Frederick Fracis Booty was a brother to my great grandmother, Ruby Mary Booty. He was born in 1879 in Sydney, fourth child of English-born Phillip Galloway Booty, law clerk, and his native-born wife Mary, née Grattan. He was descended from a long line of artists and lithographers. With his mother and five other siblings, he arrived at Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1896 aboard the Rockton to join his father and three older brothers who had preceded them. Fred supported himself by designing advertisements for the Umpire (Fremantle); in the evening he attended drawing and painting classes. He also sent cartoons and illustrations to the local newspapers.
Booty reputedly made the first line block print for the Perth Printing Works in April 1901.
He enjoyed undertaking decorative work for memorials or manuscripts or preparing theatre programmes. Slight of build, with a shock of dark hair, he was an engaging young man with an eye for the girls and a taste for the nightlife around the town. His consuming passion for the theatre ranged from vaudeville to oratorio. Grown restive by 1904, he returned to Sydney and applied for a job with the Victorian Stamp Co. Next year he joined a lithography partnership in London until the theatre lured him to the United States of America to work as a stage designer and caricaturist. Booty died of pneumonia on 13 January 1914 at Peter Bent Brigham hospital, Boston, and was cremated.
His 1st cousin once removed,Frederick William Booty was an Artist , living in Brighton, England, who was also the author of the first postage stamp catalogue in English, and the first illustrated stamp catalogue anywhere.