This Booth Hodgetts was the fourth man to bear the name. He was born in 1869 at Clenston in Dorset. After being educated at North Hill House in Winchester and Charterhouse in Godalming (where he was a Hodgsonite), Booth went up to Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1888.

He married Helen Marguerita Strong Blucke in 1892. Her father performed the marriage. The newlyweds lived at Godalming (his father’s parish) and Fernhurst for a couple of years and had two sons.

Like his father and father-in-law, Booth was destined for Holy Orders. After being ordained a deacon in 1896, he was appointed curate of Holy Trinity at Millbrook, Southampton. There he and Helen were active in the parish and Helen was noted for her musical abilities.

Without the protection of her family, Helen could have been left destitute. Instead, she returned to her family, and her subsequent marriage to Booth Hodgetts brought respectability. Although the new parish was 135 miles from her home, the court case had been widely publicised, and it would have taken only one letter or visitor from Leicestershire for the scandal about the rector’s wife to break in the new parish. Some parishioners likely shunned her.

It’s unclear whether Helen was plagued by depression, or the victim of gossip. Whatever the cause, in April 1898 she was low spirited, complained life was not worth living, and hung herself in the pantry. Alerted by the servants, it was Rev Booth who cut her down—too late to save her.

Given the scandal, it is likely Helen had married with a significant dowry. In addition Rev Booth inherited about £6,000 from his father shortly after Helen’s death. This allowed him to take time off from his curacy, buy a yacht, and pursue leisure activities before announcing he was going to Australia on medical advice.

When he embarked, he took his two young sons and their nanny: Amelia Castle. Rev Booth evidently planned a bit of fun with Amelia and booked the passage as a married couple. In April 1900, their arrival was reported in Sydney newspapers and repeated ‘back home’ where the mention of “Mrs Hodgetts” must have caused some surprise to Booth’s former parishioners and his mother.

Rev Booth had been caught out. In need of a quick, quiet marriage, he and Amelia went to the World Matrimonial Agency, a marriage shop with a reputation for marrying anyone at a ‘quid a nob with witnesses supplied’. It employed a variety of ministers, and customers took the service on offer; a Greek Orthodox minister happened to be on duty when Booth and Amelia attended.

Around this time, it seems Booth received Crockford’s annual clergy survey asking for an update on his career; he evidently replied saying he was a Sydney chaplain and continued this practice through to 1904. He was not, however, leading the life of a clergyman.

Booth was wealthier than 90% of Australians. Nevertheless, by December he joined Sidney Raper in an estate agency. Booth and Sidney were numbered amongst Mosman’s most prominent citizens and employed a manager to run the business for them. As a Cambridge-educated Englishman, no doubt Booth lent an air of sophistication to the enterprise.

Booth and Amelia had a daughter in December 1901 and named her Lilian. Three months later, Booth deserted them and moved to Randwick where his Aberladye Stables bred and raced horses. He had probably already taken up with Henrietta Grace Knight before the move. Henrietta was fifteen years’ younger than Booth, and by 1903, called herself ‘Mrs Hodgetts’. Booth showered her with expensive jewellery including rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and a gold ring engraved ‘Hetty’ and ‘Booth’. Meanwhile, Amelia sold the Mosman house and took Lilian to England, never to return.

From 1903, the estate agency was registered in Booth’s name, but in January 1907, advertisements ceased, Booth sold up, and Sidney Raper was shortly declared bankrupt. Perhaps there had been something shady about the business as it was unregistered prior to 1903, and—on three previous occasions— Raper had escaped conviction for embezzlement, forgery, and uttering as an employee of the Land Titles department.

Whatever the truth, Booth moved on, leaving no forwarding address. It transpired he was lying low in Liverpool occupied as a dairyman. I found him there because “S Hodgetts” appears on a local school’s WWI honour roll, and Booth’s son Stewart was the only S Hodgetts to serve in the AIF in WWI. While becoming a dairyman seems uncharacteristic for Booth, it ties in with his next move—and I doubt he ever milked cows himself!

As his sons reached maturity, the city beckoned, and in 1911 Booth and Hetty moved to Paddington, and he reprised his role as an estate agent. The railway line had just been extended to Bankstown where acreages offered a small farm lifestyle within easy reach of the city. Of Booth’s sons, Stewart wanted to be an architect, however William was bound for farming—Greenacre at Bankstown catered for both and, with land in demand, it was the ideal location for an estate agent.

Booth and the family were at Greenacre by mid-1911. Their property soon had cows and poultry which were probably William’s enterprise. Booth kept a flat in town, but he and Hetty lived at Bankstown until late 1914. They would shortly be married—just not to each other.

In February 1915, Hetty married a poultry farmer from Pennant Hills, and two months later Booth married Vivienne O’Keeffe who was 26 years his junior. Hetty had never been married and was therefore free. Booth, of course, was still married to Amelia but, as she had been in England for twelve years, the chances of discovery were low. Nevertheless, five days after his marriage, Booth sold up in Sydney. Relocating to Melbourne conveniently avoided awkward questions from anyone who knew he was married to Amelia, or thought he was married to Hetty.

With the country at war, the government undertook a census to assess the manpower and wealth available for Australia’s war effort and by mid-year Booth was one of 400 civil servants working for the War Census Office in Melbourne.

The pre-war lifestyle was over, and Booth settled into the life of a clerk. However, his habit of leaving no forwarding address was about to cause him grief. His son Stewart had enlisted in the AIF and, when he was wounded at Gallipoli, an official telegram was sent to Booth in Sydney. Now in Melbourne, Booth missed this telegram, and it was not until two weeks later that he saw Stewart listed in The Age under ‘wounded in action’. A second telegram had already been despatched to Sydney advising that Stewart was now seriously ill, but again Booth found out through the newspapers two weeks later. Once Booth advised the war office of his current address, he promptly heard that Stewart was progressing satisfactorily in an English hospital.

Booth’s younger son, William, also enlisted and embarked shortly before Booth and Vivienne welcomed a daughter, Joan, in 1916. At age 48, and with poor eyesight, Booth was unable to enlist in the AIF himself. Instead, he joined the Citizens Military Forces and was appointed to the Pay Corps, working in St Kilda until his discharge in 1920.

Booth appears to have returned to the estate agency trade for a couple of years, but in 1926 he took up a post as deacon at Ellalong in NSW and was ordained a full minister at Newcastle the following March. It is interesting to speculate on what prompted his return to the church. Perhaps it was his sons’ safe return from the war?

From 1926, Booth was rector at various parishes in the Hunter Region, reaching outlying areas by horse. He retired in 1936, separating from Vivienne about the same time. Booth spent his retirement at Narrandera with his daughter Joan and her policeman husband. He died in 1954 having outlived all his ‘wives’ apart from Vivienne. He had led a long life, closing the door on each chapter as he moved on. The mourners at his funeral probably had no idea of his exploits.

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