It’s the mid-1800s in London, England. Poverty and overcrowding are at record highs. Society - and the church - have turned their backs on “those poor souls.”

Seeing the need, The Salvation Army is founded, to reach the least, the last, and the lost.

But they were greeted not with praise, but derision and harassment: by establishment churches for being too radical, and by pub owners and local politicians for being too priggish. It soon escalated to a decade’s worth of violent attacks against the Salvationists by an armed group calling themselves the Skeleton Army.

This is the story of the fire from which The Salvation Army’s ministry and social work emerged, and how the uniform they developed is a prime exemplar of the trials in which they not only survived - but flourished.

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