Maria West and Richard Wombwell

The first record of Maria West in England is from 1798, the year of the United Irishmen rebellion. Whilst Ireland descended into turmoil once more, Maria, now aged thirty-three, had somehow managed to take up with a man of apparently simple farming origins from Essex named Richard Wombwell. 

Without troubling themselves with marital formalities, they had a child in 1798, Elizabeth, who did not survive. 

Old Church in St Pancras in 1815, where Maria West married Richard Wombwell.
Picture from Wikipedia.

Undeterred, they continued their relationship, and another child resulted in 1801, Sophia Wombwell. Only after this did they take the final plunge, and walk down the aisle of Old Church, St. Pancras, London, there to become man and wife. 

The couple had a third daughter in 1804, to be known as Harriett Wombwell, who was the great-grandmother of Hetty Jane Owen. A fourth daughter, Eliza, followed in 1808. She must also have died young.

In these early days, the couple moved around London. Their first two daughters seem to have born somewhere in St. Marylebone Road. Harriett was born in St. George of the East, and Eliza in Mile End Old Town. Their father, Richard Wombwell is variously recorded as having been a chandler, a grocer, and a livery stable keeper. They eventually settled in St. Mary, Stoke Newington, where Richard died in 1833.

Maria lived on and took over from her late husband as livery stable keeper, inheriting, as we know, in around 1834, a large portfolio of Irish fee farm rentals from her first cousin, Elizabeth Carson.