Well-known and admired ex-Herald journalist Betty Smith dies aged 93

TRIBUTES have been paid to Betty Smith, a well-known and much-admired former chief reporter at the Herald and author of several books, who has died aged 93.

Born in Moseley, Birmingham, in 1929, Betty, pictured, grew up in Solihull and Shirley. She attended a Catholic school – when the bombs weren’t falling during the war – and although she wished to continue her education, her father insisted she leave school at the age of 14 to get a job. She went to work as a shorthand typist at Solihull Council where she met her future husband, Vic, who had recently been demobbed after being wounded in the liberation of Holland. They married in 1950 in Solihull and moved to Cheshire where their first two children were born – Philip in 1952 and Stephen in 1954.

Three weeks after Stephen was born, the family returned to Warwickshire where Vic had a job in the then Stratford Rural District Council. Initially they lived in Bearley where two more boys were born: Iain in 1956 and Nick in 1958.