EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: CATHERINE MUMFORD BOOTH P/16

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

This is my final post on on a woman named Catherine Mumford Booth. She lived from 1829 - 1890

Early in 1873, Catherine began to hold services in Portsmouth. Within a few months, she gathered a congregation of 3,000 people in a music-hall frequented mostly by soldiers and sailors.

Catherine presented her ideas about the ministry of women in the pamphlet published in 1859 "Female Ministry: Or Women's Right To Preach The Gospel." She also supported the suffrage movement hoping that women voters "would be a powerful voice for good in the world." She believed that intellectually woman was man's equal, but the lack of training or lack of opportunity made her sometimes inferior.

When the Salvation Army was established in 1878, Catherine began recruitment of young women, mostly from working classes, later called "Hallelujah lasses," whose task was to bring relief to female and child residents of slum districts. She contributed significantly to the establishment of rescue homes for young prostitutes and wayward and delinquent women.

On 21 June 1888, Catherine made her last public appearance in the City Temple. She was stricken with cancer and retired to Clacton at the Sea. She died on 4 October, 1890.

Read Part Seventeen HERE