catherine wrote to each other, many of which have also now been lost. (I published the extant letters in 2003 and the remaining half of the Reminiscences in 2005, both in book form; I then published them in e-form in 2011, along with Catherine’s very brief Diary, in three PDF files on a CD.) In addition, Booth-Tucker had conversations with the General, from which he gleaned some of the information that appears in this book.
[ii] George Scott Railton, General Booth (London: Salvation Army, 1912), 17, from an address to young officers of The Salvation Army.
[iii] David Malcolm Bennett, The General: William Booth (2 vols. FL: Xulon, 2003), 1:41.
[iv] Harold Begbie, Life of William Booth (2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1920), 1:84.
[v] Richard Collier, The General Next to God (London: Collins, 1965), 30.
[vi] Lemon Lingwood (ed), The Illustrated Handbook to Nottingham (1906), on
<www.nottshistory.org.uk/nottingham1906/nottingham6.htm”> accessed 1 Jan. 2016. David Malcolm Bennett attended a Methodist Chapel of similar design in his childhood in London and never thought of it as unpleasant or barrack-like. Mind you, it could be cold in winter.
[vii] Railton, General Booth, 17, from an address to young officers of The Salvation Army.
[viii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:85.
[ix] Charles T. Bateman, Everybody’s Life of General Booth (London Marshall, c.1914), 5.
[x] General Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (London: Salvation Army, 1890), 1.
[xi] Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:51-52.
[xii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:87.
[xiii] Railton, General Booth, 12, from an address by General Booth.
[xiv] Railton, General Booth, 17, from an address to young officers of The Salvation Army.
[xv] Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:52.
[xvi] Railton, General Booth, 17, from an address to young officers of The Salvation Army.
[xvii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:87-88. Ervine quoted Begbie on this, St John Ervine God’s Soldier (2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1934), 1:40-41.
[xviii] Roy Hattersley, Blood and Fire (NY: Doubleday, 1999), 27.
[xix] Roger J. Green, The Life and Ministry of William Booth (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 24.
[xx] John Petty, The History of Primitive Methodism (new ed. London: Davies, 1864), 9-39.
[xxi] Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:51-52.
[xxii] Railton, General Booth, 17, from an address to young officers of The Salvation Army.
[xxiii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:85.
[xxiv] See Bennett, The General, 1:49; J. E. Page, “William Booth’s First Salvation Efforts”, The War Cry, 2 Aug. 1919, 10.
[xxv] Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:51-52.
[xxvi] Ervine, God’s Soldier, 1:38. Ervine says, “deacons”, not “leaders”, but English Methodism at this time did not have deacons.
[xxvii] Collier, General, 30-31.
[xxviii] Collier, General, 32. I have been unable to find a source for Collier’s detailed comments. However, his apparently false account has since been quoted word for word by three books that I am aware of, but will not name, dated 1991, 2003 and 2015. I have also found it in some online sermons, and all appear to be copying Collier.
[xxix] Oliver A. Beckerlegge, “Pew Rents”, in John A. Vickers (ed.), A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (Peterborough: Epworth, 2000), 271. Hereafter DMBI.
[xxx] Page, “William Booth’s First Salvation Efforts”, 10.
[xxxi] William Booth, “Memorandum”, in W. T. Stead, General Booth: A Biographical Sketch (London: Isbister, 1891), 37.
[xxxii] Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:51-52. Booth-Tucker’s account is copied word for word in Bateman, General Booth, 7.
[xxxiii] When I was editing the Booth Letters I often found that Booth-Tucker’s version of a letter drifted, sometimes imaginatively, from the originals. This has also been noticed by others.
[xxxiv] Begbie, William Booth, 1:91.
[xxxv] Ervine, God’s Soldier, 1: 41.
[xxxvi] For example, see Letters CM 6, 5 Dec. 1852, CM 7, 12 Dec. 1852, CM 9, 17 Dec. 1852, Letters of William and Catherine Booth, CD, (ed. David Malcolm Bennett, Brisbane, Camp Hill Publications, 2011), 28, 33-34, 37.
[xxxvii] Bennett, General, 1:184-86.
[xxxviii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:85.
[xxxix] Ervine, God’s Soldier, 1:40-41, 191.
[xl] Green, William Booth, 22.
[xli] Tom Lennie, Land of Many Revivals (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2015), 236-37; Beckerlegge, “Samuel Dunn” and   Margaret Batty, “Shetland and Orkney” in Vickers, DMBI, 101, 316.
[xlii] Hattersley, Blood, 32, quoting Samuel Dunn, Samuel Dunn’s Shetland and Orkney Journal: 1822-25 (ed. Harold R. Bowes, Sheffield: 1976).
[xliii] Bennett, General, 1:124-25.
[xliv] Begbie, William Booth, 1:9, 61-62.
[xlv] James Caughey, Revival Miscellanies (9th ed. by R. W. Allen and D. Wise, Boston: Magee, 1852), viii. I have been unable to establish when this selection was originally published. The fact that this ninth edition was published in 1852 could suggest that the original edition appeared before 1847.
[xlvi] Bennett, General, 1:125-26.
[xlvii] Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (2nd ed. NY: Leavitt, 1835), vii-viii.
[xlviii] Richard Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America: 1790-1865 (Westport, Greenwood, 1978), 126-31.
[xlix] “Isaac Marsden: Earnest Merchant Preacher”, <www.pawcreek.org/testimonies/isaac-marsden> accessed 6 Jan. 2016.

[l] Bennett, General, 1:35.

Letter CM 29, 20 Mar. 1853, Letters of William and Catherine Booth, CD, 90. It should be noted that early Salvation Army meetings were more in line with what William Booth liked, rather than the more formal methods approved by Catherine.

[lii] O. A. Beckerlegge, “Samuel Dunn” and “Fly Sheets”, and J. A. Vickers, “Wesley Banner and Revival Record”, in Vickers, DMBI, 101, 125, 382-83; Maldwyn Edwards, Methodism and England (London: Epworth, 1943), 22-29.
[liii] See for example Begbie, William Booth, 1:85; Ervine, God’s Soldier, 1:191-93; Hattersley, Blood, 30-32; Green, William Booth, 52.
[liv] Begbie, William Booth, 1:85.
[lv] Beckerlegge, “Samuel Dunn”, in Vickers, DMBI, 101.
[lvi] Letter from Catherine Booth to Mr & Mrs Mumford, August 1861, in Catherine Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth: The Story of her Loves (London: Hodder, 1970), 214.
[lvii] The Wesleyan Times, quoted in Hattersley, Blood, 135. For more details about the Redruth and Camborne campaigns see Booth-Tucker, Catherine Booth, 1:351-55.
[lviii] Begbie, William Booth, 1:85.
[lix] Ervine, God’s Soldier, 1:40, 191.
[lx] The War Cry, 19 Oct. 1901, in Hattersley, Blood, 27.

©David Malcolm Bennett 2016
 

No Comments Yet

Comments are closed.