William Booth (1829–1912) was born in Nottingham and apprenticed to a pawnbroker, where he saw poverty at close hand. Converted in a Methodist chapel, he became a minister of the Methodist New Connexion, then an independent evangelist. In 1865 he began preaching in East London, and his Christian Mission was renamed the Salvation Army in 1878, with military ranks, uniforms and brass bands. With his wife Catherine Booth, a noted preacher, he built it into an international movement combining evangelism with social work. In Darkest England (1890) launched its large social programme. He was known as General Booth until his death.
In Darkest England and the Way Out, published in London in October 1890 by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, is both a survey of poverty in England and a detailed plan to relieve it. Its title deliberately echoes the explorer Henry Morton Stanley's In Darkest Africa, published earlier that year, and asks why the nation was so concerned with distant Africa while a 'darkest England' of misery lay at home.