Thomas McKie
From Sawiki
Thomas McKie lies in an unmarked grave in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England. He was one of the brightest talents of the early years of the Army. Under his command in Australia the Limelight Department continued to flourish.
McKie was born in Newcastle, England in 1860. He was entirely self-educated, having left school at the age of nine to take a job for 2s 6d a week. He did not even have a session in a Salvation Army training college, before being commissioned as a Lieutenant and appointed to a corps after applying for full time work with the organisation. As he later said, "You can well imagine where I stood (in respect to education) when I commenced my career as an officer. All I know today, and all the advances I have made in this line, I have reached through struggle...".
McKie commanded a number of Salvation Army Corps around England before being brought to London and put in charge of the ‘Old Grecian’ Corps. This centre was formerly the notorious Grecian Theatre and Eagle Tavern, made famous in the nursery rhyme ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’. It was a huge complex, often filled by a rowdy mob that preferred the building’s former use. However McKie’s preaching skills suited the times. In an Army publication it was said of him that "His platform is a hot place! He makes it a furnace of Salvation... He comes on to it on fire himself, and whether the people catch the flame or not nothing is permitted to quench the fire within him". Many caught the flame at the Old Grecian and McKie’s term there was extremely successful. He went on to command the Army’s forces in Scotland and become vice principal of the British training college.
Close contact with General William Booth’s family led McKie to fall in love with Evangeline, William and Catherine Booth’s third daughter. On asking for her hand in marriage, McKie was rejected, not by Evangeline but by her father William and brother Bramwell, the Army’s Chief of the Staff. Evangeline was never to marry, and at the age of sixty nine, became the Army’s first woman General.
In 1894, McKie was sent to command the Army’s operations in Germany. Seven years later he was called to take over the Australasian command from Evangeline’s brother Herbert Booth. On his way through London, McKie married Major Marie Meidinger, a German officer who had been editor of the German War Cry. It is said that William Booth recomended the match to McKie. The ceremony was conducted by Bramwell and attended by nearly four thousand people.
In Australia, McKie threw his full weight behind Joe Perry’s Limelight Department. Over the next few years operations were expanded greatly. Biorama Companies were formed with members who could sing, play both brass and stringed instruments and operate the projection equipment. In 1904, an International Congress was held in London. McKie took some key members of the Limelight Department as part of Australia’s contingent. Their shows created great interest and on his return McKie toured extensively with films shot during the Congress.
In the first half of 1908 McKie conducted a series of services around Australia and New Zealand. Each was a "Thrilling Memorial, by Bioscope, to Departed Salvationists". Joe and Orrie Perry operated the equipment that projected images from slides and film of Salvationists who had been "promoted to glory." The aim was to inspire members of the Army. Among the departed comrades depicted was Major Kenneth McLeod, the manager of the Bayswater Boys Home. His funeral had been filmed in January of 1908 and the surviving film shows McKie with Mrs McLeod and other mourners. The services also included: "Last messages of dying Salvationists from the lonely veldt and sinking ship".
Between 1908 and early 1909, a new studio was built in Caulfield, in Melbourne's south east. Production began on two major projects, Heroes Of The Cross, and The Scottish Covenanters. During production of Heroes, word arrived that it was time for McKie to move on. The film was completed rapidly to coincide with a mammoth farewell congress for McKie in May 1909.
Thomas McKie’s Army career ended suddenly in late 1914 when he was forced to resign. The reasons are clouded, but it appears to have been related to his wife’s growing addiction to morphine, and some resulting financial irregularities. When McKie arrived in Australia in 1901 the War Cry stated that he could lay claim to the conversion of 57,000 men and women. It is something of an irony that McKie’s career ultimately foundered on the questions of love and commitment. Frustrated love for the General’s daughter, loving obedience to the General and the Army and commitment to a woman whose dependence on "the drug fiend" eventually cast him out from a chosen vocation at which he excelled. More poignant is the loneliness of his unmarked grave in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
