Charles Booth was born on 15 August 1869 and died September 1898 aged just 28.
Booth was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and started at Gainsborough Trinity.
There is a tantalising insight into Charlie on http://fredspiksley.blogspot.com/ and I am really hopeful of finding out more from this source. This source has a reference to the fact that Charlie was Arsenal captain at one time.
In 1889 he moved to Wolverhampton Wanderers, who had joined the Football League the year before. His first league game was for Wolverhampton against Notts County on 7 September 1889. In total he played 73 games and scored 10 goals.
He then moved to Woolwich Arsenal in 1892 – the year before we joined the league. All told he is shown by Arsenal.com has playing 26 games and scoring 10 goals.
He was therefore at the club in time to play in one of our more famous games. On 29 October 1892, (as I have mentioned before) he played in the FA Cup Qualifying Round match against City Ramblers. What makes this game special is that James Henderson, Charles Booth and Arthur Elliott each got three goals – the only time ever that three players all got hatricks in one game.
In the first league season of Woolwich Arsenal he continuously at number 11 apart from one match from first game of the season until a 0-3 defeat to Lincoln on February 3rd. 16 league games 2 goals plus five cup games and three goals.
He was then transferred (in 1894) to Loughborough Athletic and Football Club, often wrongly known as Loughborough Town. They had started in the Midland League in 1891 and joined the second division of the Football League in 1895. I have no idea how long Charlie stayed at Loughborough but they were still in the second division in 1898 when Charlie tragically died.
Any more information on him would be welcome.
Next up – a newspaper report from the first ever game
- 1: CA Williams: went on to manage Denmark and in Brazil
- 2: J Powell: Our first captain who died of injuries on the pitch
- 3: WW Jeffrey: The right back who was a keeper
- 4: D Devine: Lost to history
- 5: R Buist: I thought he caused us to go pro, but I was wrong.
- 6: D Howat: The mystery man
- 7: D Gemmell: Even more of a mystery man
- 8: J Henderson: Rifleman, champions medal, Arsenal, and then…
- 9: W Shaw: scored our first ever league goal
- 10: A Elliott: one of the hat trick men in the record breaking game.
- 11: C Booth: another of the hat trick men
This is from my blog. email me and I will email you an atachment of the article I have found.