Daughter of a Manchester cotton merchant, John Benjamin Smith, who went into politics in 1835 becoming the founding chairman of the Anti-Corn Law League, Jemina was born in 1843 and her sister, Edith in 1844. Their mother was Jemina Durning, the co-heiress of a wealthy Liverpool merchant and landowner. The parents were devout Unitarians and the sisters generous patrons of the Unitarian cause, both endowing scholarships at the Unitarian College in Manchester.
In 1848 the family moved to London and John Smith became Liberal MP for Stirling. In 1852 he took over Richard Cobden's seat in Stockport - a fellow reformer – and was the MP for 22 years.
The family divided their time between London in winter and Ascot in summer, where in 1860 John Smith had bought King's Ride, a former royal hunting lodge, from Prince Albert and a large house was completed in 1863. When their parents died, Jemina stayed with her sister when in London and retained King's Ride as the country house where she, her sister and brother-in-law, Sir Edwin and Lady Durning-Lawrence, held an annual party on August Bank Holiday for the Unitarian clergy and Sunday School teachers, the guests being brought from London on special trains..
Jemina, who suffered permanent spinal paralysis from a disease in early childhood and was always in uncertain health, was particularly generous to medical charities. She gave £20,000 to Great Ormond Street Homeopathic Hospital in 1875, where a ward was named after her and she was a regular visitor. She also gave substantial sums to the Royal Sea-Bathing Infirmary for Scrofula at Margate and the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in Bloomsbury.
Jemina's interest in libraries was probably sparked by her brother-in-law, Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, who was Library Commissioner for Lambeth. In 1887 Jemina contributed the considerable sum of 10,000 guineas towards the building of a gothic style library there which opened in 1889. The following year, the Ascot Durning Library was opened in Winkfield Road.
Jemina Durning Smith died suddenly in 1901 and is buried in the family vault at Kensal Green.
Her connection with the borough
The Ascot Durning Library opened in 1890 in a building that was originally a china shop cum Ascot Post and Telegraph Office which Jemina bought for £700 in 1889. The Free Public Libraries Act of 1855 had made it possible for councils of more than 5,000 residents to raise a halfpenny rate to finance public libraries, but because Ascot had fewer than 5,000 residents Jemina provided an endowment.
The library was run by a Trust and management committee of prominent local people who were responsible for leasing out the considerable number of properties she had bought in the area to provide an income. The librarian lived in a flat upstairs and the library was open six days a week for everyone over 16 (although ladies were banned in the evenings) and counted servants, labourers, tradesmen, teachers, nurses and the gentry among its users. Between one and three pennies were charged to borrow a book.
Fiction and non-fiction were stocked as well as reference books, magazines and newspapers. There was a smoking room where chess, dominoes and draughts were available and classes in "carving, bent ironwork and cooking" were held. Although the Trust still operates, the management and most of the financing for the library was taken over in 1959 by Berkshire County Council.
After 116 years in the same building the Ascot Durning Library moved to the Ascot Racecourse buildings in 2006. At Charters School, the sixth form library is also named after Jemima as it had a grant from the Ascot Durning Trust.
After Jemina's death her sister and her husband stayed on at King's Ride and helped Mrs Liddell (mother of the Alice Liddell immortalised by Lewis Carroll) establish the Royal Victoria Nursing Home at Ascot (RVNH). When Lady Durning-Lawrence died she left a legacy to the RVNH Trust and £5,000 to the Edward VII Hospital at Windsor.
[We would like to acknowledge the book "The Ascot Durning Library: Founded 1890" by Christine Weightman as the source of information for this article].