Emma Booth

Emma Moss Booth-Tucker (8 January 1860 – 28 October 1903), known as 'The Consul', was the fourth child and second daughter of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.

Salvation Army Officer

Converted at a young age, Emma Booth spoke in public for the first time during a stay at St Leonards. Aged just 19, Emma Booth became the Principal of the Officers' Training Home, The Salvation Army's first training school for women. On 10 April 1888 she married Major Frederick Tucker, the son of an affluent British family living in India, whose first wife had died of cholera in India in the previous year. Emma Booth and Frederick Tucker married at Clapton Congress Hall. As was the usual practice in the Booth family at that time, Tucker added his wife's maiden name to his own, becoming Booth-Tucker. The couple had a total of nine children; Frederick, Catherine Motee, Lucy, Herbert, John and Muriel and three others, William, Evangeline and Bramwell Tancred who died in infancy.

They remained for some time in India, but later moved back to London due to Emma Booth-Tucker's poor health. They worked for the Salvation Army International Headquarters in London before being posted to the United States in 1896, where they replaced Emma's brother Ballington and his wife Maud who had left the Salvation Army. They successfully managed to regain many of the converts lost by Ballington Booth's leaving, and Emma Booth-Tucker was given the title 'The Consul' by her father. The Booth-Tuckers' primary work was prison visitation and carrying out the farm colony experiment for urban poor envisaged in William Booth's book In Darkest England and the Way Out. Heart messages (with Frederick St George De Lautour Booth-Tucker) (1903) In memoriam Consul Mrs. Booth-Tucker. Order of service, Carnegie Hall, Nov. 1, 1903 (1903) The cross our comfort : being selections from the writings of consul Emma Booth Tucker (1907) India's Millions: being a summary of a lecture on the work of the Salvation Army in India (1923) A newsboy's wonderful Christmas visitor (unknown)