38 Facts About Mimi Smith

Mary Elizabeth "Mimi" Smith was a maternal aunt and the parental guardian of the English musician John Lennon.

Mimi Smith 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 Mimi Smith who ran his family's dairy farm and a shop in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool.

Mimi Smith 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.

Mimi Smith often told the teenage Lennon: "The guitar's all right, John, but you'll never make a living out of it".

Mimi Smith's grandfather was born in Birmingham and her great grandfather was born in London.

Mimi 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.

Mimi Smith was the couple's first daughter, born seven months before her parents married.

Mimi Smith moved his family to the Liverpool suburb of Allerton, where they lived in a small terraced house at 9 Newcastle Road.

When other girls were thinking of marriage, Mimi 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".

Mimi Smith 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.

Mimi Smith 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".

In early 1932 she met George Mimi Smith, who lived across from the hospital where she worked, and to which he delivered milk every morning.

The courtship lasted almost seven years, but Mimi Smith grew tired of waiting.

Mimi and Smith were finally married on 15 September 1939.

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.

Mimi Smith phoned the Oxford Street Maternity Hospital that evening and was told that Julia had given birth to a boy.

However, Mimi Smith twice contacted Liverpool's Social Services and complained about John sleeping in the same bed as Julia and Dykins.

Mimi Smith later confided to a relative that although she had never wanted children, she had "always wanted John".

Family friends described Mimi Smith as stubborn, impatient and unforgiving, but said that she had a strong sense of humour.

Mimi 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, Mimi 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.

Mimi Smith took her charge to a garden party in Calderstones Park every year, where a Salvation Army band played.

Mimi Smith did not witness the fatal collision, but cried hysterically over Julia's body until the ambulance arrived.

Mimi Smith related two versions of what she thought that day after seeing him on stage: "I was horrified to behold John in front of a microphone", and "as pleased as Punch to see him up there".

Mimi Smith opposed the idea of John forming a band and disapproved of Paul McCartney because he was "working class", calling him "John's little friend".

Mimi Smith once asked Stanley Parkes, her nephew through her sister Mater, to take her to The Cavern to see John and the Beatles play.

Mimi Smith hoped Lennon would become bored with music; often saying, "The guitar's all right, John, but you'll never make a living out of it".

Mimi Smith once referred to Cynthia as "a gangster's moll", and was particularly unpleasant toward her.

In summer 1962, Cynthia discovered that she was pregnant with Lennon's child and he proposed marriage; Mimi Smith attempted to stop him going through with it by threatening never to speak to him again.

Lennon had wanted his half-sisters, cousins and aunts to be there, but Mimi Smith had contacted them beforehand and advised them against attending.

Mimi Smith sternly criticised Cynthia for both divorcing Lennon and letting him start a relationship with Yoko Ono, saying she should have stopped him from making "an idiot of himself".

Mimi Smith had relatives in Eketahuna, New Zealand, as her maternal aunt Harriet Millward had married and moved there.

Mimi Smith had exchanged letters with her relatives there for years, so Lennon arranged for a tour of New Zealand in 1964.

Mimi Smith called her to say he was homesick and was planning a trip back to England.

Mimi Smith died on 6 December 1991, at the age of 85, while being cared for at home by auxiliary nurse Lynne Varcoe.

Mimi Smith was cremated at the Poole Crematorium and the reception was at the Harbour Heights Hotel.

Mimi Smith was portrayed on film in Birth of the Beatles, John and Yoko: A Love Story, In His Life: The John Lennon Story, and by Kristin Scott Thomas in Nowhere Boy.