Mimi Smith
Mary Elizabeth "Mimi" 'Smith, informally known as Aunt Mimi', was a maternal aunt and the parental guardian of the English musician John Lennon. She was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, as the oldest of five daughters. She became a resident trainee nurse at the Woolton Convalescent Hospital and later worked as a private secretary. On 15 September 1939 she married George Toogood Smith, who ran his family's dairy farm and a shop in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool.
After her younger sister Julia Lennon separated from her husband, Julia and her son, the young John Lennon, moved in with a new partner, but Smith contacted Liverpool's Social Services and complained about his sleeping in the same bed as the two adults. Julia was eventually persuaded to hand over the care of John to the Smiths. He lived with the Smiths for most of his childhood and remained close to his aunt, even though she was highly dismissive of his musical ambitions, his girlfriends and wives. She often told the teenage Lennon: "The guitar's all right, John, but you'll never make a living out of it".
In 1965, John bought her a bungalow in Poole, Dorset, where she lived until her death in 1991. Despite later losing touch with other family members, he kept in close contact with Mimi and telephoned her every week until his death in 1980. The Smiths' original Liverpool house was later bought and donated to The National Trust by John's widow Yoko Ono.
The Stanley family
According to Lennon, the Stanley family once owned the whole of Woolton village. William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, did once own the manorial rights to Woolton but Lennon's Stanley family were from humbler origins and came to Liverpool in the 1870s. Smith's grandfather was born in Birmingham and her great grandfather was born in London. Smith's father, George Ernest Stanley, was born in the Everton district of Liverpool in 1874 to William Henry Stanley and Eliza Jane Gildea; Eliza was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland. By 1891 the Stanleys were living in Upper Frederick Street, south of the city centre, in the same inner city area of Liverpool as the family of George's future wife, Annie Jane Millward, who was born in Chester in 1873 to Welsh parents. George Ernest Stanley and Annie Millward were married at St Peter's Church, Liverpool on 19 November 1906. Stanley was a merchant seaman often away at sea so was absent from some census records.Mimi was the couple's first daughter, born seven months before her parents married. Four more daughters followed: Elizabeth Jane ; Annie Georgina ; Julia ; and Harriet. After the birth of his daughters, Stanley stopped going to sea and got a job with the Liverpool and Glasgow Tug Salvage Company as an insurance investigator. He moved his family to the Liverpool suburb of Allerton, where they lived in a small terraced house at 9 Newcastle Road. According to Beatles biographer Bob Spitz, Mimi assumed a matriarchal role in the Stanley house to help her mother, and dressed "as if she was on her way to a weekly garden club meeting". Friends of Lennon later stated that his aunt based everything on decorum, honesty, and a black-and-white attitude: "Either you were good enough or you were not." Annie Stanley died in 1941, and Mimi accepted the responsibility of caring for her father with help from Julia.
When other girls were thinking of marriage, Smith talked of challenges and adventures that arose from her attitude of "stubborn independence", and often said that she never wanted to get married because she hated the idea of being "tied to the kitchen sink". She became a resident trainee nurse at the Woolton Convalescent Hospital, and later worked as a private secretary for Ernest Vickers, who was an industrial magnate with businesses in Manchester and Liverpool. She had long-term plans to buy a house in a "respected suburb" of Liverpool one day so that she could entertain the "scholars and dignitaries of Liverpool society".
Marriage and 'Mendips'
In early 1932 she met George Smith, who lived across from the hospital where she worked, and to which he delivered milk every morning. Smith and his brother Frank operated a dairy farm and a shop in Woolton that had been in the Smith family for four generations. Smith started courting Mimi, but was constantly thwarted by her indifference and her father's interference. Stanley would allow the couple to sit in the back room at Newcastle Road only when he or his wife were in the front room, and before it grew too late he would burst into the back room and loudly order Smith home. The courtship lasted almost seven years, but Smith grew tired of waiting. After delivering milk to the hospital one morning he gave her an ultimatum that she must marry him, "or nothing at all!"Mimi and Smith were finally married on 15 September 1939. They bought a semi-detached house called Mendips – named after the range of hills – at 251 Menlove Avenue, in a middle-class area of Liverpool. Menlove Avenue suffered extensive damage during World War II, and Mimi said that she often had to throw a wet blanket on incendiary bombs that fell in the garden. During the war, the government took over the Smiths' farmland for war work, and Smith was called up for service. However, he was discharged three years later and worked in an aircraft factory in Speke until the end of the war. Smith later left the milk trade and started a small bookmaker's business, which led Mimi to complain later that he was a compulsive gambler and had lost most of their money.
John Lennon
Mimi's sister Julia married Alfred Lennon on 3 December 1938; on 9 October 1940, the couple's first and only child was born. Smith phoned the Oxford Street Maternity Hospital that evening and was told that Julia had given birth to a boy. According to Smith, she went straight to the hospital "as fast as legs could carry me", during the middle of an air raid, and was forced to hide in doorways to avoid the shrapnel. Smith later recalled a story that began with a parachute-borne landmine landing outside the hospital: "My sister stayed in bed, and they put the baby under the bed. They wanted me to go into the basement, but I wouldn't. I ran all the way back to Newcastle Road to tell Father the news. 'Get under the shelter,' the wardens were shouting. 'Oh, be quiet,' I told them."The story about the air raid has since been refuted, as there was no attack that night. The previous raid had been on 21–22 September, and the next was on 16 October, when the areas of Walton and Everton were badly hit.
After Julia separated from her husband, she and the infant Lennon moved in with her new partner, John Albert "Bobby" Dykins. However, Smith twice contacted Liverpool's Social Services and complained about John sleeping in the same bed as Julia and Dykins. Julia was eventually persuaded to hand over the care of John to the Smiths, who had no children of their own. Smith later confided to a relative that although she had never wanted children, she had "always wanted John". In July 1946, Alfred Lennon visited the Smiths and took Lennon to Blackpool, ostensibly for a long holiday, but with the secret intention of emigrating to New Zealand with him. Julia went to Blackpool and took John back to her house, but a few weeks later she handed him back to Smith. John then lived continuously at Mendips in the smallest bedroom, which was located above the front door. Although she was a caring guardian, Smith was also known for being very strict, compared to the more relaxing influence of her husband and John's mother. Family friends described Smith as stubborn, impatient and unforgiving, but also said that she had a strong sense of humour. On many occasions when she criticised John, he would respond with a joke and the two of them would be "rolling around, laughing together".
Smith bought volumes of short stories for John, and her husband taught him to read at the age of five by reading aloud the headlines of the Liverpool Echo. Every summer between 1949 and 1955, Smith sent John alone on a ten-hour bus journey to visit his Aunt Mater and her family at their home near Loch Meadie in Durness, on the north coast of Scotland. Smith also took her charge to a garden party in Calderstones Park every year, where a Salvation Army band played. Strawberry Field, in Beaconsfield Road, was the name of a Salvation Army house that Lennon would later immortalise in the Beatles' song, "Strawberry Fields Forever". She would later say: "John loved his uncle George. I felt quite left out of that. They'd go off together, just leaving me a bar of chocolate and a note saying 'Have a happy day'".
The Smiths had rented their two first-floor bedrooms to students for extra income since 1947, while the Smiths slept in the former dining room on the ground floor. One of the students who lodged there included John Cavill, who stayed from September 1949 until June 1950. Cavill played piano, but as the house had none he bought a guitar; admitting he knew almost nothing about chords: "My father had a violin and I had learned to play pizzicato on it, so when I got the guitar I played tunes on the strings, and John did the same".
George Smith died of a liver haemorrhage in June 1955, leaving £2,000 in his will. Three years later, Julia was killed on Menlove Avenue when she was knocked down by a car driven by an off-duty police officer, PC Eric Clague. Smith did not witness the fatal collision, but cried hysterically over Julia's body until the ambulance arrived. Clague was acquitted of all charges, given a reprimand and a short suspension from duty; when Smith heard the verdict, she shouted "Murderer!" at Clague.
After John Lennon became famous, Smith berated him for speaking in a Liverpudlian accent, but Lennon replied: "That's show business. They want me to speak more Liverpool.” Despite the talk of Lennon being working class – as were Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – he later rejected the idea, saying, "I was a nice clean-cut suburban boy." Later comparing his pre-fame living circumstances at Mendips with those of the other Beatles, he said, "In the class system it was about a half an inch in a higher class than Paul, George and Ringo, who lived in subsidised government houses. We owned our own house, had our own garden. They didn't have anything like that".