With the opening in Southport of the new Salvation Army Building

http://www.qlocal.co.uk/southport/fo...51201376-2.htm


I thought it was appropriate for me to post a photograph of a pair of plates.

Pair of treacle ware plates Circa 1912

Left 'General' William Booth and right 'Army Mother' Catherine Mumford

probably made at the time of his death at the Ridgways factory at Bedford Works, Shelton, Hanley.






Commemorative ware is very collectible and theses pair of plates are very unusual, Mr William Booth and Mrs Catherine Mumford Booth
the founders of the Salvation Army



William Booth was born in Nottingham in 1829. At the age of 13 he was sent to work as an apprentice in a pawnbroker's shop to help support his mother and sisters. He did not enjoy his job but it made him only too aware of the poverty in which people lived and how they suffered humiliation and degradation because of it. During his teenage years he became a Christian and spent much of his spare time trying to persuade other people to become Christians too.





After his marriage to Catherine Mumford in 1855




he spent several years as a Methodist minister, travelling all around the country, preaching and sharing God's word to all who would listen. Yet he felt that God wanted more from him, that he should be doing more to reach ordinary people. He returned to London with his family, having resigned his position as a Methodist minister.

Catherine was behind many of the changes in the new movement, designing a flag, bonnets for the ladies and contributing to the Army's ideas on many important issues and matters of belief.

When she died in 1890 it was a great loss. Her life had been a challenge to thousands who remembered her as an untiring soldier in God's Army


http://www.salvationarmy.org/heritag...2?OpenDocument


Inevitably, the military spirit of the movement meant that The Salvation Army soon spread abroad. By the time Booth was ‘promoted to Glory’ in 1912 the Army was at work in 58 countries.


May be some one would like to comment on the use of words

‘promoted to Glory’

I presume this phrase means he had died.

Do the followers of the Salvation Army look at William Booth as a Prophet of God. In the same way as the followers of Joseph Smith do of the Mormon Church of the Latter Day Saints.
I am lead to believe that Joseph Smith himself did not think he was a prophet.