WILLIAM William, the third of five children, was born in Sneinton, a suburb of Nottingham, England, on 10th April 1829. Because of the bankruptcy and death of his father in 1842 William left school at thirteen to become a pawnbroker’s apprentice. These were the ‘hungry forties’ with high unemployment and poverty. William witnessed pathetic scenes as people pawned their few possessions in order to have food to eat. William’s family also experienced poverty. His pay of six shillings a week had to support his mother and two younger sisters.

Although as an infant he had been baptised an Anglican, William regularly attended the Wesley Chapel in Broad Street. Here, shortly before his fifteenth birthday, he experienced Christian conversion and committed his life to God.

William was soon spending much of his time preaching in the streets and at cottage meetings. In 1846 he became an official lay preacher. On one occasion he took several of the poorest working class people into the main body of the chapel for a service. He was told that in future such people should enter by the back door and be seated in less prominent pews!

At the end of his six-year apprenticeship as a pawnbroker he found himself unemployed. So in 1849 he went to London to look for work. The only position available was again as a pawnbroker.

He continued his part-time preaching, making a good friend of a wealthy boot manufacturer called Edward Rabbits, a member of the Methodist Reform Movement. In 1852 Rabbits gave financial support to enable William to become a full-time preacher with the Reformers. He also introduced William to a young lady who had admired his preaching, Miss Catherine Mumford.

Catherine Mumford was born at Ashbourne, Derbyshire on 17th January 1829 and her family moved to Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1833.

She was an intelligent girl who is said to have read the Bible through eight times before she was twelve. She also developed strong principles as a child. On one occasion she ran down the road chasing a collier whom she saw hitting his donkey with a hammer and tried to snatch it from his hand. She also gave up sugar because she felt the 'negroes' on the plantations were oppressed. At the age of 13 she suffered a spinal attack. She was to suffer from bouts of serious ill-health throughout her life. The family moved to Brixton, London, in 1844 where Catherine was converted as a teenager in 1846, joined the Methodist Reform chapel and became leader of the senior girls' Bible class.

The meeting of William and Catherine in 1852 was the beginning of a friendship which was to lead to marriage, the Methodist ministry and, eventually, to the founding of The Salvation Army.

Next page: Marriage, family and ministry (1852-1865)

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