William Booth (forger)
English yeoman farmer and forger
William Booth (c. 1776 – 15 August 1812) was an English farmer and forger, who was hanged for his crimes. He is the subject of the song "Twice Tried, Twice Hung, Twice Buried" by Jon 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 (by 1821 if not earlier) 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, then described as a yeoman, was accused of murdering his brother John while revisiting Hall 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.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8005707. VIAF identifies the subject as 68338876. The Library of Congress control number is n2005054768. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1776, 1812, 1799 and 1821.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Booth (forger)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.