Younger daughter of Grosvenor Bedford’s friend, Thomas Woodruffe Smith. She visited Keswick in 1826, at the time when her permanent address was in Acre Lane, Clapham. Southey wrote to her afterwards with news of himself and events in Keswick. In 1833 Maria Woodruffe Smith married George Head Head (1795–1876), a Quaker banker and active abolitionist, of Rickerby Hall, Carlisle.