COMMISSIONER BOOTH-TUCKER

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 September 1929, Page 5

COMMISSIONER BOOTH-TUCKER

LIFE DEVOTED TO INDIANS. Commissioner Booth-Tucker, the man whose grandfather had been chairman of the East India Company, and wlioso father was a judge, who had himself after surrendering brilliant prospects in the India Civil Service adopted the dress of an Indian, and begged his bread in Indian towns and villages, was buried m Abney Park Cemetery in the presence of a large gathering of his Salvation Army comrades. The Commissioner, although he was suffering from illness, had taken pai in the morning’s service at the Congress Hall, Clapton, where the funeral service was held. The coffin, draped with the Salvation Army flag and bearing his saffron and red turban and his Bible, stood in the centre of the hall beneath a canopy of saffron, which is regarded in India as the sacred colour of the Christians of all denominations. Around this enclosure were ranged fifty of the officers at present home on furlough from India, the women wearing red robes and yellow saris, and the men red and yellow turbans with their Indian dress. Some of them came from the silk and weaving schools that had been established by the Commissioner during his second long term of office in India, otheis from hospitals, and others from some of the missions and agricultural settlements that have raised so many thousand members of the traditionally criminal tribes to the status of lawabiding and useful citizens. It was herd for these officers to say farewell to the founder of their great Work, and it was harder still perhaps for the General and the Commissioners who had been associated with him directly or indirectly .for more than half a lifetime. Their sense of human loss, but of faith and triumph also was expressed in the opening prayer by Commissioner Lamb, who told how, when Commissioner BoothTucker first went out to India with three companions early in the ’eighties there had been some doubt whether the methods of the Salvation Army would appeal to the East. The Commissioner, he said, was farseeing enough to know that the only way to reach the people was to get down to their lives, and share in their daily difficulties and hardships. He aimed at “getting into the skins of the people,” and he did it. General Higgins said it had been his privilege to live for ten years side by side with Commissioner Booth-Tucker, and in .the closest comradeship with him during his stay in India, and he had never ceased to marvel at his energy and his daring. The work in India (had been of immense importance, but

here in England and in other lands the Commissioner had also done great and distinguished worok. A GREAT MISSIONARY. Commissioner Blowers, known in the Indian command as Sukh Singh, for all the officers there take Indian names, paid a moving tribute to Fakir Singh, as the Commissioner- was called. “I have been associated with our beloved Commissioner- for 42 years,” he said, “and I love to think of him as I knew him in the early days. He was the greatest missionary the Salvation Army has known, and few names are more greatly loved in India. No man ever succeeded betterin getting into the skin of the Indians and understanding their mentality and needs. “He had an Oriental mentality, and when he went among the people a* friendship between them seemed to spring up at once. India to-day will mourn his loss as no other country will. He was a man of wonderful originality, and had so many schemes in his head that sometimes we could not keep up with him.” Speaking for all his comrades in India Commissioner Blowers added an appreciation! of the work done by “Dutini” (Mrs BoothTucker), to whose care it was largely due that her husband had been spared so long. Mrs Booth-Tucker, wearing her dian robes, was seated on the platform' with her two. step-daughters, Captain Muriel B'ooth-Tucker and Mrs Lieutenant -Colonel Sladen, the daughters of the Commissioner’s first marriage to Emma Booth, the daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army. These three women took part in the service, though the effort obviously was a great strain on them, and the congregation suffered in sympathy. Captain Muriel Booth-Tucker read a passage from Revelation out of the , little Testament that had been the constant companion in India of her father, who had a habit of reading the Scriptures as he tramped about, though he had committed whole books of it to memory. Mrs Colonel Sladen, who in appearance and in her way of speaking strongly resembles her mother, said that her father never liked it when people spoke of all he had sacrificed to join the Salvation Army, for he regarded it as a joy. He was a simple earnest Salvationist. He lived in communion with God, and his greatest joy was to save souls. When he heard recently that his daughter and her husband were from Plymouth to North London he had looked forward to helping them to win souls for Christ. Mrs Booth-Tucker, a delicate-look-ing woman, speaking with great difti- : culty, said she-felt her husband would wish her to tell them something about his last moments on earth. She was proud that she had been privileged to work by his side during 23 years. He was a great man, great in soul and mind and brain. She spoke of his schemes for the development of the people of India, for the reformation of the salvation of the world. I “He always had so many’ schemes,” she said, “that we could not keep pace with them. The founder used to say to me ‘Your business is to put pins in Tucker’s balloons,’ but some of them were so productive I am glad I did not put pins in them.” She said that, nothing would persuade the Commissioner to abandon his daily habit of getting up before five o’clock. He said he could not skim his Lord’s time. A few days before he died he said perhaps this very early rising accounted for his illness, and that he would not get up till six. But his heart had failed. In his days of great pain he gave expression to his love for his wife, and constantly reiterated his faith in God, and he died with a verse from the Scriptures he loved on his lips.