page_title: George Toogood Smith
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: George Toogood Smith / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Sango Bay, Durness, North Scotland
context_page_description: George Toogood Smith was the maternal uncle, through marriage, of John Lennon. Smith operated his family's two dairy farms and a retail outlet with his brother, Frank Smith, in the village of Woolton, Liverpool. The farms had been in the Smith family for four generations, but after the start of World War II, they were taken over by the British Government for war work.
  Smith started courting Mimi Stanley in the spring of 1932, but was thwarted by her indifference and her father's interference. After delivering milk to the hospital where she worked he gave her an ultimatum that she must marry him, "or nothing at all!" On 15 September 1939, she finally married him. They bought a semi-detached house called Mendips, named after the range of hills, at 251 Menlove Avenue, Liverpool.
  Lennon lived with Smith and his wife for the majority of his childhood, and Smith taught the young Lennon to read, read him nursery rhymes at night, and later taught Lennon how to solve crossword puzzles. He also taught him to draw and paint and bought him his first mouth organ.
context_section_description: Smith collapsed and died on a Sunday in 1955 at home of a liver haemorrhage (aged 52) and was buried in the graveyard of St. Peter's Church, Woolton, in the Smith family grave. 
  At the time of Smith's death, the fourteen-year-old Lennon was visiting members of the Stanley family in Sango Bay, Durness, Scotland, and was not informed until he returned home. Lennon's first reaction was to laugh hysterically, but then to privately grieve and cry. He would do the same after hearing about the death of his mother three years later, and the death of Stuart Sutcliffe (The Beatles' first bass player), which, with Smith's death, were all major factors in Lennon's early life. In the same year as Smith’s death, the McCartney family moved to 20 Forthlin Road, just three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from Mendips. Lennon would later meet Paul McCartney for the first time at St. Peter's Church, where Smith was buried.
  After Smith's death, Lennon insisted on wearing a large overcoat that had belonged to Smith, and even though it became worn and threadbare, Lennon wore it throughout his art college years. Mimi never used the downstairs sitting room again after Smith's death, using only the breakfast room and the kitchen, and never replaced the furniture, which became old and faded. Lennon continued to live at Mendips (and also for a time with his first wife Cynthia Lennon) until his early 20s, before moving to London.
  When Lennon was living in the United States, he asked his half-sister, Julia Dykins, to send the clock that was previously in the living room at Mendips, which had been passed down through Smith's family, and was inscribed with the words "George Smith, Woolton Tavern", on a metal plate on the back. In Lennon's last published interview, he said: "This image of me being an orphan is garbage, because I was well protected by my auntie and uncle [Smith and Mimi] and they looked after me very well, thanks".
caption: Sango Bay, Durness, which Lennon was visiting at the time of Smith's death
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