Catherine Booth Statue at the William Booth Memorial Training College

Photo credit - Reading Tom

A statue honoring Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army, welcomes visitors to the William Booth Memorial Training College, the headquarters of the Salvation Army leadership and officer training.

Catherine Mumford Booth (1829-1890) was born in Ashbourne into a Methodist family. She was a devoted Christian, and from a young age, she was an activist in the Temperance movement, serving as secretary of a Juvenile Temperance Society and writing articles for a temperance magazine.

After getting expelled from her Wesleyan Methodists congregation for being a reformer, she established a Sunday school class for the reformers’ girls. At the time, she met the Methodist minister William Booth, and the couple married in 1855.

She developed feminist beliefs and advocated for women’s right to preach the gospel. In the following years, she followed her values and became a preacher in the Methodist Church. In her preaches, she focused on poverty and injustice and especially looked for people who struggle with alcoholism, trying to help them start a new way of life.

In 1865, Booth and her husband founded the East London Christian Mission, later renamed The Salvation Army. In this charitable missionary organization, the couple helped destitute people, mainly prostitutes, alcoholics, and gamblers, to fulfill their “physical and spiritual needs.”

Today, the Salvation Army operates in 132 countries, operating homeless shelters and charity shops, and providing humanitarian aid.

Catherine Booth’s statue stands at the entrance to the Salvation Army headquarters. The artist George Edward Wade created it, and the future Duke of Kent unveiled it on July 8th, 1929, and again in 1930 when he dedicated her husband’s statue, which stands on the other side of the entrance.

The bronze statue depicts her in her Salvation Army uniform; one hand carries a Bible close to her heart, while the other reaches out open.
The inscription on the granite plinth reads:
MRS. CATHERINE BOOTH
THE ARMY MOTHER
BORN JANUARY 17TH 1829
PROMOTED TO GLORY
OCTOBER 4TH 1890

On the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Salvation Army, the women of the Salvation Army in the United States donated a replica of this sculpture, and it was unveiled next to her husband’s statue on Mile End Rd, East London, near the location they founded the Salvation Army.

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William Booth Memorial Training College, Champion Park, London, England, UK

 

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