In 1890 “General” Booth attracted further public attention by the publication of a work entitled In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which he proposed to remedy pauperism and vice by a series of ten expedients: (1) the city colony; (2) the farm colony; (3) the over-sea colony; (4) the household salvage brigade; (5) the rescue homes for fallen women; (6) deliverance for the drunkard; (7) the prison-gate brigade; (8) the poor man’s bank; (9) the poor man’s lawyer; (10) Whitechapel-by-the-Sea. Money was liberally subscribed and a large part of the scheme was carried out. The opposition and ridicule with which Booth’s work was for many years received gave way, towards the end of the 19th century, to very widespread sympathy as his genius and its results were more fully realized.
The active encouragement of King Edward VII., at whose instance in 1902 he was invited officially to be present at the coronation ceremony, marked the completeness of the change; and when, in 1905, the “general” went on a progress through England, he was received in state by the mayors and corporations of many towns. In the United States also, and elsewhere, his work was cordially encouraged by the authorities.
See T. F. Coates, The Life Story of General Booth (2nd ed., London, 1906), and bibliography under Salvation Army.
BOOTH (connected with a Teutonic root meaning to dwell, whence also “bower”), primarily a temporary dwelling of boughs or other slight materials. Later the word gained the special meaning of a market stall or any non-permanent erection, such as a tent at a fair, where goods were on sale. Later still it was applied to the temporary structure where votes were registered, viz. polling-booth. Temporary booths erected for the weekly markets naturally tended to become permanent shops. Thus Stow states that the houses in Old Fish Street, London, “were at first but movable boards set out on market days to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring licence to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little, to tall houses.” As bothy or bothie, in Scotland, meaning generally a hut or cottage, the word was specially applied to a barrack-like room on large farms where the unmarried labourers were lodged. This, known as the Bothy system, was formerly common in Aberdeenshire and other parts of northern Scotland.
BOOTHIA (Boothia Felix), a peninsula of British North America, belonging to Franklin district, and having an area of 13,100 sq. m., between 69° 30′ and 71° 50′ N. and 91° 30′ and 97° W. Its northernmost promontory, Murchison Point, is also the northernmost point of the American mainland. It was discovered by Captain (afterwards Sir James) Ross, during his expedition of 1829–1833, and was named after Sir Felix Booth, who had been chiefly instrumental in fitting out the expedition. Boothia forms the western side of Boothia Gulf. From the main mass of the continent the peninsula is almost separated by lakes and inlets; and a narrow channel known as Bellot Strait intervenes between it and North Somerset Island, which was discovered by Sir E. Parry in 1819. The peninsula is not only interesting for its connexion with the Franklin expedition and the Franklin search, but is of scientific importance from the north magnetic pole having been first distinctly localized here by Ross, on the western side, in 70° 5′ N., 96° 47′ W.
Boothia Gulf separates the north-western portion of Baffin Land and Melville Peninsula from Boothia Peninsula. It is connected with Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound by Prince Regent Inlet, with Franklin Strait by Bellot Strait, and with Fox Channel by Fury and Hecla Strait. The principal bays are Committee and Pelly in the southern portion, and Lord Mayor in the western.
BOOTLE, a municipal and county borough in the Bootle parliamentary division of Lancashire, England; at the mouth of the Mersey, forming a northern suburb of Liverpool. Pop. (1901) 58,566; an increase by nearly nine times in forty years. The great docks on this, the east bank of the Mersey, extend into the borough, but are considered as a whole under Liverpool (q.v.). Such features, moreover, as communications, water-supply, &c., may be considered as part of the greater systems of the same city. The chief buildings and institutions are a handsome town hall, a museum, free libraries, technical schools, and several public pleasure grounds. Bootle was incorporated in 1868 and was created a county borough in 1888; the corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. A proposal to include it within the city of Liverpool was rejected in parliament in July 1903. Area, 1576 acres.
BOOTY (apparently influenced by “boot,” O. Eng. bot, advantage or profit, through an adaptation from an earlier form
cognate with Ger. Beute and Fr. butin), plunder or gain. The phrase “to play booty,” dating from the 16th century, means to play into a confederate’s hands, or to play intentionally badly at first in order to deceive an opponent.
BOPP, FRANZ (1791–1867), German philologist, was born at Mainz on the 14th of September 1791. In consequence of the political troubles of that time, his parents removed to Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, where he received a liberal education at the Lyceum. It was here that his attention was drawn to the languages and literature of the East by the eloquent lectures of Karl J. Windischmann, who, with G. F. Creuzer, J. J. Görres, and the brothers Schlegel, was full of enthusiasm for Indian wisdom and philosophy. And further, Fr. Schlegel’s book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (Heidelberg, 1808), which was just then exerting a powerful influence on the minds of German philosophers and historians, could not fail to stimulate also Bopp’s interest in the sacred language of the Hindus. In 1812 he went to Paris at the expense of the Bavarian government, with a view to devote himself vigorously to the study of Sanskrit. There he enjoyed the society of such eminent men as A. L. Chézy, S. de Sacy, L. M. Langlès, and, above all, of Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824), who had acquired, when in India, an acquaintance with Sanskrit, and had brought out, conjointly with Langlès, a descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial library. At that library Bopp had access not only to the rich collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, most of which had been brought from India by Father Pons early in the 18th century, but also to the Sanskrit books which had up to that time issued from the Calcutta and Serampore presses. The first fruit of his four years’ study in Paris appeared at Frankfort-on-Main in 1816, under the title Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, and it was accompanied with a preface from the pen of Windischmann. In this first book Bopp entered at once on the path on which the philological researches of his whole subsequent life were concentrated. It was not that he wished to prove the common parentage of Sanskrit with Persian, Greek, Latin and German, for that had long been established; but his object was to trace the common origin of their grammatical forms, of their inflections from composition,—a task which had never been attempted. By a historical analysis of those forms, as applied to the verb, he furnished the first trustworthy materials for a history of the languages compared.
After a brief sojourn in Germany, Bopp came to London, where he made the acquaintance of Sir Charles Wilkins and H. T. Colebrooke, and became the friend of Wilhelm von Humboldt, then Prussian ambassador at the court of St James’s, to whom he gave instruction in Sanskrit. He brought out, in the Annals of Oriental Literature (London, 1820), an essay entitled, “Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic Languages,” in which he extended to all parts of the grammar what he had done in his first book for the verb alone. He had previously published a critical edition, with a Latin translation and notes, of the story of Nala and Damayantī (London, 1819), the most beautiful episode of the Mahābhārata. Other episodes of the Mahābhārata—Indralokāgamanam, and three others (Berlin, 1824); Diluvium, and three others (Berlin, 1829); and a new edition of Nala (Berlin, 1832)—followed in due course, all of which, with A. W. Schlegel’s edition of the Bhagavadgītā (1823), proved excellent aids in initiating the early student into the reading of Sanskrit texts. On the publication, in Calcutta, of the whole Mahābhārata, Bopp discontinued editing Sanskrit texts, and confined himself thenceforth exclusively to grammatical investigations.
