S. Parkes Cadman - Early Life

Early Life

S. Parkes Cadman was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, where he worked in a coal mine for ten years, beginning at age 11. A voracious reader, he read books while working in the mine, in between hauling loads of coal. He became interested in theology and began speaking at age 18 as a lay preacher in local Methodist churches. He studied at Richmond College of the University of London and at Wesley College seminary. While a seminarian in 1888, he heard Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army speak in London, recalling years later, "I have not heard since anything which moved me more deeply than that remarkable address . . . delivered in the purest English, with faultless diction, in a voice like the pealing of a silver bell across a still lake."