DEATH OCCURS OF GENERAL BOOTH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18787, 17 June 1929, Page 11

DEATH OCCURS OF GENERAL BOOTH.

FORMER LEADER OF SALVATION ARMY.

(United Press Assn. —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.)

(Received June 17, 11.5 a.m.) LONDON, June 16. The death is announced of General

General William Bramwell Booth was the son of the founder of the Salvation Army. Born in March, 1856, at Halifax, Yorkshire, which later made him a freeman, and educated at the City of London School, he became an officer of the force in 1874 at the age of eighteen. In 1880 he was appointed chief of staff, that is, second in command, and that position he held until the death of his father in 1912, when he became by the founder’s own decision General of the Salvation Army. Before he took over the command the army had been working in nearly sixty countries. Under his leadership) it spread still further, and now its liag is planted in over eighty lends, its message is spoken in wellnigh sixty languages, and its corps and outposts number more than 1400. In his early days he travelled extensively, visiting Europe, the United States, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. Pie took an active part in the agitation over what was known as the “ Maiden Tribute ” —a movement which influenced legislation for the protection of girls in the shape of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Bramwell Booth was a brilliant administrator and could have earned a large salary in a business house. It was he who built up the machinery for the “ Darkest England ” scheme, whose object was to rescue the “ submerged tenth.” The Salvation Army has an elaborate organisation for this purpose. In 1913 General Booth, after a long estrangement, was reconciled in New York with his brother, Ballington Booth, who had a disagreement with his father and had started a rival movement. Plis activities included the chairmanship of the Salvation Army Life Assurance Society and the Reliance Bank, and he was joint president of the Temperance Council of the Christian Churches. In 1920 he made a tour round the world. In March, 1926, when his seventieth birthday was celebrated, officers attended from all over the world, and there was a wonderful pageant of races. The collection for his brithday scheme for the extension of mission work realised £165,282. The General wrote a number of books, including his reminiscences In 1882 he married Florence Soper, daughter of a Plymouth doctor, who had bene engaged in the beginnings of the Army’s work in France All their seven children became officers. Mrs Booth was appointed a Co f -nissioner in 1888, and was up to 1925 responsible for the evangelical work in the United Kingdom. Recently General Booth was deposed from the command of the Army by the High Council, which considered that his illness had unfitted him for continuance in that office.