page_title: Mimi Smith
section_title: Marriage and 'Mendips'
hierarchical_section_title: Mimi Smith / Marriage and 'Mendips'
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Mendips, John Lennon's childhood home
context_page_description: Mary Elizabeth "Mimi" Smith was a maternal aunt and the parental guardian of the English musician John Lennon. Mimi Stanley was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, England, 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.
context_section_description: 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 Smith, 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 only allow the couple to sit in the back room at Newcastle Road 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.
caption: 'Mendips', the Smiths' former home, which is now owned by the National Trust
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