Betty was born in England and raised in Bradford, Yorkshire, before moving to South Wales at the start of WW2, as a young girl. Her parents were Tommy and Rhoda Taylor and she has a younger sister Barbara. She married Alf Smith in 1953 and had two children Christine and Derek.  They emigrated to South Africa in around 1959 and she lived there until returning to the UK in 2007. Following her divorce in the 1980's she went out to work for the first time since she married, she managed a sheltered housing project and enjoyed the work. When she retired, she lost the cottage which went with the job and moved in with a friend, Bill Sharrett, to look after him. They lived on Marine Drive, in the picturesque seaside village of Schoenmakerskop, until sometime after the year 2000, when they moved into a suburb of Port Elizabeth, as they felt worried about being so far out of town after they had suffered a number of burglaries. In 2007 she had a nasty fall and broke her leg in several places, she spent 5 months in hospital and when she came out was not able to cope by herself. She moved to a nice flat in ABC sheltered housing in Newport in the UK to be near family for support.  She fulfilled one of her lifetime dreams, by taking a short cruise to the Norwegian fjords, a few months after her 80th birthday, in June 2011.

When Bill died in 2012 both of their ashes were scatterd in a plot here: http://www.gwentcrematorium.org.uk/