Annie Jane Millward met George Ernest Stanley sometime in 1898, George was a sailor and Annie was a seamstress and later that year Annie fell pregnant and on the 17th of July 1899 she delivered a baby girl whom they named Charlotte Alice Stanley however tragedy struck when she passed away on the 11th of April 1900. Annie and George were living at 21 Fletcher Street when their baby daughter was baptised on the 26th of July 1899 however by the time Charlotte was buried, they were living at 2 Saint Luke’s Terrace. Another move took them to Grey Street and here Annie delivered her next child George Ernest junior on the 12th of January 1903, but he too passed away on the 9th of April 1903 at eleven weeks old.
After the tragic loss of their first two children George and Annie’s life finally became complete in 1916 after the birth of their five daughters known as “The Stanley Girls”. Their fourth daughter was to become the mother and the other four, aunts of the man who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles, John Winston Lennon. Since the Beatles fame the lives of the “Stanley Girls” has always been of keen interest to the Beatles historians and their stories are documented either in the many Beatles websites to be found on the internet or if you prefer reading a book then amongst hundreds if not thousands of books written about the Beatles.
John Lennon himself was later to make comment about his mother and four aunts.
“Five fantastic, strong, beautiful and intelligent women”
So, this is my research, starting with the first-born Mary Elizabeth Stanley. I have written about Mimi’s life in a previous blog but not in such detail and so this is the first of several blogs’ covering her life in Liverpool and her final days in Dorset.
Mary Elizabeth Stanley “Mimi” maternal aunt and parental guardian to John Lennon was born on the 24th of April 1906 in rented rooms at 21 Windsor Street and she was named after the matriarch of the family her grandmother Mary Elizabeth Millward nee Morris and in later years Mimi certainly lived up to her grandmother’s matriarch role within the family. Mary Elizabeth was baptised at St James’s Church Toxteth on the 23rd of May 1906 and six months before her parents were married. The family next moved to Cornwallis Street and it was here that Mimi’s parents married on the 19th of November 1906 at St Peter’s Church, Church St Liverpool.
Mimi’s father George had no intention of working in factories along the dockside, for him it was a life at sea, with fewer hardships and a chance to see beyond Liverpool. He spent years at sea working as a sail maker and in fact worked on the famous tall ships. So, Annie and George’s children were born in quick succession well at least to coincide with her husband’s time back in Liverpool and before his return to sea, however the conscientious husband George finally surrendered his work at sea after all his girls had been born and took to working on a shoreside job with the Liverpool & Glasgow Tug Salvation Company and by 1921 he was employed by Harland & Wolf Engineers and Ship Repairers.
As Mimi grew up in the streets of Toxteth her parents were said to have lived and rented a great many properties that were bought by Mimi’s strong headed grandmother from North Wales, Mary Millward was to have inherited a large sum of pound notes, believed to have come from one of her wealthy Welsh uncles. My research to date presents no evidence of such an inheritance although the story has been told verbally by Lennon’s cousin Stanley Parkes and in print by John’s sister Julia Baird however having spent much time researching the Morris family in North Wales I find it very difficult to understand why an inheritance was left to a lady who had left home in 1871 bringing disgrace on her family and leaving behind her baby son to be adopted, but who knows! Whatever the reason for this frequent moving from one property to another meant that the Stanley girls didn’t stay at any one address for long.
At the age of five Mimi was ready to start primary school and this was to be at St Luke’s Church of England school at the corner of Colquitt and Seel Street and by now the family were living at 36 Lydia Ann Street less than six hundred yards from the school. Mimi’s baby sister Elizabeth Jane known as “Mater” was born on the 29th of August 1908 at 5 Emerson Street and at the time of the 1911 census (recorded on the 2nd of April) Mimi was living with her mother Annie who was two months pregnant and three-year-old sibling at Lydia Ann Street, with her father George away at sea.
St Luke’s CE school originated in Cropper Street but moved to the corner of Seel and Colquitt Street in 1870. Admission details for St Luke’s were “Mary Stanley daughter of George Stanley, address 36 Lydia Ann Street, admission on the 19th of June 1911”. The Stanley’s third daughter Anne Georgina known as “Nanny” was born on the 17th of November 1911 at 36 Lydia Ann Street. According to the electoral registers the Stanleys remained at Lydia Ann Street until about late 1913 however sometime before the March of 1914 they had moved to 33 Head Street, and it was there on the 12th of March 1914 that Julia known as “Judy” was born. Many historians document Mimi’s next school to be that of Windsor Street Wesleyan school and although I haven’t been successful in locating the school records, I deem it highly likely Mimi and Mater in view of the school’s distance from Head Street were in attendance there.
The next move for Mimi and her family was to 23 Cedar Grove just off Lodge Lane and it was here the family settled from about late 1915 until there next move in 1920 to 31 Churchill Street.
Mary Stanley as she was listed on the admissions records for Tiber Street Council school started school there on the 16th of April 1917 at the age of eleven, with both her sisters Elizabeth Jane aged nine, and Annie Georgina aged six enrolling at the school the same day and on the 28th of May 1916 the Stanley’s family was complete with the birth of their fifth daughter Harriet “Harrie” Stanley. Mimi lived at 23 Cedar Grove until 1920 when the family moved to their next home where they resided for ten years and that was at 31 Churchill Street. The 1921 census was recorded on the 19th of June 1921 a late recording due to industrial upheaval and by then George had finally succumbed to a job with Harland & Wolf Engineers and Ship Repairers on land so he could support his wife with his five daughters. Mimi was fifteen and would have left school as in 1921 the official school leaving age was made fourteen.
It is interesting to note that Julia Stanley started at Tiber Street Council School on the 24th of March 1919 only eighteen months before the Stanleys moved to Churchill Street and note her date of birth, the 14th of March 1914! So did Mimi’s younger siblings remain at Tiber Street school which was a mile walk from their home in Churchill Street and the answer was yes. Harriet Stanley’s records show her admission to Tiber Street Council school on the 11th of April 1921 whilst residing at 31 Churchill Street.
Having left school and living at Churchill Street Mimi was growing up to be a headstrong young girl and very sure of herself taking any opportunity to argue with her father and these arguments often ending in loud shouting matches. Mimi assumed a matriarch role in the house helping her mother and as each new baby had come along Mimi was expected to step up the role in her home duties. As the 1920’s were fading away the Stanleys made their next move and in 1930 they moved to a rented flat at 71a Berkley Street where they lived until 1937-38. Berkley Street was a road of impressive Georgian terraced houses which had been built for the rich Liverpool merchants however by the 1930’s the houses had been taken up by private landlords, divided into flats and allowed to fall into disrepair.
Mary Elizabeth Millward (Mimi’s grandmother) was living with the family in Churchill Street and moved with them to Berkley Street where she passed away in 1932 at the age of seventy-eight.
When Mimi left home unlike her sisters’ marriage and having children were furthest from her mind and all she talked about was challenges and adventures and as we well know they certainly came her way! So, Mimi started work as a trainee nurse at Liverpool Convalescent Hospital Allerton Road Woolton taking her story from the grimy streets of Toxteth to the leafy streets in the suburbs of Liverpool. After her workday was finished Mimi would make the daily journey back to Toxteth catching the tram from the Menlove Avenue boulevard wondering if her father would be home edging for a heated discussion.
The next period of Mimi’s life is a little vague and historians have many different accounts.
Mark Lewisohn the author of “All These Years-Extended Special Edition-Volume One Tune In” in my opinion has the right answer. Many historians and authors describe Mimi as working in the hospital and then going on to be a private secretary for a business magnate Ernest Vickers who owned and lived in big houses both in Manchester and Liverpool.
Mark however thinks after starting her training at the Liverpool Convalescent Hospital in about 1927 that Mimi fell in love with a young doctor presumably working at the hospital where she was a trainee nurse. The couple got engaged but then tragedy struck when the young doctor contracted an infection from one of the patients and sadly passed away leaving a very distraught Mimi. Mimi was never to talk about this part of her life, was it to be kept a secret because marrying the young doctor was far from being a part of the adventures and challenges, she had bragged about to her family. Mark Lewisohn’s story of the following events in Mimi’s life was that after her fiancé passed away Mimi went to work in North Wales for a business magnate. When you look at the electoral registers for Liverpool, Mary Elizabeth Stanleys name doesn’t reappear until the 1929-1930 electoral register and then she was back at the Liverpool Convalescent and this time as a resident nurse. *
Sometime between 1929 and 1930 the Stanleys had moved to Berkley Street and their first-born daughter had returned to the Liverpool Convalescent Hospital as a resident nurse. Liverpool Convalescent Hospital is now operating as a care home called Woolton Manor. The hospital known as the Liverpool Convalescent Institution, owes its origin to the surplus from the Liverpool Cotton District Relief Fund (due to the Cotton Famine of 1862) and when Mimi was nursing there the number of patients would have been over three thousand. In 1932 Mimi met George Toogood Smith who lived across the road from the hospital at 120 Allerton Road and he delivered milk to the hospital every morning. George and his brother Frank operated a dairy farm and shop in Woolton that had been in the Smith family for four generations and what followed was a very long courtship due to Mimi’s indifferences and her father’s interference.
While Mimi was working at the hospital and courting George T Smith, her parents moved from Berkley Street into a flat at 22 Huskisson Street. Huskisson Street was amid the Georgian Quarter and today many of the beautiful buildings along the street are Grade ii listed and the street was named after William Huskisson a Liverpool MP in the early nineteenth century. Mimi’s younger sister Julia Stanley (John Lennon’s mother) was still living with her parents, and it was from 22 Huskisson Street that she married Alfred Lennon in December 1938 and according to the 1939-1940 Electoral register printed on the 15th of October 1939 Julia was still living at number 22 with her parents and surname was still Stanley.
With World War ll imminent Mimi’s parents had been offered the use of a house in a suburb five miles out of the city known as Penny Lane and this was of course 9 Newcastle Road. They were living in Newcastle Road by the time of the 1939 register which was recorded on the 29th of September; however, it was only Mary Elizabeth and Julia’s names on the register with their mother Annie living in Birkenhead with her daughter Elizabeth. In 1939, Mimi’s father George who worked for the “Liverpool & Glasgow Salvage Association was said to have been amongst those on the mission to salvage the “HMS Thetis” which sank during a trial dive off the North Wales Coast on the 1st of June 1939. Although the timeline doesn’t coincide the company intentionally grounded ashore the “Thetis” at Traeth Bychan Marianglas near Benllech Anglesey on the day war broke the 3rd of September 1939, making George away from home at the time of the census.
After seven years of courting Mimi, George Toogood Smith was getting impatient and, in the September of 1939, he gave her an ultimatum and they were married on the 15th of September 1939 at the Bolton Street registry office where less than a year previous her sister Julia had married Alf Lennon. Mary Elizabeth’s surname was originally recorded as Stanley which is a puzzle as by the date of the register Mimi would have been a Smith. Bearing in mind that Mimi’s mother was living in Birkenhead and her father was salvaging submarines at the time of her marriage to George it’s unlikely her parents were present at the wedding. When funds allow, I will purchase the marriage certificate and hopefully find out more.
During the years 1940-1945 no electoral registers or censuses were recorded due to the war and the 1939 register taken on the 29th of September was used to produce identity cards and once rationing was introduced in January 1940, to issue ration books. As there are no records available for this period I have relied on the research of other historians and members of family with respect to Mimi’s life during the war years with a few of my own findings and suppositions.
So, Mimi had married George a couple of weeks after the Second World War broke out and soon after George was called up to fight in France with Mimi and her younger sister Julia staying home at 9 Newcastle Road. Curiously George was recorded on the 1939 register as living with his family at 48 High Street Woolton so although the couple were married, they both lived with their families after their marriage.
It was at the age of thirty-six that George was called up to fight with the British Expeditionary Force which took part in the Battle of France in May-June of 1940. The battle ended in serious defeat for the British and it was a desperate retrieval of the British troops from the Dunkirk beaches.
The Battle of France was known as the Western Campaign, the French Campaign and the Fall of France and began on the 10th of May 1940 and ceased on the 25th of June 1940. According to historians George was away from home for three years and when he returned home, he was a changed man, the war years having depleted him. Some historians place Mimi and George living in Vale Road before moving to their home at “Mendips” 251 Menlove Ave but due to the lack of records there is no proof of such a story except that Julia Baird (John Lennon’s half-sister) writes in her book “Imagine This” that Mimi and George had lived in Vale Road (possibly number 76) and their garden backed on to that of Mendips. Mimi having a clear view of the house one day noticed the tenants at 251 Menlove Avenue were moving out and Mimi quickly moved their belongings over the fence and moved in before the owner of “Mendips” found out! The owner of the property had been waiting to sell and now had no choice other than to sell to Mimi and George Smith. According to the last electoral register recorded before the war (1939-1940) the couple living at 251 Menlove Avenue were an Ernest Bridson and Mildred Mary Harrop nee Austin so were these the couple Mimi saw leaving from her garden that day. Ernest was a bank clerk and he and his wife had lived at number 251 since 1934, probably making them the initial tenants, the houses being built circa 1933.
While George was away at war Mimi lived for periods of time at 9 Newcastle Road as did her sister Julia Lennon helping their father look after their mother who sadly died at the age of sixty-seven in April 1941. Mimi was staying at Newcastle Road when her nephew John Winston Lennon was born on the 9th of October 1940. Julia Baird confirms in her book that the time they flitted to Mendips was not long before Julia Lennon was pregnant with her second child named Victoria Elizabeth Lennon and who was born on the 19th of June 1945.
In the next blog I will continue my research, with the birth of Mimi’s nephew John and how he came into his aunt and uncles’ life and Mimi’s life at “Mendips” Menlove Avenue Woolton.
*After completing tis blog I was fortunate to make another discovery that has long evaded Beatles historians and authors, the business magnate that employed Mimi Stanley as his personal secretary and this covered later in the series.
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