Feature of the month: ELIJAH CADMAN (1843-1927)
Elijah Cadman is primarily known for his leading role in the Salvation Army, which he joined in 1876. He is credited with championing the move to their wearing a uniform. However his early faith experience was in Methodism.
His father was transported as a criminal in 1845, and Elijah’s early work, due to his diminutive size (he was only five foot tall when adult) was as a chimney sweep, then as a partner in a boxing booth. He heard a ‘ranter’ preacher one Sunday morning, and this led to conversion. The result was that he gave up his boxing gloves, and with his wife joined the Rugby Railway Terrace Primitive Methodist Chapel, being part of an ‘Hallelujah band.’
The accounts are that his preaching style was energetic. Englesea Brook museum of Primitive Methodism has the pulpit in which he famously kicked a hole, by way of demonstrating that the devil would be kicked out. Such was the apparent effect of this that the repaired pulpit has a commemorative plaque, and an associated inscription to record the event. It is a pulpit with a difference.
David Leese
