Background
Smith was born in Dagnall, Buckinghamshire.
Anglican clergyman vicar of Dagnall
Smith was born in Dagnall, Buckinghamshire.
She was one of seven children of the Anglican clergyman, Charles Penswick Smith, who was vicar of Dagnall at the time of her birth and was vicar of Coddington, Nottinghamshire from 1890 to his death in 1922. The details of her early life are not clear, but she worked as a governess in Germany in the late 19th century. By 1901 was a dispenser of medicines at the Hospital for Skin Diseases in Nottingham.
She was a dispenser at the Girls" Friendly Society lodge in Regent Street, Nottingham from 1909.
Smith was inspired by a newspaper article in 1913, on the plans of Anna Jarvis, an American woman from Philadelphia, who hoped to introduce mother"s day in the United Kingdom. In 1914, United States President Woodrow Wilson made a proclamation establishing the second Sunday of May as the official date for the observance of a national day to celebrate mothers. Smith linked this concept to the Mothering Sunday, traditionally observed in the Anglican liturgical calendar on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and she published a booklet, The Revival of Mothering Sunday, in 1920.
The movement established Mothering Sunday as a widely observed day throughout the British Empire. Smith never married and had no children.
She died in Nottingham in 1938 from acute tonsillitis and streptococcal cellulitis of the neck.
She was buried in Coddington, beside her father. The lady chapel at All Saints", Coddington was dedicated to her memory in 1951.