- Mayor
- Bolton: 1941-42 (Labour)
- Born
- The Haulgh, Bolton 24 February 1893
- Died
- Bolton District General Hospital 19 December 1965
- Educated
- St James's School, Bolton; Mawdsley Street School; Bolton Municipal Secondary School
- About
-
Son of Sydney Booth, fried fish seller of 29 Halliwell Road.
Began work aged 12 as a half-timer errand boy for Whitehead's Fur Store, then employed at Barlow & Jones Mill as a sidepiecer and later as a liquor blender at William Walker & Sons' Rose Hill Tannery, Bolton.
He enlisted in the Army on 8 December 1915. He was listed as having been killed in action on 21 August 1917 but was in fact still serving with 11 Bn Lancashire Fusiliers.
He was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans in early 1918, spending the rest of the War in a POW camp in Saxony.
He wrote home expressing the hope that the War would be over before his younger brother Richard was caught up in the fighting. Richard Booth was killed in action in Belgium on 27 April 1918, aged 18, while serving as a Private with 15th Bn Durham Light Infantry.
Alfred's injuries and time spent in captivity left him being treated for ill health until June 1921 when he joined the Shell Petrol Company on Bridgeman Street.
In 1938 he went into business for himself as a tobacconist and Sub-Postmaster at 17 Sharples Avenue, Bolton.
Represented North Ward from 1933. Alderman 1945.
Chairman of the Parks Committee.
Borough Magistrate 1940.
Chairman of Bolton Borough Juvenile Bench and Chairman of Bolton Bench 1964.
Chairman of Bolton National Savings Committee.
Chairman of the Confirming and Compensation Committee.
Chairman of the Bolton Branch of the Sub-Postmasters Federation.
Vice President of the Cremation Society.
Chairman of Bolton YMCA Executive Committee.
Chairman of Bolton Boys Federation.
First lay President of the Bolton Council of Christian Congregations.
MP for Bolton East 1950-1951 (Labour).
Radio broadcaster - appeared in dialect sketches as a 'typical Lancastrian' with Wilfred Pickles - and was a popular after dinner speaker.
Close boyhood friend of James Vickers, Mayor of Bolton 1952-53.
Congregationalist - he was a member of Blackburn Road Congregational Church and a lay preacher.
He was held in great affection in the town and over 300 people braved the rain to attend his funeral service. He was - of course - cremated at Overdale.
His wife, Anne, was Mayoress.
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