Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  John and Kitty married in 1914, and of Elsie’s seven younger siblings, three didn’t survive infancy. Life was grim for the Gleaves, especially after John went through front-line trench action in the Great War; Elsie was in the care of a grandmother for at least part of her childhood, and was out of school and into work at 14. She had a variety of jobs, one of them in the bakery where worked Richard Starkey.

  In the throes of a chaotic time in her life, Elsie was receptive to Richy’s offer of stability through marriage, and in October 1936 the bells rang out at St. Silas Church. He was 23 and she 22. With nothing set aside, they moved into the cramped and boisterous Starkey household at 59 Madryn Street, and, like all the generations before them, tried to make the best of things.

  • • •

  Everyone knew a war with Hitler was coming, and everyone knew Liverpool would be devastated, but the city’s preparations were poor and inadequate. Not that the first bombs to explode here in 1939 were German. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) began a fresh wave of mainland terrorism that summer, and—in spite of its vast Irish population—Liverpool was a repeated target. On May 3, a tear-gas bomb exploded under a seat in the Trocadero cinema. It wasn’t designed to kill and there was no loss of life, but this was only realized later; there was a loud explosion, a great panic, and fifteen people were rushed to the hospital. The Evening Express ran a photo of three usherettes in their matching uniforms and pillbox hats receiving first aid on the street outside. Julia Lennon isn’t in it, but it’s likely she was on duty and among the shaken staff who, with admirable calmness, ushered patrons to safety. The Daily Mirror headline the next day was 3000 FLEE FROM IRA GAS.§

  Four months later, on September 3, Britain stood up to Germany’s aggression and declared war. The Merseyside time signal—the “one o’clock gun” fired every day at Birkenhead—was silenced. From the outlying quarry village of Woolton to the slums of Scotland Road, from Toxteth and the Dingle to Everton and Wavertree, all of Liverpool—as shockingly ill-equipped and under prepared as she was—held their collective breath and waited, more or less unprotected, for the Nazis to come and bomb the hell out of them.

  The British government’s National Service (Armed Forces) Act compelled the call-up of men between the ages of 18 and 41, but as a merchant seaman, bus driver and cake-maker respectively, Alf Lennon (26), Harry Harrison (30) and Richy Starkey (25) were in “reserved occupations” and excused duty, and Jim McCartney (37) was spared because of his impaired hearing. He became a part-time fire-watcher, and Harry Harrison may have gone into his works’ Home Guard. Richy Starkey’s access to the means of production meant his family had sugar, tightly rationed for everyone else.

  Elsie fell pregnant about four weeks after war was declared, after which she and her husband moved out of Ma and Pa Starkey’s at 59 Madryn Street and into a place of their own. Despite the certainty of heavy bombing right here—the adjacent docks were a clear target—they didn’t go far: they carted their possessions just twenty-five houses along the terrace to a rented house at number 9.

  George and Annie Stanley also moved when war was announced, renting a terraced three-bedroom house at 9 Newcastle Road, Wavertree, an area generally referred to as Penny Lane because of the nearby bus and tram terminus that took the name.8 Their three at-home children made the move with them—unmarried Mimi and Anne, and Julia, now 25, whose husband—“that Alf Lennon”—was at sea. It was Mimi’s home for so few days it’s doubtful she unpacked: she numbered among the many who rushed to marry when war was announced. On September 15, age 33, she pledged herself to George Smith, a Woolton cowkeeper, 36, whom she’d known ten years. In one move, Mimi broke away from an imposing father, gained a devoted husband, moved into an inherited small cottage in Woolton, and had a little cash in hand—new and understandably welcome experiences in uncertain times.

  Mimi would later remark that Julia swiftly regretted marrying Alf, and accepted that she’d allowed defiance of her family to cloud her judgment, but it was unlikely to have been for the sake of defiance that Julia conceived Alf’s baby. The Duchess of York was in port between January 5 and 13, 1940, and Alf had removed his waiter’s white gloves for a week of unabashed revelry in and around 9 Newcastle Road. Always one for candor, he’d later boast how they made the baby on the kitchen floor.9 Then he set sail again, helping to maintain the increasingly dangerous North Atlantic trade route. What just years earlier had been an enjoyable job had turned into a hellish nightmare, U-boats lurking in the deep.

  Ten minutes into Sunday, July 7, 1940, in an upstairs bedroom at 9 Madryn Street, Elsie Starkey gave birth to a boy. He was a week overdue and the delivery was tricky, but he appeared to be a healthy, podgy ten-pounder screaming his lungs out. Fourteen days later, Richy and Elsie were back at the scene of their wedding, St. Silas Church, to have their son baptized Protestant, Church of England. In working-class tradition, they named him after his father, so now there were two Richards, a Big Richy and a Little Richy.

  Having babies now was tricky, as Louise Harrison was also finding out. In July, she gave birth to her third, Peter … and then, shortly after midnight on August 17, the Germans finally began their attack on Liverpool. The first bombs fell on the southern docks, and when the sirens sounded Elsie and Big Richy jumped out of bed, grabbed the baby and panicked through the blackout to the pathetic shelter of the tiny under-stairs cupboard. It was only when the baby wouldn’t stop screaming that Elsie realized she was holding him to her shoulder feet first. Years later, when he was old enough to understand, Elsie would tell her son the Second World War had started because of his birth—it was the only way it could be celebrated.10

  Julia Lennon didn’t give birth in an air raid. Wednesday, October 9, 1940, offered a rare window of respite from the falling bombs. Her baby was born in Liverpool Maternity Hospital on Oxford Street, Mimi as companion, and the first to appreciate it was a boy—very welcome in a female-dominated family. John Winston Lennon’s arrival was registered by Alf on November 11. The name John might have been Mimi’s suggestion, one that Alf, the informant, could have changed had he wished—but maybe it was his idea. It was, after all, his dad’s name, and so the infant connected him to the memory of Liverpool’s original John Lennon, 1855–1921. The middle name was in honor of Churchill at this time of fervent patriotism—the Stanleys, certainly Julia and Mimi, are said to have loved Britain’s wartime leader—but the timing of the registration may also have been an influence: November 11 is Armistice Day, always a somber date in Britain, when everyone wears a poppy and remembers the Great War dead. Now, in the midst of another do-or-die struggle against the Germans, the occasion had a focused poignancy.

  Home for baby John was Newcastle Road with his parents (although Alf was about to sail away again), his Aunt Anne and his grandparents (Pop and Mama), with a dash for the shelter when the air-raid sirens sounded, and already frequent visits to his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George two miles away in Woolton, where the not-so-young newlyweds, stable adults with no children of their own on the horizon, were already forming a singular attachment to this one.

  In the north end of town, in Norris Green, Jim McCartney too was seeing plenty of enemy action. He spent every night as a fire-watcher and, when called to duty, fireman. Day to day, though, his life was in turmoil. The British government’s sudden wartime decision to nationalize the buying of cotton forced the closure of the Cotton Exchange; all work there ended and a new job had to be found. Matters were suddenly moving in his personal life too. Mary Mohin was visiting Florrie McCartney one night when the sirens sounded and she was forced to stay over. Jim and Mary had talked together many times, but if there was ever a spark of interest between them, it hadn’t much ignited. This time, chatting for several more hours, it finally did. How long they courted isn’t known, but relationships accelerate in times of war, and, as their loved ones were doubtless pointing out, neither of them was getting any younger.

  On April 15, 1941, two weeks after losing his job, Jim Ma
c married Mary Mohin. He was 38 and she 31. He was Protestant by birth and agnostic by choice, but because religion was important to Mary, they married in a Catholic chapel. Jim found work at a factory making piston engines for British fighter planes, then he became a lathe-turner on a production line. They lived in a rented house at 10 Sunbury Road, Anfield (next door to a couple called Lennon), and Mary worked on the maternity ward at nearby Walton Hospital.

  All Merseyside continued to suffer heavily from the bombs, especially in the Blitz week of May 1941, when Germany attempted to obliterate Liverpool, to wipe it off the map as a prelude to a land invasion. In that one week, 3,966 people were killed and 3,812 seriously injured; 10,000 homes were destroyed and 184,000 damaged—as if many of them weren’t decrepit enough to start with. Liverpudlians, for whom tough times were a way of life, buried their dead, swept the rubble into piles and carried on. They couldn’t be extinguished any more than their humor. One street-corner chip shop (“chippie”) simply put up a sign—“Owing to Hitler, our portions are littler”—and kept the home fryers burning.

  The ensuing months were quieter, however, and in the middle of the pause, in September, Mary McCartney became pregnant. As maternity ward sister at Walton Hospital she was accorded the luxury of a private room there when giving birth to a boy on Thursday, June 18, 1942. It was just as well, because there was a complication. Interpreting signs that the delivery would be difficult, the midwife (who’d trained Mary) summoned the urgent assistance of a doctor. In the terminology of the time, the baby was born in a state of White Asphyxia, a condition that typically required direct cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was an emergency, but a brief one: the infant suddenly began screaming and all was well. Jim and Mary named him James Paul—the first from Jim, the second, maybe, from Jim’s grandad, Paul Clegg (c.1815–79). To avoid the kind of confusion common in many households, they called him by his middle name. He was baptized Catholic, but on King Billy’s Day (July 12), the most important date in the Protestant calendar, when Liverpool was full of marchers.

  A month or so before these events, Louise Harrison became pregnant once more. She and Harry were still in the tiny house at Arnold Grove, the one they’d rented pro-tem eleven years earlier. Though they’d no intention of adding to the army of local families squeezing ten or more kids into a room, they wanted Peter to have a sibling around his age, just as Louise and Harry had each other. With Liverpool now free of bombs, and those elder children back from a temporary evacuation to Wales, bus driver Harry Harrison’s house had room for just one more on top.

  The baby was close to three weeks overdue when he emerged into the cold front-upstairs bedroom ten minutes into Thursday, February 25, 1943.11 No one could sleep through Louise’s labor pains, and each in turn was invited to see the latest and last addition to the family, another boy. The strong similarity between father and son wasn’t lost on Harry, who later said, “There he was, a miniature version of me. ‘Oh no,’ I thought, ‘we just couldn’t be so alike.’ ”12 He trooped off next day to register the birth. He and Louise hadn’t discussed a name, so Harry gave it some thought as he walked the short way to Wavertree Town Hall. When he got back, Louise asked what he’d chosen. “George.” “Why George?” “If it’s good enough for the King it should be good enough for him.” The baby was baptized Catholic, and after a spell in his parents’ bedroom a place was found for him in the children’s—he had a small wooden cot, Harry and Peter now shared a single bed, and Louise had another. Along with a small chest of drawers, nothing more could possibly be squeezed into the tiny space.

  Paul and George were fortunate to have a settled home life. The same could not be said for young Richy Starkey, whose parents split up some time after his third birthday. They’d been married seven years and it was over. There was no divorce (yet), just a parting of the ways, the child sticking with his mother. While Johnny and Annie Starkey would always maintain a close relationship with their daughter-in-law and grandson, their son provided his estranged wife and child with little support and Elsie was forced to raise Richy on whatever shillings she could scrimp. From 1943 she was taking any job going, but they remained firmly on the breadline. Elsie later said that Little Richy didn’t seem too upset about it all, though he did complain about lack of company. “When it was raining he used to look out of the window and say, ‘I wish I had brothers and sisters. There’s nobody to talk to when it’s raining.’ ”13

  John Lennon was also feeling the effects of marital discord. The longest period he spent within a standard family unit was probably about two months, when Alf was home for a spell and Mimi and George let him, Julia and John stay at their place, 120a Allerton Road, the cottage George had inherited from his father. It was spring 1943, after Alf had completed a succession of voyages to and from New York on the Moreton Bay. John was two and a half.

  Alf would later say how shocked he was to find that, during his time at sea, Julia had been going out most nights to local pubs and to dances, mixing and singing with men of the forces, a married woman enjoying the life of one unmarried. And his next absence was much longer, because Alf got himself into trouble: first he deserted one of his ships, and then, on his next voyage, he was arrested for possession of broached cargo, landing up in a naval court in Bône, northeast Algeria, where he was sentenced to a month in prison. Back in Liverpool, Julia may have had no idea of her husband’s fate. Down at the Mercantile Marine Offices there was no pay (“family allotment”) to collect, Alf’s letters home stopped, and all went quiet. Here ended whatever vestiges of marital fidelity she still maintained.

  It’s not difficult to imagine what a hit Julia was when she took a job as barmaid at the Brook House pub on Smithdown Road. She soon began a relationship with a soldier from Wales—history records his name only as Taffy Williams—and he evidently spent a fair bit of time at Newcastle Road, in John’s company, because John would remember him. He’d also keep a particular memory of Julia at this time, when she sang to him “I’m Wishing” from Walt Disney’s animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Want to know a secret? / Promise not to tell? / We are standing by a wishing well.” It could be something she sang in the pub, because, like Alf, Julia enjoyed providing saloon entertainment.

  The following November, when Alf knocked on the door of 9 Newcastle Road, it was eighteen months since he’d gone away. “Give us a kiss,” appealed the guileless wacker, suggesting his long absence could be put behind them with a kiss and a cuddle and a roaring great yarn about Algeria. But Julia stopped him short and announced, “I’m in the family way.” Out tumbled a tale to explain her pregnancy (she was two months gone) by Taffy Williams and a domestic scene blew up involving all parties, which the four-year-old John witnessed and would remember but never fully understand. Mimi watched ever more anxiously from the sidelines, concerned about the impact of events searing into her nephew’s fertile mind.

  That December, Alf took John away to Maghull, ten miles north of Liverpool, to stay with his brother Syd, his wife Madge and John’s cousin Joyce.‖ They left after about three weeks and then suddenly made a surprise and, in John’s case, indefinite return: Joyce says he lived with them for several months—maybe three—staying in their small semidetached house at 27 Cedar Grove. He was here long enough for Madge to seek his admission to the local school in the coming September, and for her and Syd to form such an attachment that they hoped to become his legal guardians. Julia never came to see him, which left them a long way short of impressed. Then, probably in April 1945, Alf came and took John away. Joyce, who’d been getting along great with her younger cousin, never met him again. She remembers, “My parents were devastated when he left—and not only for themselves. They knew John was going back to being dragged from one parent to the other.”14

  The McCartneys, meanwhile, had begun a succession of short-term lets; Jim had found new work in an armament plant, and Mary had become pregnant again. Paul gained a brother in January 1944—Peter Michael, k
nown as Michael or Mike, and to his parents as Mick. The age gap was one and a half years, the distinction of older and younger brother always clear. Mary then became a municipal midwife for the Corporation, delivering babies around the north end of the city, which enabled the family to rent a reserved tenement flat in Everton.

  VE Day, Victory in Europe. Little Richy Starkey, who’d lost a parent but not as a result of the war, sat down to a few severely rationed treats at an open-air party in Madryn Street, and George Harrison, youngest in a family of six, did the same in Arnold Grove.15 Alf Lennon, back in Liverpool between voyages, was with his mum on Copperfield Street, his bizarre marriage in tatters. Julia had charge of their four-year-old John and was about to pop with another man’s baby.a Mimi and husband George had taken out a mortgage on a semidetached house on Menlove Avenue, a leafy but busy boulevard in Woolton. For the McCartney family, VE Day would be ever tinged with sadness. Just a few hours before, Jim’s mother Florrie died from a heart attack. Paul and Mike would never remember her, and with her passing they lost their last grandparent. In their stead, they had aunties, uncles and cousins galore to provide them with the most energizing and memorable of family lives.

  Much of the Liverpool in which all these people lived was in ruins, the city fathers having made distressingly few efforts to bandage its open wounds during the four post-Blitz years—certainly nothing like as much as Britain’s other bombed cities were doing. But on this great day, the 8th of May 1945, everyone put the trauma of the six-year war behind them and looked forward to a brighter future. Schoolchildren were given the day off, streets were bedecked with bunting, flags were waved, and crowds gathered outside Liverpool Town Hall to hear the BBC broadcast by Winston Churchill and an address by the Lord Mayor—a great mass of people the like of which wouldn’t be seen again at this place for about another twenty years.