Kate Booth

Catherine Booth-Clibborn (Katie Booth, 18 September 18589 May 1955) was an English Salvationist and evangelist who extended the Salvation Army into France and Switzerland against local opposition. She was the oldest daughter of William and Catherine Booth. She was also known as "la Maréchale". Early life Born in Gateshead, where her father was serving as a minister, during her childhood Katie Booth was particularly close to William Booth's secretary, George Scott Railton, who lived with the Booth family for ten years and acted as her spiritual mentor. Saved by the age of thirteen, she began preaching at the age of fifteen and shared the platform with her father at the East London Christian Mission's annual conference in 1876. Salvation Army officer As an adult Katie Booth brought The Salvation Army to France in March 1881. A captain, she led two lieutenants (one of whom was Florence Soper, who later married Katie's brother Bramwell Booth) in preaching the Gospel in Paris, wearing sandwichboards when the police forbade 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.