Captain Gilbertson was the youngest captain in the British Merchant Navy. Simon, who never married and was killed in action in World War II on 23 March 1944 and Priscilla who married in 1946 to a lawyer named John Constantine Phipps but died from Polio in Scotland on 7 October 1947. In spite of her misfortunes Helen Melville Smith led an adventurous life, she drove sports cars and became a pilot. She came to the set of A Night to Remember in the winter of 1957-8 and remarked that Lawrence Naismith, who played her father, bore a striking resemblance to him. Helen Melville Smith moved to Leafield, Oxfordshire in 1934, she died there in August 1973 and was buried close to her mother and husband.
Some locals can still recall witnessing the conversion of the shop into a house.
In the 1851 Hanley Directory, Edward Smith of Well Street is listed as a shopkeeper.