The university of humanity

George Tanton investigates the Army’s early days of officer training

OFFICIALLY opened on 8 July 1929 by His Royal Highness

Prince George, the William Booth Memorial Training College in Denmark Hill was the physical realisation of the Founder’s desire for a ‘world-helping university of humanity’.

The 1930 year book reported that the college was ‘constructed entirely in modern style’ and provided comfortable lodgings and included a library ‘every book-lover dreams of possessing’ and even ‘Russian and Turkish Baths’. As well as learning from Scripture, provision was made so that cadets received a wellrounded education with modules in theology, history, geography, languages and science.

However, the training of cadets was somewhat different from today’s training at William Booth College. In 1907’s The Romance of The Salvation Army, Hulda Friederichs wrote: ‘Sandhurst is but a playground where a pretty game is light-heartedly played, as compared to the discipline awaiting the young Salvation Army recruits when they go to Clapton.’

The training of officers began in 1880 with the opening of a home for 30 women at Hackney, followed by a similar home for men. One of the first training colleges was Clapton Congress Hall, which had been acquired in 1882. Early officer training initially took four to six months, much of which involved practical experience among those most destitute in society.

In 1888, the first commissioner of The Salvation Army, George Scott Railton, expressed in The Nottingham Daily Express that the Army would not survive if its officers were not ‘thoroughly conscious of the perfect sympathy and fellowship which makes all from the General to the cadet share each other’s difficulties and comforts’.

Indeed, training at the turn of the 20th century was not for the faint-hearted. General Bramwell Booth asserted that those considering officership should ‘leave the life of ease and moneymaking, and the struggle to get up in this world, which is bound to go down at last, and come for Jesus Christ’s sake’.

Cadets were thrust to the front line of the Army’s war against sin and injustice; the public houses, gambling dens, workhouses and slums of Victorian Britain’s industrial metropolises made for demanding training arenas.

‘They learn by experience,’ wrote Catherine Booth in 1884, ‘when smitten on one cheek, to turn the other, and how to respond to blasphemy, spitting, and often cruel buffetings by blessing those who curse them, and praying for those who despitefully use them.’

Before being taken into training, cadets pursued preliminary studies. Departure from the institution was followed by 12 months’ probationary service, during which the budding officers were required to undertake a further series of lessons, which had to be successfully completed before they were fully commissioned.

What type of people were required to become officers of The Salvation Army? General Bramwell Booth wrote in the 1914 year book that he wanted people who were ‘educated and uneducated – gentle and refined as well as rough and untutored –those who have a bit of money and those who have none – the classes as well as the masses – all are called for this great enterprise of flooding the whole Earth with the Water of Life’.

Today, cadets continue to pledge themselves to a life of God-led service. To quote General Bramwell’s call to arms, the Army still needs people of ‘every kind of nature, every type of character [and] every sort of experience’.

TANTON Editorial Assistant Salvationist