William Booth was an English farmer and forger, who was hung for his crimes. He is the subject of the song "Twice Tried, Twice Hung, Twice Buried" by John Raven. and a book. Several geographical features in Birmingham, near his former home, carry his name.
Early life
Booth was born at Hall End Farm near Beaudesert, Warwickshire and was baptised at the church there on 21 February 1776. He was one of eight children of a farmer and church warden, John Booth, and his wife Mary. On 28 February 1799, Booth signed a 25-year lease for what became known as "Booth's Farm", including a farmhouse and 200 acres of land, part of the Perry Hall estate. The farm was then in Perry Barr, Staffordshire; that part of Perry Barr is now known as Great Barr, and is in the city of Birmingham. Booth was accused of murdering his brother John while revisiting Wall End on 19 February 1808, but was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Criminal activity
After the Napoleonic Wars caused the government of William Pitt the Younger to order the Bank of England to restrict gold supply - the so called "Restriction Period" - and to issue new, low-denomination, and easily-reproducible, bank notes, Booth converted the top floor of the farmhouse into a fortified workshop where he produced forgeries of those banknotes, as well as promissory notes, coins, tokens and other material of monetary value. ] Once his activities came to light, a raiding party was convened on 15 March 1812, led by a constable from Birmingham, J. Linwood, and comprising ten special constables and seven dragoons. Booth was arrested, tried at Stafford Assizes before Simon Le Blanc, and sentenced to hang. Booth's public execution, outside Stafford jail, on 15 August 1812 was bungled, and he fell through the scaffold's trap door to the floor. Within two hours, he was hanged again and died. He is buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Handsworth. The inscription on his gravestone reads: He was survived by his father, wife, sister, and two daughters, aged about fourteen, and three. Following a change of county boundary, his body was disinterred and reburied. A public outcry at the harshness of his sentence and others resulted in the death penalty in England and Wales being reserved for capital crimes. Booth also minted genuine tokens as a cover for his forging activities. Several of his tokens, forgeries and printing plates are in the collection of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.
Co-conspirators
Booth's accomplices were tried alongside him and, on conviction, sentenced to transportation to Australia. Elizabeth Chidlow was sentenced to 14 years, departing in August 1813 on the. Prior to the voyage, she wrote, from the ship, at Deptford, on 8 July 1813, to the Bank of England: and received £5 from them as it was their charitable custom to support women sentenced to transportation for forgery. She arrived at Port Jackson, New South Wales on 9 January 1814.
Booth's Farm
The farmhouse was demolished in 1974, much of the farm - still known as Booth's Farm - having been sold off for housing. An archaeological excavation was conducted at that time. As late as 1956, coins forged by Booth were found in a local garden. What remained of the farm became a sand and gravel quarry, and later a landfill site and eventually a nature reserve, with additional housing built in the 2010s. During the latter period, the buried foundations of the farmhouse were re-exposed and an information board placed alongside them.
Namesakes
Booth and his farm gave their name to the still-extant Booths Lane and Booths Farm Road, now separated from each other by the M6 motorway which bisected the former farm. In the 21st century, Forgers Walk, the pedestrian tunnel under the motorway, and later Booths Farm Walk, Booths Farm Close and Forger Lane, nearby, were so named. Until the late 1920s, the farm was occupied by the Foden Family, commemorated in Foden Road. The area around Booths Farm Road is known as the Booths Farm Estate.
