Benjamin Booth was the youngest of ten children born to John Booth of Glendon Hall, Northamptonshire. Booth did not succeed to the Glendon Estate but pursued a career in the East India Company, becoming a Director and living in the Adelphi in London. He collected more than 40 works by Wilson that came to form a significant part of the Ford Collection. He also made manuscript notes about them which remain a very useful resource for Wilson scholarship (see Booth Notes). In 1760 he married Jane Salwey, daughter of Richard Salwey of the Moor (Moor Park) Shropshire. They had seven children and their youngest daughter, Marianne, married Sir Richard Ford. Thus parts of Booth's collection passed by descent to the Ford family. (See Walpole Society 1998, especially vol. 1, pp. 5-21).
