The village of Thringstone has a special claim to fame in its association with the Rt Hon Charles Booth PC (1840 - 1916) of Gracedieu Manor, the great philanthropist and pioneer of social research, whose tomb and beautiful epitaph can be found on the north side of Saint Andrews churchyard.

Mr Booth was a shipping line owner whose revolutionary inquiry into the conditions of the London working class and tireless campaign for the introduction of old age pensions helped lay the foundations of the modern welfare state.

He was born at Liverpool on 30 March 1840, the third son of Charles Booth and Emily Fletcher. Charles Booth Snr was a wealthy corn merchant who, in 1860, left to each of his five children the sum of £20,000. In 1862, the young Charles combined his fortune with that of his eldest brother Alfred, investing it in the construction of two steamships, the Augustine and the Jerome, with the aim of building up a fleet to carry merchandise to and fro across the Atlantic. From this relatively modest enterprise grew the Booth Steamship Company, a huge concern which gained interests in many parts of the world, especially in the Amazon River trade of South America, and of which Charles was Chairman until 1912. The construction of the great harbour of Manaus in Brazil occurred as a result of the Booth enterprise.

In 1871, Charles married Mary Macaulay of London, one of the distinguished Macaulay family, whose grandfather, Zachary, had been instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery and whose uncle was the great historian, Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay.

With a station in life so far removed from the perspectives of the working poor, one might wonder just how it was that Booth came to divert so much of his energy and resources into the arena of social questions and, moreover, how this giant figure came to be buried within the humble confines of Thringstone churchyard.

Charles Booth always seems to have had an inherent concern for the welfare of working men and as a young man he became a Radical and campaigned for the Liberal Party in Liverpool. But he quickly became disillusioned by the fray of local politics and found that his efforts to bring about change through these channels were of little effect. Thereafter, Booth was never a keen partisan to any political ideology and remained independent in his actions. However, it was while campaigning for the Radical cause in the General Election of 1865 that Charles made house to house visits in the Toxteth slums. Here he encountered ignorance, poverty and squalor on a scale he had never before imagined and which deeply shocked him.

Like many other better off Victorians, Charles had hitherto been unaware of the terrible living conditions suffered by so many of the working class. An early writer on the subject of poverty, Henry Mayhew, once described the poor as 'a large body of persons of whom the public has less knowledge than the most distant tribes of the earth'. More affluent citizens were able to ignore poverty close to home because of the segregated 'zoning' of many British cities, a physical distance between the poor and the better off

There were those who were anxious to play down the problem of pauperism, fearing that an acknowledgment of such would fan the flame of revolution and overturn the social order. Many blamed the poor themselves for their misfortune and saw poverty as a consequence of their own fecklessness and personal inadequacies. In any case, very little had ever been written about poverty and with so many contradictory views being aired about the nature and extent of poverty in England at that time, Booth sought to discover an accurate picture of existence among the working masses of London, using statistical methods of study.

In 1886, he launched his monumental inquiry, a survey to which he was dedicated without intermission for the next seventeen years. The results of his investigations were published in seventeen volumes between 1889 and 1903, entitled "Life and Labour of the People in London".

The years of painstaking work necessary to compile this survey involved not only Booth, but also a large body of assistants, including his wife's cousin, Beatrice Potter (later Mrs Sydney Webb) and Mary Booth revised and corrected it. Booth's granddaughter, Belinda Norman-Butler, estimated that the inquiry must have incurred a personal expense to Charles well in excess of £40,000. Called by 'The Times' the grimmest book of its generation, the survey revealed that approximately one third of London families lived in abject poverty, on about £1 per week or less, and a successive inquiry by Seebohm Rowntree in York produced similar conclusions.

The efforts of Booth and Rowntree provided irrefutable evidence of the enormity and wretchedness of poverty in England and were sufficient to end argument on the subject. Booth believed that if given help people would improve themselves and recommended major state intervention to this end. He saw the need for better wages and educational opportunity as a fundamental urgency and campaigned vigorously for the introduction of old age pensions. One of his papers, 'Pauperism: A Picture. Endowment of Old Age: An Argument' (1891), was based in part on studies carried out into the conditions of the poor in Ashby de la Zouch. Charles remained undeterred in his campaign for state pensions, despite frequent attacks of ridicule from many of his peers. One described his proposition to be 'so Utopian that it did not provide food for serious discussion'.

In 1904, Booth was appointed a member of the Privy Council by the Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, and his influence was instrumental in the passing of the Old Age Pensions of 1908, though Booth criticised this Act for granting pensions not to all, but only to those whose incomes fell below a certain level. In February 1910, the Labour Party, then in its infancy, presented Booth with an illuminated address in the House of Commons, 'To you more than any other man' they wrote, 'this first instalment of justice to the aged is due'. Other recognition of his work came from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Liverpool, which awarded him honorary degrees, and at Liverpool a professorship of Social Science was subsequently established in his name.

The arrival of Charles and Mary Booth at Gracedieu occurred quite by chance. The family had been living with Mary's father in London and were anxious to find a suitable country residence, located somewhere between London and Liverpool, where Booth's main interests lay

In the spring of 1886, Charles took his two eldest children on a short vacation to the Midlands with the object of visiting some of the areas cathedrals and also looking out for a potential family residence. The trip included a casual visit to Gracedieu Manor, which was then in a rather deplorable condition, but Charles and his children were instantly captivated by its woodland setting.

'The ground is picturesquely broken', wrote Mary Booth in 1918, 'divided into hill and dale, covert and open space, and traversed by a winding rushing brook, so that it affords a great variety of beauty'

Charles made an instant decision to take on the lease of the manor from the De Lisle family, leaving to his wife the considerable task of making the place habitable. This was to be his home until his death some thirty years later, and up until shortly before he died his daily routine almost always included a ramble through Gracedieu Wood

During the earlier years, Charles's relentless commitments to the inquiry and to his business interests meant that he was frequently absent from Gracedieu, sometimes for long periods, but when increased leisure time became available to him, he became an active participant in the life of the district. The Coalville historian, 'Lavengro', wrote, "he made the manor a focal point for the social life of the district and became - in fact, if not in name - the Squire of Thringstone". The village was to benefit immensely in its development and welfare as a result of Charles and Mary Booth's constant acts of kindness and generosity.

Examples of their charity seem too many to enumerate here, and doubtless the Booths would have made untold other acts of personal kindness in complete anonymity. Of their deeds, the founding of present day Community Centre is best known, and it is hoped to put together a detailed history of the centre in the near future. Other examples of the Booths' charity seem to have been forgotten with the passage of time, though I would like to mention several here on account of their particular interest.

In 1898, Charles was instrumental in the founding of the Whitwick and Thringstone District Nursing Association, apparently in response to an outbreak of typhoid fever in Cademan Street, Whitwick. No doubt the Whitwick Colliery Disaster of the same year had also served as an influential factor. Mr Booth contributed £50 annually to this organisation (of which he was president), in addition to other donations made by Mrs Booth for special purposes, though at the Annual General Meeting held in June 1902, the committee moved that Mr Booth's subscription should be reduced to £10 per annum in order to encourage the association to become self-supporting. The Coalville Times of 13th June 1902 reported that "Mr Booth considered that the request was unique in the history of the world!".

In March 1908, it was reported that through the generosity of Mr and Mrs Booth, a Lady District Visitor had been appointed and had taken up residence in the vicinity. According to the late Mr Frederick Sykes (1907 - 76) of Thringstone, who was once under groom and chauffeur at the manor, the Booths had also provided Dr J C Burkitt of Whitwick with a motor car. Mr Sykes explained (tongue firmly in cheek) that the car had been given because Mrs Booth's family were "always having babies", the doctor having sped previously to the manor on horseback!

In January 1907, Mr Charles Booth Jnr, in the absence of his father, officially opened the Whitwick and District Gymnasium and School of Arms. This was built by Mr Booth on Silver Street, 'to provide physical exercises combined with drill and rifle practice for boys and young men. Mr Booth also bore the expense of a caretaker and instructor, one Sergeant Major Turnbull RE, and in November 1909 he also provided a shooting range in an adjacent field. Members could buy seven rounds of ammunition for a penny. The gymnasium, which later doubled up as the Arcadia Dance Hall, was sold into private hands after the First World War and is now divided into three private houses (numbers 6a to 6c Silver Street).

In 1914, Mary Booth built 'The Meadows' on Loughborough Road, Thringstone. Originally known as 'Saint Andrews' Home', this was a large white house used as a convalescent home for women and girls from London, and run from Mrs Booth's private income. This later became the home of Charles Booth Jnr and then a country retreat for Lt Col Tom Booth, the eldest son, before eventually being sold off by the family. Regrettably, as with so many local buildings of historic and aesthetic value, this was demolished in 1989, having fallen into a state of disrepair. It is perhaps at least some measure of consolation that a large modern nursing home has since been built on this site and which retains the title, "The Meadows"

Another, more enduring instigation was the founding of Gracedieu Park Cricket Club by Charles in 1887. For many years, matches were played in the manor grounds and Lavengro records that these were sometimes followed by 'sumptuous feeds at the manor', which were remembered for years afterwards by local people. The Cricket Club is now based in a field to the rear of the Bulls Head.

Sadly, Mrs Booth's one last wish of kindness to the people of the district was denied. In January 1938 (a year before her death) she wrote to her daughter, Meg, "Mr de Lisle has absolutely turned down my request to buy the wood ( for the benefit of the people of Leicestershire). I am very, very disappointed". It is remembered that the Booths established primrose and rhododendron valleys in the wood, which were tended every day by two elderly gentlemen from Golden Row, Whitwick.

Charles Booth passed away on Thursday, 23rd November 1916 at Gracedieu aged seventy-six years. In a lengthy obituary, the Coalville Times recorded: 'The body, enclosed in a plain oak coffin, was removed from Gracedieu Manor on Sunday morning and placed in the church on the chancel steps under a small guard of the Whitwick and Thringstone Volunteer Training Corps'. Here, the body rested for several hours prior to the service, while outside an enormous and magnificent collection of floral tributes mounted to form 'a bank of bloom' near the simple ivy-lined earth grave.

In her memoirs, Mary Booth wrote , Charles '...was buried in the churchyard of the little church at Thringstone that he was accustomed to attend, and where two of his daughters were married. Those of his relatives and friends who were able to come quite filled the small building, and there was but little room left for the villagers who loved him. But they assembled in the churchyard, where altogether sang the hymn, "O God, our help" at the grave side'.

In 1920, a tablet designed by Sir Charles Nicholson was unveiled to Mr Booth's memory in the crypt of Saint Paul's Cathedral, London. The Reverend C Shrewsbury , Vicar of Thringstone, accompanied members of the Booth family at the unveiling ceremony, which was performed by Sir Austen Chamberlain, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Booth was a great admirer of Saint Pauls and had presented the Cathedral with a copy of Holman Hunt's most famous painting, "The Light of the World" in 1904. The painting cost Booth £1,000, and an additional £5,000 to send it on a world tour. Lady Holman Hunt was among the mourners at Thringstone Church on the occasion of Charles Booth's funeral.