This is an excerpt from the first monthly report from the Salvation Army here.
Our first open-air meeting on Saturday night was very good indeed. People flocked to see who it was making such a noise there, and when we had finished one woman came and spoke to us weeping.
On the Sunday afternoon we had the body of the Hamilton Hall nearly full, and in the evening we had it full. Many we are sure were wounded, one so deeply that she could scarcely stand, but only one man came out to seek mercy. We had five good open-air meetings during the day. The next night we got three souls, and three more on the Wednesday, including an infidel.
The next Sunday we had a good time. Went out in the morning, held two open-air meetings, sang through the streets home. Had three new converts with us. One spoke and prayed. The other gave out a hymn. We had good open-air meetings all day and good numbers. There was a good feeling all day, but they would not come out for salvation except one Roman Catholic and one young man. The streets were all alive at night. We are pretty well known now.
From, 'The Christian Mission Magazine', April 1878, page 106.
After a flying visit, Mr Bramwell Booth reports as follows:
They have 60 to 70 members, all new converts, with 20 others to come in. They have twelve or fifteen railwaymen.
...At night there were thirty or forty out on the monument in the Market Place. The crowd began to come up at once. At 7.30 the roughs begun their pushing. It got worse and worse, and by a little before 8 there was an immense crowd, and some 200 rowdies pushing and shoving frightfully. I spoke and
closed with the benediction. Then the mob surged up and swept us away. They broke over everything. My hat went, and I got badly squeezed. I and E and another kept ourselves up, and in the meantime, the women and others had gone by different streets to the greengrocer's shop for the meeting. I went on walking round and round hoping to distribute them, but to no purpose, and they were trying to catch up in a squeeze again. So we went to the Police Stationtntio, waited three-quarters of an hour and then went up a backway escorted by two policemen!
Got to the meeting by nine. Imagine fifty or sixty people in two very small rooms and you have it! But they are a real Mission lot. Sing like Welling-bro'. Laugh and cry.
From, 'The Christian Mission Magazine', May 1878, page 129..
I NEVER was so happy in my life as this last fortnight; since I have been in Salisbury, God is working and the devil is trembling, for he is missing some of his best men.
...Our Holiness Meetings are grand, we will get so full of God, the flame of His grace sets us all on a blaze and makes our old hall seem a mansion of praise.
...One Sunday, a young man, who had been laughing at us all day, came at night to do the same, but during the meeting, God laid hold of him, and he came out and got saved.
On Sunday, the 11th, we had some grand times. Hall packed, seven souls saved. Monday a tea; good time; grand meeting; after, we had the happy family, and their hallelujah brass band, good go. One woman said we Hallelujah Lasses wanted six months in prison for making such a noise; could not close the meeting till half-past eleven o'clock; eleven souls; good collection; the youngest was a boy of 13, the oldest was a woman of 77. We left the hall shouting glory and filled with God. The policemen are yery kind, they protect us in the open-air one each side the procession; we shall soon have the roughs saved. These are only a few of the glorious facts of God's work in Salisbury; as time and space will not admit more.
From, 'The Salvationist', June 1879, pages 165-6.
I do not know where the meetings were.