Constance Adelaide Smith (28 April 1878 – 10 June 1938, published under the pseudonym C. Penswick Smith) was an Englishwoman responsible for the reinvigoration of Mothering Sunday in the British Isles in the 1910s and 1920s.

Biography

Smith was born in

Dagnall, Buckinghamshire Dagnall is a village in the parish of Edlesborough, in Buckinghamshire, England. The place name is derived from the Old English for "Daegga's Knoll". In manorial rolls of 1196 it was listed as ''Dagenhale''. The spelling ''Dagenhale'' appears i ...

. She was one of seven children of the

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

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. She was a High Church Anglican, and all four of her brothers became Anglican priests. The details of her early life are not clear, but she worked as a

governess A governess is a largely obsolete term for a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching. In contrast to a nanny, th ...

in Germany in the late 19th century. By 1901 she 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 Anna Maria Jarvis (May 1, 1864 – November 24, 1948) was the founder of Mother's Day in the United States. Her mother had frequently expressed a desire for the establishment of such a holiday, and after her mother's death, Jarvis led the moveme ...

, an American woman from Philadelphia, who hoped to introduce Mother's Day in the USA. In 1914, US 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 instead linked this concept to the Mothering Sunday, traditionally observed in the Anglican liturgical calendar on the fourth Sunday of Lent. She published a play, ''In Praise of Mother: A story of Mothering Sunday'' (1913), as well as ''A Short History of Mothering Sunday'' (1915), which went through several editions. Her most influential booklet was ''The Revival of Mothering Sunday'' (1921). She advocated for Mothering Sunday as a day for recognizing Mother Church, '

mothers ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gesta ...

of earthly homes',

Mary, mother of Jesus Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...

, and Mother Nature, basing her work on medieval traditions. With Ellen Porter, a colleague from the Girls' Friendly Society lodge, Smith established a movement to promote Mothering Sunday, collecting and publishing information about the day and its traditional observance throughout the UK. This included research into local traditions, such as the making of simnel and wafer cakes. The movement established Mothering Sunday as a widely observed day throughout the British Empire; by the time of her death, the day was said to be observed in every parish in Britain, and every country in the British Empire. Smith never married and had no children. She died in Nottingham in 1938 from acute tonsillitis and

streptococcal ''Streptococcus'' is a genus of gram-positive bacteria, gram-positive ' (plural ) or spherical bacteria that belongs to the family Streptococcaceae, within the order Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), in the phylum Bacillota. Cell divisio ...

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.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Constance Adelaide 1878 births 1938 deaths People from Newark and Sherwood (district) Burials in Nottinghamshire Deaths from streptococcus infection English Anglicans English governesses 19th-century English women writers 20th-century English women writers 20th-century English writers People from Aylesbury Vale Pseudonymous women writers 19th-century pseudonymous writers 20th-century pseudonymous writers