Kate Booth

Kate Booth (September 18, 1858 - May 9, 1955) was the oldest daughter of William and Catherine Booth. She was also known as "la Maréchale".

Kate Booth brought the Salvation Army to France. As a captain, she led two lieutenants in preaching the Gospel in Paris, wearing sandwichboards when the police forbid them to hand out leaflets. They were not well received. Their street-corner sermons were often interrupted by people pelting them with mud and stones. After repeated attempts by men on the roads to strangle them by their bonnet strings, they began pinning the strings on rather than sewing them. They lived in rented apartments where prostitutes lived in poor conditions. Progress was slow. Opposition was fierce, and those who were converted were given a rough time, sometimes being fired from their jobs. The newspaper reports in France were nearly unanimously critical.

Eventually, Captain Kate Booth moved on to Switzerland, where the opposition was even fiercer. The authorities refused to allow her to rent halls in which to preach, and she was imprisoned for conducting an open-air meeting in the forest.

Kate married Arthur Clibborn (1855-1939) at the age of 28: they took the name of Booth-Clibborn. They together continued preaching and spreading the Gospel in Europe, the United States, and Australia for the rest of their lives.

The Kate Booth House, a Salvation Army residential environment for women and children fleeing family violence in Vancouver, British Columbia, was named in her honour.

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