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Mary Elizabeth "Mimi" Smith (''née'' Stanley; 24 April 1906 – 6 December 1991) was the maternal aunt and parental guardian of the English musician, John Lennon. Mimi Stanley was born in 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 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, she and her son (Lennon), moved in with a new partner, but Mimi contacted Liverpool's Social Services and complained about him sleeping in the same bed as the two adults. Julia was eventually persuaded to hand the care of Lennon over to the Smiths. Lennon 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, Lennon bought her a bungalow in Poole, Dorset, where she lived until her death in 1991. Despite later losing touch with other family members, Lennon kept in close contact and telephoned her every week, until his death in 1980. The Smiths' house in Liverpool was later donated to The National Trust. ==The Stanley family== According to Lennon, the Stanley family once owned the whole of Woolton village. Mimi's father, George Stanley, was born in the Everton district of Liverpool in 1874, and became a sailor. Her mother, Annie Jane Millward, was born in Chester around 1875, to Welsh parents. Annie's first two children, a boy and a girl, died shortly after birth, and she had five additional children: Mary, known as 'Mimi'; Elizabeth 'Mater' (1908 to 1976); Anne 'Nanny' (1911–1988); Julia 'Judy' (1914–1958); and Harriet 'Harrie' (1916–1972). After the birth of his daughters, Stanley retired from sailing and found 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." Lennon's school friend, Pete Shotton, later commented that she "had a very strong sense of what was right or wrong". Annie Stanley died in 1945, so Mimi accepted the responsibility of caring for her father, with help from her younger sister, Julia. When other girls were thinking of marriage, Mimi 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". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mimi Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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