Katharine O'Shea
Political Wife
Remembered for the scandal provoked by her lengthy affair with and subsequent marriage to Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell, this aristocratic, Victorian era adulterer had two surviving daughters -- Claire and Katharine -- with the disgraced politician.
When she met Parnell, she was recently separated from her first husband, British Army Captain and politician William O'Shea.
Her longtime lover and second husband, Charles Stewart Parnell, died just four months after marrying her.
She was born in Essex, England, to a socially prominent family that included Whig politician Sir Matthew Wood (her grandfather) and Baron William Wood (her uncle).
Conservative politician Robert Peel was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time of O'Shea's birth.