Come Here To Me!

A contemporary illustration depicts a Skeleton Army on the march.

The Salvation Army has been in business since 1865, today boasting more than 1.7 million members internationally. The ‘Sally Ann’, as generations knew it, has long had a presence in Dublin, establishing themselves here in the 1880s, and still active in the city today. A rather curious part of the history of the Salvation Army concerns its opponents. People who were hostile towards its campaign to ‘clean up the streets’ so to speak – in particular organised mobs who confronted the Salvation Army as they went about their work – became known on the neighbouring island as The Skeleton Army. Carrying banners, beating drums and even wearing mock uniforms, the Skeleton Army  are a curious social history phenomenon, no doubt often encouraged in their work by publicans.  While the term Skeleton Army was not used here to describe opponents of the Salvation Army, the hostility was bad enough in Dublin that the Salvation Army newspaper warned their readers how “the sight of a woman wearing an Army bonnet in the streets” had the same effect in Dublin as “a red rag to an infuriated bull.” When Mrs. Booth, wife of the leader of the Salvation Army, attempted to speak in Dublin in 1882 at a meeting in the Christian Union Buildings, her meeting had to be postponed due to what newspapers termed “riotous proceedings.”

A Protestant charitable body, the Salvation Army was born in London’s East End. It modelled itself on the army in terms of structure, and had its own flags, symbols, uniforms and marching songs. The Salvation Army went right into the slums of Britain, and into what they termed ‘Hostile Areas’.  In Dublin they encountered opposition from the beginning as they were viewed very much as outsiders, in England the form of opposition was sometimes surprising.

The Salvation Army’s rallying cry centered around the Three S’s – soup, soap and salvation. Its opponents raised their own satirical rallying cry in the form of the Three B’s – beef, beer and bacca! The phenomenon of the  Skeleton Army was first noted in England in 1881, when banners with skulls and crossbones on them began appearing at rowdy anti-Salvation Army events. The way they are described in the contemporary press suggests there was real fear, take this from a Bethal Green newspaper:

A genuine rabble of ‘roughs’ pure and unadulterated has been infesting the district for several weeks past. These vagabonds  style themselves the ‘Skeleton Army’…. The ‘skeletons’ have their collectors and their collecting sheets and one of them was thrust into my hands… it contained a number shopkeepers’ names… I found that publicans, beer sellers and butchers are subscribing to this imposture… the collector told me that the object of the Skeleton Army was to put down the Salvationists by following them about everywhere, by beating a drum and burlesquing their songs, to render the conduct of their processions and services impossible.

 The Skeleton Army adopted some ingenious tactics – once, they placed red pepper under the wings of pigeons who were released into a Salvation Army hall during a meeting in northern England. Imagine the sight of terrified birds fluttering about, raining red pepper down on the gathered Salvationists, running from the hall only to be confronted outside by a waiting mob.

On one occasion in Worthing, about 4,000 so-called Skeleton Army showed up to pelt the local Salvation Army hall, and then attacked the towns police station was one of their ranks was imprisoned. In Chester, the violence was so bad that one day became known  as ‘Black Sunday’. Over the course of 1882, there were at least 650 assaults on Salvationists on the street, and more than 55 buildings were damaged. Where do the Irish fit into all of this? It’s probably fair to presume that some of those attacking the Salvationists in England may have had little love for Irish immigrants in Britain either. Yet on the other side of things, it does seem that Irish Catholic migrants got in on the act of attacking the Salvationists too,  perhaps fearful of attempts to convert Irish districts to Protestantism. In Boughton, one newspaper wrote following violence there that “the attacks of the Irish Papists of Boughton on the unoffending Salvationists will be handed down as another proof of the development which the human mind is capable of under the influence of Popish learning.”

In Dublin, the Salvation Army attempted public rallies at the Custom House, a long established location for public speakers, but encountered real opposition. In 1887, it was reported that a mob followed the Salvation Army after one such rally as far as Harcourt Street, where “their car was stopped by the mob and the occupants of it would eventually have been subjected to violence but for the arrival of fifty constables who had followed on the cars.”

Belfast Newsletter report on violence towards Salvation Army in Dublin, October 1887.

This all leaves the very important question – who was making all of this happen? Thousands of people don’t just descend on a scene with banners, drums and uniforms – somebody puts them there. Evidence points towards brewers, publicans and even brothel keepers, all of whom had plenty to lose. One publican in Surrey was revealed to have donated a thousand pounds to the cause of the Skeleton Army, which was a most considerable sum of money in the 1880s.

To some, this all began as a bit of a laugh, and perhaps many who involved themselves in early riots had no real motivation beyond liking the thrill of violence. Things took very sinister turns, and tactics were becoming more and more unsavory and downright vile. Salvationists, including women and children, drenched in the contents of chamber pots. At Guildford, a female Salvationist was fatally injured by a mob. Drunken seamen on the Thames fired ships rockets, essentially flare guns, in the direction of a Salvationist gathering. Rotten vegetables were one thing to have rain down on top of you, burning coals and dead rats were something else entirely.

Curiously, there is evidence of some people making the leap from one to the other. Charles Jeffries from Shadwell had been heavily involved in the Skeleton Army in London, physically attacking Salvationists on more than one occasion and a much feared ‘street fighting man’. He was moved to join the Salvationists after showing up to wreck one of their meetings, later remembering that his old pals in the Skeletons didn’t take well to this and enjoyed attacking him:  “In the Open-Airs my old mates gave me many a blow and kick – but I stuck fast. At times they would follow me home singing, ‘Jeffries will help to roll the old chariot along’ – and, thank God, I am doing it.” He went on to serve the cause in Australia and other places, with the passion of the convert.