Early-day Salvos ordered to ‘go for the roughs, toughs and larrikins’

A photo taken in 1894 of a group of ‘young larrikins’, known as the Bayswater Boys. It was groups like this that often disrupted early Salvation Army meetings.

BY BARRY GITTINS

The Salvation Army was born out of a love for the poor, the marginalised and the brutalised people of the nations; that ‘preferential option for the poor’ lasted well into the 1960s.

In his sermon on the mount, Jesus Christ taught that heaven belonged to the poor in spirit, that those who mourn would be comforted, and that the meek would inherit the earth.

Those qualities are often found in crisis-ridden tenements and villages on the brink of socio-economic collapse.

Some 107 years ago, in The Salvation Army’s Orders and Regulations for Field Officers, our officers were urged to reach out to “roughs, larrikins and hoodlums or toughs”, in “low public-houses or saloons and brothels and gambling dens”.

An early Orders and Regulations book.

These targets of the early Salvos’ evangelical efforts “have grown up largely ignorant of religion, and if not actually antagonistic to it, they are perfectly indifferent”.

In passionate, surprisingly satirical tones, the book sets out ‘how not to’ reach larrikins: “Keep away from them ... leave them to harden in sin, sink lower in vice and crime, and go to Hell without being disturbed. Have doorkeepers who will keep them out of the Hall, because they do not act like ladies and gentlemen ...

“Talk to them in language they do not understand ... look down upon them as an inferior class of people ... Scold them [and] treat them like people who are never likely to become religious ...“Be impatient [and] threaten them a great deal ... always be running for the police getting out summonses, making them pay fines, or sending them to prison ...”

Thankfully, the Regulations followed up with positive instructions on ‘how to’ appeal to the rowdy, rough and ready.

These included going to them. Being friendly and making events interesting to them. Talking to them in the meetings, and while out and about on the streets. Visiting them when they are ill and feeding them.

Officers were instructed “not to be too particular” about how they acted, or get in a stink if they wanted to clap their hands or shuffle their feet. If the ringleaders mucked up and interfered with the meetings, they were to be banned for a week and then re-admitted “on the promise of their good behaviour”.

Salvationists used to be told to “run risks, and suffer any reasonable amount of inconvenience, rather than lose them … They are a difficult class to deal with [but] make all possible sacrifices [as] numbers of them have been converted and have become soldiers in the Army, some of whom are now highly valued and useful officers.

“Once saved, they [are] full of spirit and daring, ready to face any danger, and endure any hardship.”

The chapter outlining orders and regulations in dealing with ‘roughs, toughs and larrikins’.