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Charles Booth was born in Liverpool on 30th March, 1840, the son of a prosperous corn merchant. He was educated at the Royal Institution School in Liverpool, leaving at sixteen to get a grounding in the world of commerce.
In 1871 he married Mary Macaulay, niece of the historian Thomas Macaulay. By this time he was already a successful businessman, but with pronounced and evolving interest in the social issues of the day.
He was a natural businessman, forming the profitable Booth Steamship Company together with his brother Alfred in the early 1860s. The company also had interests in the leather industry and was instrumental in the development of the Brazilian port of Manaus. Booth travelled extensively on business, contributing to a lively correspondence with his wife and others.
Booth was intimately involved in the intellectual life of his time, debating and discussing issues of social policy, economics, philosophy, politics and religion with such figures as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Alfred Marshall and Octavia Hill. His interest in poverty and working class life led him to undertake the enormous work of the Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, and to campaign for a universal old age pension.
Balfour made him a member of the Privy Council in 1904, where he was involved in developing government policy on pensions. His interest in social statistics and the Census was recognised when he was made a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1884.
Charles Booth died on 23rd November, 1916 at his family home of Gracedieu in Thringstone, Leicestershire.
