Betty de Courcy Ireland

Betty de Courcy Ireland (25 May 1911 - 24 December 1999) was a socialist and anti-war activist, who was described by her husband, John de Courcy Ireland, as the "real inspiration" of all "the adventures, campaigns, and journeys" of his life.

Biography Betty de Courcy Ireland was born Beatrice Haigh in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England on 25 May 1911. She was youngest of four daughters of an architect, Philip Haigh, and Victoria Alice Haigh (née Brunker), originally from Dublin. De Courcy Ireland attended Cheltenham College and later a school in Switzerland. She then went to a catering college, and helped her sister in operating a restaurant in Cornmarket Street, Oxford, known as "the Irish cafe" owing to its university and left leaning clientele. Here she met John de Courcy Ireland, who was attending Oxford, in the early 1930s. He had gone to the cafe to wash himself after canoeing on the canals from Oxford and the Thames to Bath and the Severn. They married in 1932.