By the middle of the 19th century the methodist denomination for whom William Booth was an itinerant preacher had become a very respectable organisation and much of fire and fervour in which it had been born during the great awakening a century earlier had died down.
William Booth hailed from Nottinghamshire, when he arrived in London's East end he was staggered by the poverty he encountered among the working classes. He resigned his commission with the methodist new connection and set up The East London Christian Mission.
His first preaching engagement in the new mission was outside the notorious "Blind Beggar" pub in Whitechapel Rd a known hive of prostitution, gambling and every kind of vice.
He threw his hat on to the ground outside the pub and started preaching to it the love of God in sending His Son to die on the cross to redeem men and women from the wicked paths they had chosen for themselves, among the missiles that were hurled in response to his loving invitation to be saved were human excrement, offal and at least one live cat. But three persons got saved so the following evening they set up a tent in a field opposite and God honoured the work by bringing many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
One freezing november night Booth was walking over London bridge with his son Bramwell and peering over the bridge he discerned rows of cardboard boxes seemingly filled with newspaper, he enquired what they were and Bramwell told him "why father did you not know, they are men and women who have no home, they sleep out in those boxes.
William Booth was distraught, he went home in an agony of grief that such a thing could be so. He paced the floor, back and forth pulling on his beard, "and you knew, you knew, but you did nothing."
From that time onwards the E.L.C.M. started buying up or renting empty warehouses and like buildings and the first hostels were formed. Each building bore this sign, NO MAN NEED BEG, STEAL, STARVE, SLEEP OUT AT NIGHTS, BE A PAUPER OR COMMIT SUICIDE-WE WILL HELP YOU.
In may 1878 Booth summoned Bramwell and his closest ally George Railton to read a proof of the annual statement of the E.L.C.M. at the top of which was written The Christian Mission is a voluntary association. Bramwell objected to the word voluntary "I am not a volunteer, I must serve." William Booth took his pen and crossed the words voluntary association out and wrote in their place SALVATION ARMY.