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Commissioner Arthur Sydney Booth-Clibborn (née Clibborn) (1855 – 20 February 1939) was a pioneering early Salvation Army officer in France and Switzerland, and the husband of Kate Booth, the oldest daughter of General William and Catherine Booth.
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He was born in Moate, County Westmeath in Ireland, the son of a linen mill owner. At the age of 13 his parents sent him to boarding school in France and Switzerland where he graduated from the University of Lausanne. It was during this period in his life that he developed his capacity for languages. At the age of 26 he was appointed a Quaker minister.[1]
Joining The Salvation Army in 1881 at the invitation of General William Booth, Major Clibborn became Kate Booth’s chief of staff during her mission in France. They married on 18 February 1887. On marriage, Arthur and Kate changed their surname by deed poll to Booth-Clibborn at the insistence of General Booth.[2] They had ten children, including the Pentecostal preacher William Booth-Clibborn. A grandson was Stanley Eric Francis Booth-Clibborn, who became the Anglican Bishop of Manchester.
Posted to Switzerland in 1889, opposition to the Salvationists grew in that country leading to the government ordering that all Salvation Army halls be closed. Arthur Booth-Clibborn was thrown into prison alongside a thief and a prostitute.[1] Following the birth of their tenth child the Booth-Clibborns resigned from The Salvation Army in January 1902, unhappy at the restrictive nature of the Army's military style of government.
At her husband's wish, Katie and the children travelled with him to the cult leader John Alexander Dowie's Zion City, a township about 40 miles north of Chicago.[3] Katie Booth-Clibborn did not believe Dowie's grandiose claims — in 1901 he declared himself the prophet Elijah the Restorer, and in 1904 the first apostle of Jesus Christ — and she was offended by his criticism of her father even though her resignation had made her an outcast from both her family and The Salvation Army. For the rest of her life Kate Booth-Clibborn had almost no contact with her father or with those siblings who remained in The Salvation Army.[4]
After becoming Pentecostals in 1906[5] the Booth-Clibborns together continued preaching and spreading the Gospel as travelling evangelists in Europe, the United States, and Australia for the rest of their lives.[6][7]