It was 10.30 on a Sunday morning in late April 1896 and Mr Eamonson had settled down to write in his study when, once again, his peace was broken by the sound of music playing in the street outside. He set aside his work and went outside to remonstrate with those responsible, as he’d done more than once before.

There were six or eight members of the Salvation Army assembled on the opposite side of Burdett Road in East London, and they had drawn a small crowd around them. He approached John Murfitt who was banging a large drum and asked him, ‘please to stop, or go away’.

Murfitt took no notice and the band played on.

Eamonson tried again, cupping his hands and shouting for them to stop or play somewhere else.

Ignored three times he set off in search of a policeman to complain to. Eventually he found one and accompanied him back to Burdett Road to ask the Army band to desist.  The officer tried to take their names and addresses on the grounds that they were causing a nuisance and obstructing the pavement but it was difficult given the ‘infernal din’ they were making.

In the end two of the band (Murfitt the drummer and Charles White) were summoned before Mr Mead at Thames Police court on the dual accusations of refusing to stop making a disturbance after having being requested to, and of obstruction of the thoroughfare. The men denied both charges.

In essence the men of William Booth’s ‘army’ tried to argue that they couldn’t hear what was being said to them, so weren’t aware that Eamonson had requested them to stop. Their solicitor, a Mr Frost, told the court that the Army ‘always cheerfully acquiesced in any suggestion’  that they should refrain from disturbing the peace but hinted that on this occasion his clients were the victims of an ‘organized attack’. Perhaps Eamonson was a serial complainer and simply didn’t like the Salvation Army.

He would not have been alone; in its early years Salvationists like Murfitt and White suffered considerable abuse from all classes in Victorian society. They were ridiculed, chased down the street, and prosecuted as a nuisance. It is quite hard to imagine the global success and acceptance that they have today.

Mr Mead was a stickler for the law and so he trod a careful path around this pair of summons. He agreed with the lawyer that the playing of music was not illegal and that any obstruction caused was minor, technical in fact, but not worthy of a summons. However, he was also clear that Mr Eamonson had been disturbed by a band playing loudly outside his home on a Sunday morning.

‘In many persons’ eyes the essence of the Sabbath is quietness’, he stated, and so he could ‘quite understand the Complainant being annoyed’.

He told Frost that if his clients gave an undertaking not to play there in the future he would dismiss the summonses. The lawyer waivered, not wanting to commit the Army to signing up to self-enforced restrictions, but Mr Mead pressed him.

‘Perhaps you would like to consider your position’, he told him. Further prosecutions could follow if others objected to the Army setting up a band outside their homes but hopefully if they took sensible cognizance of this action they could continue their form of recruitment without the need to defend themselves in court.

It was an invitation to common sense: leave Mr Eamondson and others like him alone, and the Salvation Army band could continue to play. Persist in disturbing his peace and the law would probably find for the complainant. Mead decided to end proceedings by adjourning the hearing sine die, meaning that it was effectively postponed indefinitely. Like Mr Eamonson the worthy magistrate had no desire to hear from the Salvation Army in his court again and, if they followed the advice he’d give, he wouldn’t have to.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, April 28, 1896]