In the meantime, there is no shouting in the street, the employees are simply safe and the windows have been in place for years. “And I don’t get booed,” responds Sarien Horinga, missionary worker in Meppel. How different it was in the beginning. “The surprising thing is that you see a lot of court reports in the newspaper. That there has been a lot of unrest and destruction.”
The English pastor William Booth founded the Salvation Army in 1865. The first meeting was held in Meppel on Saturday, December 31, 1887. On August 1, 1888, the Salvation Army settled in Meppel. It is the fifth corps in the Netherlands, after Amsterdam, Haarlem, Rotterdam and Nunspeet. There was a lot of enthusiasm for it in Meppel. The next morning, around seven o’clock, more than forty people were waiting to enter. An overwhelming majority were drunks.
Not only that morning, also on other days people waited for hours to go inside. Once inside, several banks collapsed due to the crowds.