W.T. Stead to Bramwell Booth, (November 19, 1885)

Quoted in Harold Begbie, The Life of General William Booth (2 vols., New York, 1920)

Dear Bramwell

You are down in the dumps.

Don’t be down in the dumps.

I tell you my imprisonment is a great blessing and will be a greater. It would be a thousand pities to get me out. Don’t be savage or indignant or contemptuous or anything, but joyful and grateful and willing to do God’s will.

Poor ‘Becca, I would offer to change places with her, but it would be no use and the people would think that the proposal was merely made for theatricality, so I must just hope and pray that God may be with her where she is.

It is no use you troubling to come up to Holloway. The rule is in cast-iron. Waugh, Mrs. Fawcett, George Russel, and Bunting have all been peremptorily refused. I see no one, only Wife, Talbot, and Stout.

I am very sorry to see that the Glasgow bailies have sent the Freethinker seller to gaol for six days for your caricature. It will do harm, and I wish I could get him out.