S. Talbot Smith

His mother died when he was a baby and his father took him and his two-year-old sister to England to be brought up by relatives in Staffordshire and straightaway returned to his extensive business interests in South Australia.

He was educated at Tettenhall College, Wolverhampton and studied law at Cambridge University, graduating BA, LLB, MA and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in June 1885.

[2] While at Cambridge, Smith immersed himself in the English arts and theatre scene, attending hundreds of plays and exhibitions in London, Manchester and Birmingham.

[1] Smith married Florence Oliver Chettle in 1887; they had a modest home at Halton terrace, Kensington Park and a busy social life.

He appears to have had a disdain for wealth: during the 1914–1918 war he drew up, gratis, some 4,000 wills for volunteers; when he was left only £2,000 of his father's estate of some £250,000 he was not disappointed, as he had the benefit of his generosity while a young man, when it counted most.