Catherine Mumford was born on January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, England, to strict Methodist parents. Ill from childhood because of spinal problems, she spent much of her adolescence reading and studying at home, which forged in her a thoughtful faith and a discipline of reading unusual for a woman of her time.
At 22 she met William Booth, a Methodist preacher also marked by a desire for church reform. They married in 1855 and chose to live simply in order to devote resources to ministry. Catherine began supporting William behind the scenes, but soon discovered a calling of her own to preach.
In 1859 she published the pamphlet Female Ministry: Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel, defending the biblical right of women to preach the gospel. The text responded to criticism against the American preacher Phoebe Palmer and became a landmark in evangelical theology on women’s ministry.
In January 1860, shortly after the birth of the couple’s fourth child, she asked to say a word during a service in Gateshead. William introduced her to the congregation that same night, and Catherine discovered, in preaching, a gift that many of her contemporaries considered superior to her own husband’s.
In 1865 the couple founded the Christian Mission in London among the poorest of the Whitechapel district. William evangelized in the streets while Catherine sought financial support among wealthy families. In 1878 the mission became the Salvation Army, with a structure organized along military lines.
Catherine helped design the symbols, uniforms, and doctrines of the new organization, and for this became known as the Mother of the Salvation Army. Even so, the institution she helped build was slow to equalize salaries and ranks between male and female officers, a contrast that her own defense of women’s preaching was not enough to resolve.
She also wrote Practical Religion (1878), Aggressive Christianity (1883), and Popular Christianity (1887), collections of sermons that shaped generations of lay preachers. She kept up this pace of preaching and writing despite fragile health since her youth, refusing to slow down despite medical warnings.
She died of breast cancer on October 4, 1890, in Clacton-on-Sea, at age 61. She was buried beside William in Abney Park Cemetery, London. Her defense of women’s preaching is still cited whenever churches discuss the place of women in ministry.