Hiram Crompton Booth (1825-1890)

Booth began his photographic career in Bradford in c.1847. He set up a short lived Scarborough studio in Falsgrave Road in 1848. Adamson suggests that his Scarborough studio had been connected to Beard’s, it certainly had the same name as Beard’s studio (in York Place which had operated during the season in 1842-1843 and 1845) - The Royal Photographic Portrait Institution. It is possible that at this point Booth had purchased a daguerreotype licence from Beard. The studio name is next used by Mr J. Holroyd in 1850. He also had a studio in Leamington Spa. Booth is best know as a photographer working in Harrogate, where he opened the town’s first studio in the season of 1847, before settling there in the late 1850s. By the 1870s he was beginning to loose interest in photography and he became a picture dealer.

Booth was born in Bradford in 1825, the son of John and Sarah Booth. He began his career as portrait painter, at one time in partnership with his brother, Nelson in Bradford. On the 4 August 1852 he married Eliza Ellen Turpin.