George Toogood Smith - Early Years

Early Years

George Toogood Smith's parents, Francis and Alice Smith, had eight children in total; Mary, Eleanor, Francis, Robert, Alice, George, Alfred and one other who died. Robert was killed in action on the 30th August 1918 in World War I. George's paternal grandmother's maiden name was Toogood which was given to George as a middle name. His mother died in 1949. Smith operated his family's two dairy farms and a shop with his brother Frank in the village of Woolton. The farms had been in the Smith family for four generations. Smith delivered milk by horse and cart in the Woolton area. The raw milk he provided was stored in a large churn and was ladled out into the bottles and receptacles of customers.

When other girls were thinking of marriage, Mimi Stanley talked of challenges and adventures. She once confided that she never wanted to get married, as she hated the idea of being "tied to the kitchen sink". She became a resident trainee nurse at the Woolton Convalescent Hospital, to which Smith delivered milk every morning. Smith started seriously courting Mimi in the spring of 1932, but was constantly thwarted by her indifference and her father's interference. George Stanley (Mimi's father) would only allow the couple to sit in the back room of the family home in 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, so after delivering milk to the hospital one morning he gave her an ultimatum that she must marry him, "or nothing at all!" The youngest sister of the Stanley family, Julia Stanley, had married Alfred Lennon nine months before, on 3 December 1938.