Early life and education Born in
Hurworth-on-Tees, Durham, England, on 24 September 1845, Lancelot Booth was the son of Thomas Dixon Walker, medical practitioner, and his wife, Elizabeth Martindale. He was born John Joseph Walker, changing his name upon leaving England following his alleged involvement in a forgery case while employed with the Bishop Auckland branch of the
National Provincial Bank of England. The fraud was widely reported in the English and Australian newspapers at the time, although his disappearance and name change meant he was never to face any charges. He went first to Australia in 1869 or 1870, then to New Zealand in July 1870, returning to Australia in 1876.
Career In the early 1870s Booth worked on the stage in New Zealand, marrying actress Eliza Frances Eltham at the Union Hotel in
Dunedin on 29 January 1873. He moved to Australia in 1876, where he initially worked on the Newcastle stage. He made his first appearance in Sydney at the
Royal Victoria Theatre on 24 July 1876 as Count De Rivera in the Italian drama,
Society, or a
Mistake in Education. Booth was a prolific performer, appearing in more than 70 productions between 1876 and 1880, many of them alongside fellow actor
Bland Holt, mainly in the Victoria Theatre and Queen's Theatre. The two first appeared together in
The Steeplechase at the
Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, on 28 October 1876 in Holt's first appearance in Sydney. During the early to mid-1880s, he lived in
Brisbane, where he was connected with the
Theatre Royal, Brisbane, appearing in more than 20 productions. Booth returned to Sydney sometime after 1885 and from that time made only rare appearances on stage. He appeared as Charles Beeswing in the farce,
Taming a Tiger, at the
Royal Standard Theatre on 28 November 1892 and in July 1898 joined with several old actors to perform
Othello to raise money for the benefit of retired actors. Booth also wrote a number of plays including
Crime in the Clouds, performed at the
Royal Standard Theatre in Sydney in January 1898 by Henry's Sydney and Suburban Company and
Outlaw Kelly (1899) a four Act
melodrama, first performed at the
Victoria Theatre (Newcastle), on Saturday, 12 August 1899, by the Henry Dramatic Company. In addition to writing plays, he published short stories, poetry and children's fiction as well as two popular novels: ''The Devil's Nightcap
(1912), an Australian bushranging adventure of the Frank Gardiner–Ben Hall gang, and Tools of Satan'' (1914), a murder mystery in an English setting, both published by the
NSW Bookstall Company. Many of his short stories and poems were published in
The Queenslander. Favourite subjects were bushranging and life on the gold diggings, with many themes exploring encounters between migrants from the 'old country' and the Australian bush. In May 1903 at the age of 58, Booth commenced on a walking tour of the north coast of
New South Wales, starting at the
Hunter River and ending at the
Tweed River on the Queensland border and then back again. His plan was to publish an account of his travels and although he duly completed this endeavour, the account appears to have never found its way into print.
Death and afterward Booth died on 20 May 1913 in Balmain aged 67 and is buried in
Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney. His wife, Eliza, pre-deceased him 20 years earlier on 4 September 1893. Together, they had eleven children: Mark, George, Harry, Francis, Ada, Ernest, Ruby, William, Archibald, Harold and Mary. == List of plays ==