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'Georgie' Booth
At the Christian Mission conference of 1877, Booth reported: 'I believe I can say for my dear wife as for myself that we have no greater joy than to see our children devote themselves to the redemption and salvation of the masses. May God accept all the nine for his service! I believe he will'
There are several references to the Booth's 'nine' children and also to Georgie Booth as being 'the General's little son'. However, little is known of George Booth and he seems to fade quietly in to Salvation Army oblivion, except for a brief mention in an unpublished letter of 1890, that he had arrived safely in New York.
'Harry' Henry John Andrews [b.1873 d.1919]
'Harry' Andrews
The History of the Salvation Army - vol. 3, Ch.28, p.166, says that Lt Colonel (Dr) Henry J Andrews was brought up in The Salvation Army Nursery at Clapton when the then Miss Emma Booth was the Principal of the Officers' Training Home. As a youth of fifteen he accompanied her when upon her marriage she went with her husband, Commissioner Booth-Tucker, to India.
It is suggested that he arrived in the Booth household in around 1873 as a new-born baby. In an extract from 'Echoes and Memories', Bramwell Booth recalled:
'Near my father's house on the corner of Victoria Park there was a little street of workmen's houses... In the course of my early work in the Mission I frequently visited in this street, especially the sick, which as a lad I was rather fond of doing. In one of these houses I came across the wife of one of our own people, belonging to the Society in Bethnal Green. The man was a foreman in a cardboard box factory in the City. They had numerous family, and the wife who had lately given birth to another child, was very ill. It was soon evident that she was sick unto death... Her last request to me was that I would take charge of her baby - the latest of her family. Perhaps not altogether realising what I was undertaking, I promised that I would.
Naturally I turned to my mother for assistance, and after a certain amount of negotiation the little boy - Harry, we called him was brought into our home and placed under the care of my sister Emma... who was at the time in delicate health, and who found in the training of this baby delightful occupation. The child grew and prospered and gave early evidence of being a child of God. While still in his teens he developed a singular gift for caring for the sick'.
Harry became the Salvation Army's first 'medical man' in India, serving almost 30 years there before dying heroically, whilst a medical officer attached to the Indian Army on the North-West Frontier in 1919. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Dr Harry Andrews
click here for further information on his Victoria Cross award
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