James Booth

The Revd Dr James Booth, (1806–1878) was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, notable as a mathematician and educationalist. Life Born at Lavagh, County Leitrim on 26 August 1806, the son of John Booth (cousin to the Gore-Booth baronets), he entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1825 and was elected scholar in 1829, graduating B.A. in 1832, M.A. in 1840, and LL.D. in 1842. Booth left Ireland in 1840 to become Principal of Bristol College, where he had Francis William Newman and William Benjamin Carpenter as colleagues. It had been set up by the British Institution in 1830, to provide non-denominational education. It closed in 1841, however, having suffered some opposition from James Henry Monk. Booth then set up a short-lived private school, where Edward Fry was a pupil. In 1843 he was appointed vice-principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution; he had been ordained at Bristol in 1842, and acted there as curate till he moved. In 1848 he gave up his Liverpool post, and moved to London. He taught geography and astronomy at Bedford College, London in 1849 and 1850. In 1854 he was appointed minister of St. Anne's, Wandsworth, and in 1859 was presented to the vicarage of Stone, Buckinghamshire, by the Royal Astronomical Society, to which the advowson had been given in 1844 by Dr Lee. He was also chaplain to the Marquess of Lansdowne, and a Justice of the Peace for Buckinghamshire.