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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

SALVATION ARMY

Contents


National Development

With this success in Dunedin, Pollard quickly moved off to Auckland to start the war there (23 April), and thence to Christchurch, cabling to William Booth: “Dunedin Auckland blazing Christchurch shortly reinforce sharp”. Wellington first heard the Salvationists from the stage of the Princess Theatre, Tory Street, on Sunday 17 June. The first issue of the War Cry appeared on 16 June. As in Britain, compassionate women soon began to take needy women and girls into their homes for spiritual and physical care, just as a humble East Ender, a Mrs Cotrell, had laid the foundation of the Army's international social operations by taking street girls into her own home in Christian Street, Whitechapel. Rescue homes were opened in Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Auckland's Prison Gate Brigade and Labour Bureau (1884) founded the extensive and varied social work of the Army in New Zealand. By the close of 1884 there were 30 corps and over 60 full-time officers.

The first of a long series of Court cases over the holding of street meetings occurred in Waimate in January 1885. Two men, who refused to pay fines, spent a week in prison and were met on release by a large crowd of Salvationists with a “war chariot”, in which they rode to a large “praise” meeting. Many other imprisonments followed, until a rising tide of public appreciation of the Salvationists' work ended the difficulty. Meanwhile, experiments in organisation, which more than once took the administration centre to Australia, ended with a complete territorial system in New Zealand. At the present time the Army is concerned with work among the Maori people, farm training for new settlers, migration schemes, care of alcoholics, work among the troops, and many other activities of a social nature.