Maud Ballington Booth: the "Little Mother" of the prisons

              Figure

Maud Ballington Booth
THE LITTLE MOTHER OF THE PRISONS
REDPATH




RAINBOW HOUSE GWYNEDD, PA.



Figure


High among the names of women who have devoted their lives to the worldwide cause of human salvage is that of Maud Ballington Booth.  History may say, Her name leads all the rest.  Multitudes of humanity-loving hearts have been thrilled by her story and that of the Volunteer Prison League, which she founded and by her own efforts has sustained and vitalized.  More than 85,000 men while serving prison sentences have ascribed their complete regeneration to it and are still its loyal supporters.  National prison reforms have been promoted, and a number of splendid and valuable rural properties in widely separated states, temporary homes for discharged prisoners, have been acquired, equipped, and are now in operation.  To these, friendless prisoners go immediately when discharged, remaining until they or the League find employment where they can win back that which was lost.  Well has Mrs. Booth named these homes Hope Halls, and the homes established for sick and starving,

ENTRANCE TO NEW YORK HOPE HALL
 helpless and blameless wives and children of prisoners, Rainbow Houses.  Many thousands of graduates from Hope Hall have become useful and respected citizens.  Practically none has returned to crime.  Hundreds have their own happy homes.  Some are in positions of great trust and responsibility, and two are earning over $10,000 a year.

Great as is this work, a far greater one still awaits on the genius, the marvellous resourcefulness of its founder.  That a personality so powerful should be at the same time the most loved and honored, most successful, most sought after woman speaker on the American platform is not surprising, for the ability to effectively plead her cause is no small factor in its success.  If she would lecture for selfish money-getting, a competence or a fortune would be hers in a year.  At present she can devote only a few dates each season to the platform, and money thus earned goes to the support of her Hope Halls, the financial burden of which
 rests on her shoulders with well-nigh over-whelming responsibility.  Mrs. Booth's addresses are entirely new with each succeeding season, for the incidents of her work furnish far more material of entrancing interest than she can possibly utilize.  She is the god-mother in thousands of homes, not a fairy god-mother either, but one who brings actual blessing and comfort.  As such, she is revered.  Recently at the great prison at Joliet, Ill., when the chapel was in flames, two prisoners climbed over icy ladders and actually through the fire to rescue from destruction an ordinary portrait of The Little Mother, which hung on the chapel walls.  The very thought of the picture being consumed by fire impelled them to risk their lives for its recovery.  Her Boys beg for the opportunity to decorate prison chapels for her coming, and their painstaking efforts to show their gratitude melt the stoutest hearts.

Mrs. Booth is not a sentimentalist, but believes that imprisonment should tend toward reformation, and she is today recognized as one of the world's leading exponents of sane prison reform.  Without consulting or even advising her the governors of thirty-eight states petitioned President Wilson to appoint her the American delegate to the world's prison congress.  The outbreak of the war, of course, caused the abandonment of the congress, but the specific, signed endorsements of these thirty-eight governors form a most unusual testimonial.  There is space here for but one or two:

To my mind Mrs. Ballington Booth is one of the most remarkable women in the world.  I am weighing my words when I say this.  If there is any other woman in the world who has done more for sane prison reform, I should like very much to know who she is.  If any man has done greater work along these lines, I should like to know his name.

WOODBRIDGE N. FERRIS, Governor of Michigan.

It is unnecessary for me to call attention to the work done by this noble woman in the prisons and reformatories and among the fallen of our land.  I think she is eminently qualified to represent our great country.

EARL BREWER, Governor of Mississippi.


MRS. BOOTH TALKING TO HER BOYS IN THE STATE PRISON, RICHMOND, VA.




HOPE HALL NEW YORK


Mrs. Booth is averse to the printing of newspaper opinions of her work as a lecturer.  It is her message, her Boys, that she would bring to the notice of the public, not any gifts or abilities of her own.  But we can pass on to others the opinion from one in touch with the prison-world who knows of her work and can endorse its practical efficacy.

Superintendent Leonard, of the Mansfield Reformatory, when introducing Mrs. Booth in his capacity as President of the Prison Association, said: Now, we that administer prisons know Mrs. Booth's value.  The matter of discipline is a very delicate subject, and some very well-meaning, and otherwise very wise people, who want to help us, do not always have the wisdom to do so.  Mrs. Booth has studied this question for years, and there is not a prison from the Atlantic to the Pacific that is not open to her, and our discipline is always surer and always better for her having been there.

The Boys in prison have lovingly called Mrs. Booth The Little Mother, and one of them voices in his letter something of the secret of the power of that name: There were many things that had a tendency to change my life while in prison.  But the essential thing was your voice, rich with the pathos from a mother's heart, that affected me.  After seventeen years of wandering without a woman's voice to direct me, I came near forgetting the memory of my mother.  But your most wonderful voice recalled certain lingering visions of her and her love of the long ago.  It was the first time in years that my heart was softened, or tears came to my eyes.  I feel that it was the sympathy in your voice that brought this change into my life and brought me to realize the great debt I owed to the memory of that dear, dead mother.  The man who wrote these words never saw Mrs. Booth's face, for she was in a prison of solitary confinement and spoke down the long corridors and could only be to her boys a voice and a messenger.

It may be of interest to mention that Mrs. Booth is the daughter of an Episcopal clergyman.  Her maiden name was Maud Charlesworth.  The late Florence Barclay, author of The Rosary, was her sister.  She had every advantage in education, and in her home had always before her the beautiful example of unselfish devotion to the cause of the poor and needy in the service of her father and mother in their work among the poor of London.  She consecrated her life to public service at the age of seventeen, working as an evangelist and missionary in

CHICAGO HOPE HALL BUILT BY MRS. BOOTH

England, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.  But she always feels that her real life work dates from the time, over thirty years ago, when she commenced her labors in this country at her husband's side.  Mrs. Booth is a very ardent American, having taken out her papers of citizenship when she began her work in America and loves her adopted country with a zeal that has made her serve it in any way within her power regardless of sacrifice, difficulty, or hard work.  That a woman who could plan, organize, and develop to its present magnitude such a work as the Volunteer Prison League would exert a world-wide influence is inevitable.  This influence has been greatly extended through her public writings, and if her literary efforts are measured by their worth as well as their popular appeal, their author ranks high in American letters.  Among her published volumes are After Prison, What?  Sleepy Time Stories, Lights of Childland, Twilight Fairy Tales, etc.  A recent book is her novel entitled Was It Murder?  which has met with much favor.

That which Mrs. Booth has to tell is the story of a personal experience and of living facts in the great prison-world in which she has been the pioneer in faith and hope for those that the world had well-night abandoned as hopeless.

In every State the deepest interest is now being manifested in prison reform problems, but when Mrs. Booth commenced her work, tradition, sentiment, and prejudice were all against the convict.  Her work in the Volunteer Prison League commenced when she and her husband severed their connection with the Salvation Army over twenty years ago.  They took that step because they disapproved of much in the government, methods, and measures of that English organization, and they have always since felt that the step which was then so painful was ordained of God, as it made possible for them far wider fields in the dear country of their adoption.  Mrs. Ballington Booth's prison work alone has proved the wisdom of the step which they then took.



Some of Mrs. Booth's subjects are:

Twenty Years of Service in Human Salvage
Rainbows
After Prison, What?
Heart Mending
Safety First—the Movement for Crime Prevention
Out of the Shadows
The Regeneration of the Hopeless





MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH
Figure


MRS. BOOTH is the only woman orator of a decade whom the public will turn out and pay to hear.  Why?  She is the ablest woman orator in America, and her cause is the most worthy.  She probably is the most beloved woman in the land and is certainly the most attractive of all women speakers.  She has fire and magnetism—gifts of the highest oratorical order—sustained and animated by deep conviction, high purpose, and burning earnestness.

After hearing Mrs. Booth, Willard French, a prominent Washington editor, wrote:

Mrs. Booth is a mite of a woman.  'Little Mother' is her name among convicts and ex-convicts from Maine to California, and she calls them all 'My Boys.'  But she is so brim full of savoir faire, of fire, and energy that you can think of her only as one who could easily move mountains, which she frequently does.  Her face is supremely earnest—lovingly earnest—its instinctive tendency strengthened by a lifetime labor among the outcasts and outlaws.  She has the perfect composure of a personality wholly submerged in a message.  Her remarkable voice is all music—penetrating without a harsh or rasping note.  Her enunciation is perfect.  There is no apparent effort, neither is there any difficulty to hear.  The words are soft and musical.  Her face, her manner, her sentiments are all the inspiration of earnestness, but there is no surfeit, for pathos and humor, comedy and tragedy drift absolutely side by side down the same silver stream.  You laugh with tears in your eyes.

With beautiful words, in telling touches, she paints a picture in a paragraph that preaches a sermon, tells a tale, fastens itself indelibly.  For example: 'In slime and filth, at the bottom of a black, stagnant pool, five, eight, ten feet below the foul surface, there is a bud.  There is no power beneath to push it, but there is a power above.  The sun shines on the surface of the stagnant slime.  No one can see the bud.  No one suspects that it is there.  But the sun shines on the surface.  The deep hidden bud knows it, feels it, hears the call, and responds.  Up and up and up, slowly it creeps through the filth and mud, seeking the sunlight, till finally it breaks from the slimy water.  It bursts open in the sunlight, and out of those foul depths has come a beautiful waterlily.  It is so that the soul of Hope comes through and out of a life of sin to answer the call of the sunlight of Love.'

NOTE—To prevent confusion it should be noted that Mrs. Ballington Booth has no connection with the Salvation Army.  Her husband is the President of the Volunteers of America.