The biggest ever riot involving the Salvation Army started on this date, in the seaside resort of Worthing, Sussex. On the following day the Dragoons were sent in to restore quiet to the streets; many people were injured and at least one man died.
Pitched battles between the Sally Army and its organised opponents were not uncommon during the 1880s, mostly in southern England. Like many militant Christian sects of the time, the SA was widely seen as being primarily intent on stamping out the few pleasures available to the poor. As well as supporting the prohibition of alcohol, it campaigned against tobacco, gambling, dancing and other proletarian vices.
But opposition to the SA didn’t only come from the working class. Naturally, those businesses which made their money from people having fun (and, indeed, from people suffering from addictions) were worried about the effect of such evangelism on their livelihoods. More surprisingly, to modern eyes, local figures of authority in various towns – police, magistrates, councillors and the like – were just as hostile. They viewed the SA, with its noisy, provocative and frequent street parades, as a serious threat to law and order and the tourist trade. They wanted peace and stability, not anger and confrontation, and they resented the effect the SA’s propaganda, focussed on sin and iniquity, had on a town’s reputation. Besides this there was the SA’s insistence on marching even on Sundays, a disturbance of the sabbath distressing to more conventional Christians.
From somewhere amid this anti-Sally coalition arose the Skeleton Army. Its first appearance was probably in Exeter or Whitechapel, or possibly in Weston-super-Mare, in 1881. Rapidly, its methods and style, along with its name, spread through southern England. (There were also, notably in Basingstoke, similar groups known as Massagainians; the only suggested explanation I’ve seen for the name being that they would “mass again” whenever needed.)
When the Salvation Army marched, the Skeleton Army (made up of all sorts, though with a predominance of young men) would march against them, drowning out their hymns with rude chants and rough music made with tins full of pebbles, pan lids, and foghorns, and often pelting them with eggs and other missiles. Local SA headquarters were often besieged, fouled with tar and other unpleasant substances, and sometimes physically attacked.
“Leave us alone you joyless bastards” probably sums up the Skeleton manifesto. They aimed to run the Salvationists out of town, to defend what they saw as the English citizen’s birthright: “Beef, beer and bacca,” as their banners put it. They didn’t appreciate pious outsiders coming in to save their souls and tell them how to live their lives. The religious impulse to equate enjoyment with sin has never entirely died out, and the English masses have rarely been terribly keen on it.
Worthing, in August 1884, was something special, even by the riotous standards of the day. The Salvation Army had established what they unhelpfully called a “barracks” in the town, and the Skeletons tried to burn it down. The landlord of the rented building – not entirely in keeping with teachings concerning the turning of the other cheek – tried to dissuade them from this course by firing his revolver into the crowd.
The Skeletons wore yellow ribbons in their caps, sunflowers in their buttonholes, and carried skull-and-cross-bones flags. Some wore uniforms in mockery of the Salvation Army’s quasi-military structure. Emboldened by magistrates who refused to convict them, and police who rarely arrested them, a crowd of thousands was determined to inflict a final defeat on their hated enemies.
Two days of fierce rioting eventually persuaded the worthies of Worthing that the Skeleton Army had turned out to be something of a Frankenstein's monster, causing almost as much trouble as the Salvationists themselves. The army was sent for – the real one - and the Skeletons were dispersed with considerable violence.
Sporadic, localised activities by the Skeletons continued into the early 1890s, gradually dying out. I think it’s pretty clear who won the war, though. True, the Salvation Army has long outlived its opponent, but waging open combat against the evils of booze no longer seems to be its main priority and most of us only encounter it at Christmas, when its brass bands cheer up dreary shopping centres with their carols. At some point it must have learned the eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not standeth between an Englishman and his pint.”
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Sources:
www.theargus.co.uk/news/18483373.skeleton-army-rioted-streets-worthing/
https://westsussexrecordofficeblog.com/2020/01/03/beef-beer-and-bacca-versus-soup-soap-and-salvation-the-skeleton-army-riots-of-worthing-1884/
www.salvationarmy.org.uk/news/new-book-reveals-turbulent-early-years-salvation-army
www.friendsofthewillis.org.uk/articles/the-massagainians/