Understanding John Lennon. Francis Kenny
of the city, a few miles from each other’s homes. On Sunday afternoons, families would take their children there to feed the ducks. Young men and women would dress up in their best clothes and parade themselves for each other’s approval in the hope of finding a date. In Liverpool parlance, Freddie and Julia ‘copped off’ in an unusual way. Although small, Freddie was handsome, with jet-black hair and the gift of the gab. He spotted Julia as she sat on a park bench, and the attraction was easy to see – she could easily be mistaken for the movie star Ginger Rogers, petite in size and with a mane of flaming red hair.
Julia had noticed what seemed to be a small ‘boy’ wearing a black bowler set at a jaunty angle and a cigarette held inside a cigarette holder. The ‘boy’ was Freddie. As suavely as he could, he asked Julia if she may be so kind as to permit him to sit on the bench with her. Julia turned slowly, studied the bandy-legged, bowler-hatted Freddie and screamed with laughter. She told him to take his hat off, for he looked daft. Instead of taking umbrage, as most young men would, Freddie did as he was told and skimmed the hat across the boating lake, nearly decapitating a duck. This act of going against the grain, spontaneity and zaniness instantly endeared him to Julia.
Their relationship immediately ran into problems with the total lack of approval and contempt of Freddie from Pop and Mimi. That Freddie was a bellboy, and came from a ‘less acceptable part of town’, had been in an orphanage and was stunted in size, left Pop and Mimi in no doubt that he would not be welcome over the Stanleys’ doorstep. ‘I knew he was no good to anyone, certainly not [for] our Julia’,7 judged Mimi. Freddie’s family view of the courtship was that of a seven-day wonder, just like his dreams of showbiz stardom.
Over their long period of courtship, Julia was constantly discouraged by her family from having anything to do with Freddie. On Freddie’s side, his older brother Sidney regularly cast aspersions as to the strength and ‘sense’ of the relationship. Such was Pop’s antagonism against the young Freddie Lennon that he conspired with Mater’s husband, his son-in-law Captain Charles Parkes, to arrange a two-year trip for him on a whaling ship. Sometime later, Pop had to be restrained by Julia from beating up the pint-sized Freddie for the crime of knocking over a radio speaker.
After a long and sometimes tortuous courtship, Freddie and Julia were married on 3 December 1938 at the Liverpool Registry Office, Mount Pleasant. They did so without informing any members of their respective families. After a desperate search for a witness for Freddie, a last-minute call was made to his elder brother, Sidney. Their honeymoon consisted of going to the Forum Cinema in the city centre, where they bought tickets to watch Dr Barnardo’s Homes, starring Mickey Rooney. This was followed by a return to each other’s respective family homes. Within the week, Freddie shipped out on a liner for a three-month trip to the West Indies. If Freddie couldn’t believe his luck in obtaining such a good post, it was because it wasn’t luck. It was Pop Stanley again, who had worked behind the scenes with son-in-law Charles Parkes to arrange Freddie’s absence. Even when married, Freddie was to be kept as far away as possible from his daughter.
If Freddie and Julia felt that their courtship was beset with pitfalls and emotional hardships, then Freddie being ‘lost at sea’ and the arrival of a baby in war-torn Liverpool would test their love for each other to breaking point.
chapter 3
1940–45
Salvation Army Hospital
THE MARRIAGE of Freddie and Julia was followed a year later by the outbreak of war. The initial period of the conflict in Britain was named ‘The Phoney War’ – phoney inasmuch as, unlike mainland Europe, life in Britain for the large majority remained much the same as before. The Battle of the Atlantic, in which Freddie was involved with the Merchant Navy, however, was to be the longest conflict between allied and German forces within the whole of the Second World War.
From the start of the hostilities, the transatlantic crossing of vessels manned by merchant sailors like Freddie soon became a lifeline for those in Britain. Such work was not without its dangers, though. Thirty-six thousand merchant sailors lost their lives during the period 1939–45, of which 8,000 were from Liverpool alone. And although the Stanley family criticised Freddie for not sending Julia money home while he was away at sea, they did not realise he went awol in 1943, with his pay stopped immediately.
The Port of Liverpool was responsible for the bulk of shipping coming in and out of war-torn Britain. The Western Approaches HQ was the command post for the entire British fleet and Merchant Navy headquarters, based in Liverpool’s city centre. It lay half a mile from the Mersey and directed the supply of foodstuffs and armaments for tens of millions of Britons.
Just two weeks before the outbreak of war in September 1939 and after a protracted courtship, Mimi married George Smith. Their marriage was to bear no offspring. Later on, Mimi’s view of being childless was that she had already been a mother to her four sisters. Furthermore, at 34 years of age, she was getting to a point where having children was becoming less likely. George’s family was relatively wealthy and owned land in Woolton, along with a dairy farm. This is how Mimi and George came to meet, when he made the deliveries to Mimi’s place of work in Woolton Military Convalescent Home. The agreement to get married began with a formal shake of the hands by the couple: ‘Farmers always shake hands on a bargain’,1 George was to declare. Not long after they married, George’s father committed suicide by drowning himself in a local pond. The resulting will was shattering. Instead of leaving the bulk of the estate to George, the eldest son, his father gave it to his younger brother Frank. George was given a small cottage next to the main farmhouse. Both George and Mimi took this decision hard. Having been financially overlooked, Mimi especially became very bitter.
Julia Baird (the eldest daughter of John ‘Bobby’ Albert Dykins and Julia Lennon, and half-sister of John Lennon) recollects how Mendips, the home where John spent most of his early life, came to Mimi and George in what can only be described as an unusual and unlawful way.2 The house, whose name came from the previous owner’s fondness of walking on the Mendip Hills, was separated from Mimi’s previous home at the rear by a fenced garden. The new house was located in a prestigious position on the prominent boulevard of Menlove Avenue. When Mimi noticed that the neighbours were moving out of Mendips, she quickly collected all her furniture in her back garden then proceeded to pile it over to her neighbour’s garden. Breaking into the empty but secured house, she claimed squatter’s rights – even though she and George had a perfectly good home just yards away. In Liverpool parlance, this was ‘hard-faced’. The owners of Mendips had intended to sell the house when the previous tenants left, now they were left trying to negotiate with ‘sitting tenants’. The outcome was that Mimi claimed possession as being nine-tenths of the law. She drove a hard bargain in the price she paid for the house. This was to be one of many examples of how what Mimi wanted, she eventually got … including John.
While Mimi’s ‘house moving’ was taking place, Freddie’s time was spent in the Merchant Navy, whose Liverpool-based transatlantic convoys were to supply the bulk of Britain’s war supplies. Freddie’s discharge book reveals that during four years at war, he had only three months’ leave at home. The major problem with Freddie and Julia’s marriage was that the words ‘Freddie’, ‘dependable’ and ‘sensible’ couldn’t be used in the same sentence. Freddie’s time away from Liverpool became a catalogue of misfortune, naivety and downright dullness.
In addition to attacking Liverpool’s docks and the war materials coming through its port, there were also grain silos, power stations and gas works for the Luftwaffe to target. It made Liverpool Hitler’s number one British target, outside of the capital. The effects of the war really started in earnest for the civilian population of Liverpool (and many other big cities) with the German Luftwaffe bombings in 1940. Twelve months after hostilities started, Liverpool, along with the nearby Bootle docks and Birkenhead shipyards across the river, were to suffer shocking devastation and terrible civilian casualties. A total of 3,875 people were killed during the Blitz, 7,144 seriously injured and huge swathes of the city destroyed. Out of 282,000 homes, 10,840 were completely destroyed along with considerably more damaged. This devastation resulted in tens of thousands of people being made homeless.