In Norton (St. Mary) Churchyard is the Commonwealth War Grave of:

60488   Private
W.M. Booth
Yorkshire Regiment
15th September 1919   age 24

Thy will be done

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
William Milburn Booth was born at the start of 1897 in Norton on Tees and baptized there on 10th February.  He had an older brother called Laurence and a younger brother George born after the death of his father George in April 1898.  His mother Dorothy Isabella (nee Appleton) remarried  in 1900 and became Dorothy Davison, giving birth to a daughter Annie, half sister to William.

The 1901 census shows William living with his maternal grandparents, William and Ann Appleton, on their farm, Tithe Barn, Norton.  His mother was living in Yarm with her husband and new family.  Still living with his grandmother, now a widow, in Blakestone Lane in 1911, William was still at school.

William served with 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards)  in the trenches during WW1 as Private 60488 and  then found himself posted to  Ireland where the Battalion served during the War of Independence.  He was killed on active service in Tipperary on 15th September 1919.

The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail  17/09/1919 reports:-
TIPPERARY CAMP TRAGEDY.
SHOT THROUGH THE HEART
The victim of the revolver accident at Tipperary military hutments on Monday was Private Booth, of the Yorkshire Regt., not Private Pagan, first reported. Booth and another soldier had exchanged tunics when Pagen came into the room and asked to see Booth’s revolver. He did not know it was loaded, and while he was handling the weapon it went off, Booth being shot through the heart.

A verdict “Accidental death” returned the inquest yesterday.

Acknowledgements: Rev. David Youngson

Wilfred Milburn Booth is remembered in Norton on N68.02 and in Stockton in S138.18.