the weekly ‘Journal’ of the society was begun. He was treasurer and chairman of the council of the society from 1855 to 1857. Some of the addresses which he delivered about that period were published by the society. Their titles are: ‘How to Learn and What to Learn; two lectures advocating the system of examinations established by the Society of Arts’ (1856); and ‘Systematic Instruction and Periodical Examination’ (1857). He was the main instrument in the establishment and organisation of the Society of Arts examinations, a system which was afterwards modified and developed by Mr. Harry Chester. He was also instrumental in preparing the reports on ‘Middle Class Education,’ issued in 1857 by the society, and in that year he annotated and edited for the same body the volume of ‘Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Albert.’ He published also the following, and probably other addresses: ‘On the Female Education of the Industrial Classes’ (1855); ‘On the Self-Improvement of the Working Classes’ (1858). Booth was an eloquent preacher, and published: ‘The Bible and its Interpreters, three sermons’ (1861); ‘A Sermon on the Death of Admiral W. H. Smyth, D.C.L., F.R.S.’ (1865); ‘The Lord's Supper, a Feast after Sacrifice’ (1870). He died at the vicarage at Stone, Buckinghamshire, 15 April 1878, aged 71 years. His wife, daughter of Mr. Daniel Watney of Wandsworth, died in 1874.
[J. W. L. Glaisher in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Soc. xxxix. 219–25; Journal of the Society of Arts, xxvi. 483; the Guardian (copied from the Times), 1878, p. 576; Clergy List, 1842, p. 78.]
BOOTH, JAMES (1796–1880), secretary to the board of trade, fourth son of Thomas Booth of Toxteth Lodge, near Liverpool, was born about the year 1796, and after passing some time at St. John‘s College, Cambridge, was admitted to the Society of Lincoln's Inn on 7 Nov. 1818, when he was stated to be twenty-one years of age. He was called to the bar there on 10 Feb. 1824, and practised with some success in the chancery courts. He was a member of the royal commission for inquiring into the municipal corporations of England and Wales in 1833. In 1838 he was applied to by the speaker to prepare for the use of the House of Commons what were called breviates of the private bills. Booth's engagement was at first temporary, but at the end of the session of 1839 he was appointed counsel to the speaker, and examiner of recognisances. During the recess he undertook the preparation of skeleton bills in unimproved form for all the more important classes of bills. These became familiarly known us the ‘model bills,’ and reference was constantly made to them by the select committees when bills falling within any of the classes came before them. In the preparation of these bills Booth had the co-operation of Mr. Robert John Palk, counsel to the chairman of the committees of the House of Lords. Booth's great work, however, was the preparation of the Clauses Consolidation Acts. Booth accepted the office of secretary to the board of trade on 10 Oct. 1850, which he held until 1865. Subsequently to the passing of the Clauses Consolidation Acts he gave great assistance to Sir John Romilly in the preparation of various legislative measures for the government, the principal of these being the act to regulate the proceedings of the high court of chancery in Ireland, passed in 1850. For his services he received an extra pension. After his retirement he acted on the commission for inquiring into trades unions and other associations, 12 Feb. 1867, and prepared the draft report which appeared in the eleventh and last report of the commissioners 9 March 1869. His literary productions were chiefly confined to the various law magazines. In 1871 a work was published under the title of ‘The Problem of the World and the Church reconsidered, in three letters to a friend by A Septuagenarian.' Of this book Booth edited and brought out a second and revised edition in 1873, and six years later edited a third edition, with an introduction written by himself. He was created a C.B. on 6 July 1866. He died at 2 Princes Gardens, Kensington, on 11 May 1880, in his eighty-fourth year. He married in 1827 Miss Jane Noble, but was left a widower in 1872.
[Times, 15 May 1880, p. 8; Law Times, lxix. 71 (1880).]
BOOTH, JOHN (1584–1659), of Twemlowe, genealogist of Cheshire, was descended from an old family in that county, his father being John Booth of Twemlowe, and his mother, Isabella, daughter of Richard Lowndes of Smallwood. He was born in July 1584. Succeeding to the property on the death of his father, he occupied his leisure in genealogical researches into Cheshire pedigrees, those in the Inter generations being compiled from the visitations of 1568, 1580, and 1613, and the earlier ones from charters and similar documents. As a genealogist he was supposed to be inferior only to Sir Peter Leycester, who frequently acknowledges indebtedness to his labours. The original copy of his pedigrees is still preserved at Twemlowe Hall, and besides several copies in the pos-
