The Booth-opo-ben Day (Part Two)

So, exactly one week ago today, our five explorers met outside Fenchurch St station, ready for their adventure. Much like the Famous Five. Although, to my knowledge, the Famous Five never met at Fenchurch St station. And we're not famous - but nor were they actually. And there were only four of us.

But then we found Patrick and we went on our way. First stop, Whitehapel Road (helpfully both the place where The Salvation Army started and one of the brown squares on the Monopoly board). We set off, rather stupidly forgetting to take a photo of ourselves at Fenchurch St station, which we would regret later in the day...

We decided to look at The Salvation Army things first. Now The Army's Heritage Centre in the UK publishes a walkabout of things in the Whitechapel area that are to do with The Salvation Army's origins. Unfortunately most of them have kinda... gone, ('On the site of this car park was the...', etc) but there are some things that are well worth checking out in my opinion. We knew we didn't have much time, so we moved fast.

First stop, the Blind Beggar pub - of interest to us because this is where William Booth was walking along one day in 1865 (I think things have changed a fair bit since then) and he saw a group of Christians holding an open-air meeting. They asked him to say a few words and the rest is, as they say, history. He gave his speech and later remarked to his wife Catherine, 'I have found my destiny' - and The Christian Mission (which later became The Salvation Army) was born.

Incidentally, this is also the pub where one of the Krays shot a rival gangster, but our Krays tour would have to wait for another day.

Walking along we saw the bust and the statue of William Booth. Now, as a child, William would have seen these statues and modelled himself accordingly (Only joking! William grew up in Nottingham).

Now, although lots of the places don't exist anymore, one building is still there and I found it very cool to see it. This is the dancing academy where The Christian Mission held its first indoor meetings and where it stayed for two years (it's down a quiet little side road off Whitechapel Road). It even has a blue plaque! Although Whitechapel has probably changed beyond recognition since Booth's day, this road (if you ignore the shop opposite) probably looks just like it did when the crowds of people used to follow Booth from his open-airs to here for their meetings. Nice.

As many of you will know, before the dancing school, The Christian Mission used to hold its meetings in a tent - and this is where that was.

Having done our Army tour, we went and got our first Monopoly picture from WHITECHAPEL ROAD (1/26) Out came the moustache and monocle. (Perhaps a little self-conscious at this point, as this was our first one - no worries, that wore off) and we went on our way! (Don't worry, Ben does give up on the thumbs-up thing eventually).

Maybe things haven't changed so much...