Arthur Bentley Worthington

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Arthur Bentley Worthington (died 1917) was an American-born Australasian alternative religious leader, bigamist and fraudster in late nineteenth-century Christchurch, Melbourne and Tasmania.

Early alternative religious period (1890–1895)[]

Arthur Worthington's documented life began when he settled in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1890, after emigration from the United States. He began to lecture at a local Oddfellows Hall on subjects such as metaphysics, natural philosophy and the human mind, and rapidly gained a following. Worthington's externally professed sexual ethics were conservative, and he preached celibacy and the value of the institution of marriage. He established an alternative religious faith called the .

Worthington and bigamy[]

Reverend John Hosking, a fundamentalist minister at St. Asaphs Free Methodist Church investigated Worthington's background, and found that Worthington had contracted at least five bigamous marriages - to Miss Josephine Moore (New York, 1868), Miss Groot (Albany, New York), Mrs Lizzie Cowell (Troy, Michigan), Miss Joy Winfield (Chicago, Illinois) and May Barlow (Xenia, Ohio). He had eloped with already-married to Christchurch, and had several pseudonyms employed in the previous recorded instances. After the exposure of his past, Hosking eloped with Miss Evelyn Jordan, a follower at the Temple of Truth, leaving Mrs Plunkett to deal with the adverse publicity and debts that Reverend Hosking's matrimonial and financial fraud had generated in Christchurch.

Worthington in Australia (1897–1904)[]

Worthington fled to Australia, where he settled in Tasmania (1895–1897). Unfortunately, he found that its rural and mining frontier society held little promise for an alternative religious entrepreneur, and returned to Christchurch in 1897, only to find that his estranged ex-lover had revealed all of the details of their relationship, and that the former Temple of Truth had closed down. He attempted to revive it, but faced a riot from Reverend Hosking and his own supporters, which was narrowly averted by the police.

As a consequence of this hostile reaction, Worthington resettled in Melbourne, Australia. He founded a new Temple of Truth, attracted new followers, and set himself up as a reincarnation of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian deity.^[1] He was exposed when he tried to defraud a wealthy widow out of her spousal inheritance, and was imprisoned for seven years.

After he served his sentence, Worthington returned to the United States, allegedly had an evangelical religious experience and became a Presbyterian Church minister. He was again imprisoned, because of financial fraud, and died in prison in 1917.

Bibliography[]

• Dunmore, John: Wild Cards: Eccentric Characters from New Zealand's Past: Auckland: New Holland: 2006: ISBN 1-86966-132-X
• Hill, Richard S. "Arthur Bently Worthington". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
• Hosking, John: A Christchurch Quack Unmasked: Christchurch: H.F.Weeks: 1893.
• Criminal Details of Worthington: Christchurch: Weeks: 1891.

References[]