A MEMORY OF TR& CINEMA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Some years ago when cinemas were still rare and the pictures -flickered violently, an incideirt occurred in a small fishing town on -the Essex coast upon' which I have often wished to have more light thrown. A man called Junitis Booth, said to be an American, hired a large shed which I -think had been previously used by a yacht builder, arid there he set up a cinema. There was not much money in the place, as an Englishman would have known, and the. fishermen and yacht " hands " apparently preferred the ra et rient of the harbour to the flickering images of the shed. The enterprise failed and Junius Booth killed himself. There was an inquest and all the facts were recorded in the newspapers.
Now what interested me, though I never found that it interested anybody else in that small town, was that Junius Booth bore the name of the father of Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Junius Booth had for one son, Edwin Booth, ,the famous actor, and for another, John Wilkes Booth; the assassin. I have often wondered whether the eccentric Booth who killed himself in Essex was a descendant of that family. An apparently confirming piece of evidence was the rumour that he had been an actor before coming to England.—I am,
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