Rena’s father, Captain William Swiney, married Violet Hamilton, née Jerningham, the illegitimate daughter of a lord, and their only child, Rena, would also marry a lord.
In 1901 the Swineys were living in Paddington, London. They had only one child, Rena DeVere Swiney, born in 1898. She called herself Shapland-Swiney, and after the divorce from her second husband she was noted as Rena DeVere Humphrey Shapland-Swiney.
Rena was a debutante presented at court to King George V, and became a ‘London socialite favourite’. In 1917, she married Harry A. Howell in London. She was 18, and he was 22 years old.
Rena and Howell divorced about 1920, then she married William Frederick Mario Graham Humphrey, an older man and an army officer, in 1921.
She left Humphrey in 1923 and began an affair with a lord, Baron Terrington, living with him for some years. Both their partners sued for divorce, and, on 28th July 1927, in Boulogne Sur Mer, France, Rena, aged 29, married her lord, Harold James Selbourne Woodhouse, 2nd Baron Terrington (1877-1940).
But Lord Terrington had unfinished business at home. He managed to avoid extradition until 1928, when he finally had to face charges of ‘fraudulent conversion’ in England. He spent three years in prison.
He died on 19.11.1940 in England. While he was in prison, Rena worked in the U.S.A., writing articles for Liberty Magazine, among others.
In 1930, one of a group of journalists, she waited at Long Island airport, New York, hoping to interview the famous pilot, Charles Lindbergh, who was flying in with his wife, seven months pregnant and quite sick. The Lindberghs very much resented the harassment and refused to be interviewed. Rena commented later, ‘He wasn’t just curt, he was damned rude’.
Rena published a number of books, including a book of reminiscenses in 1931 with the enigmatic title: “All That for Nothing”.
“The author states she tried to recapture the spirit of her youth and that the stories are true, except for the names.”
A list of female authors states that she died in 1973, but that is when Terrington’s first wife, Vera died, in England on 19 May. As Vera was also an author, it seems likely that somebody has confused the two.
We have now found Rena’s fourth marriage. In 1938 in the USA, she married Tony Billingham, an American news correspondent, and eventually settled with him in Georgia. He died in June 1963. She died in 1965, aged 66 years. They are both buried in Georgia.
