Mary Teresa Smyth

She was born in 1854, the daughter of a Dublin coal merchant and haulier. Her first marriage was to John Barry in Dublin in 1879 , by whom she had 2 children - Mary (b.1880) and Emily (b.1882). In 1885 she married Henry West as a widow in London, having given birth to their first child, Charles, there the previous year. Their second child, William Gerald, was born in 1892 while the family was living in Cork. She was not welcomed by the children of Henry's first marriage who never spoke to her.

In 1898 the family moved to Manchester and then Liverpool where she died of acute alcoholism in 1901. Henry said that 'she had been a good wife until the demon drink got her in his clutches'.