Syrie Maugham - Marriage To Henry Wellcome

Marriage To Henry Wellcome

In 1901, on a visit to Khartoum with her father, she met Henry Wellcome, an American-born British industrialist who had made his fortune in pharmaceuticals (his firm became Burroughs Wellcome). She was 22 and he was 48, and they married soon after. In 1903 they had a son, Henry Mounteney Wellcome, who apparently had a learning disability that kept him apart from his family for most of his childhood and youth.

The Wellcomes' marriage was not happy, and Syrie reportedly had numerous affairs, including with the department store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, Brig. Gen. Percy Desmond Fitzgerald, and the novelist William Somerset Maugham. Eventually, after some years of separation, she became pregnant with Maugham's only child, Mary Elizabeth, who was known as Liza. When the child was born in Rome, Italy, she was given Wellcome's surname. Wellcome then publicly sued for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.