It was just before he set out for his great career at sea that Fred Lennon started going out with Julia Stanley. The first meeting was just a week after he had left the orphanage.
‘It was a beautiful meeting. I was wearing one of my two new suits. I was sitting in Sefton Park with a mate who was showing me how to pick up girls. I’d bought myself a cigarette holder and a bowler hat. I felt that really would impress them.
‘There was this little girl we had our eye on. As I walked past her, she said, “You look silly.” I said, “You look lovely,” and I sat down beside her. It was all innocent. I didn’t know anything.
‘She said if I was going to sit beside her, I had to take that silly hat off. So I did. I threw it in the lake. I haven’t worn a hat from that day to this.’
Fred and Julia went out together, during Fred’s spells ashore, for about ten years. He says her mother ‘loved the bones of his body’ but that her father didn’t care for him very much. But he had taught Julia to play the banjo.
‘Me and Julia used to play and sing together. We’d have been the tops today. One day she said to me, “Let’s go and get married.” I said we had to put the banns up and do it properly. She said, “I bet you won’t.” So I did, just for a joke. It was all a big laugh, getting married.’
The Stanley family didn’t think it much of a laugh. ‘We knew that Julia was going out with Alfred Lennon,’ says Mimi, one of Julia’s four sisters. ‘He was quite good looking, I’ll admit. But we knew he would be no use to anyone, certainly not Julia.’
The marriage had taken place at Mount Pleasant Register Office on 3 December 1938. No parents were present. Fred turned up first, outside the Adelphi Hotel, at ten in the morning. There was no sign of Julia so he went off and tried to borrow a pound from his brother. When he got back, Julia still hadn’t turned up so he rang the Trocadero cinema. Julia spent a lot of time at the Trocadero, as she’d always been stage-struck. She never actually worked there, though she put ‘cinema usherette’ on her marriage certificate, as a joke. ‘I spoke to one of her mates at the Troc,’ says Fred. ‘They all loved me at the Troc. They used to say to me, “If you ever fall out of love with Julia, I’ll be waiting.”’
Julia did turn up and they spent their honeymoon at the cinema. Afterwards, Julia went back to her home and Fred went back to his. The next day Fred got on a ship and went off to the West Indies for three months.
Julia stayed at home with her parents, which was where Fred also lived on his trips back home over the next year. After one trip, Julia found that she was pregnant. It was the summer of 1940. Liverpool was under heavy bombing. No one knew where Fred Lennon was.
Julia was admitted to the Maternity Hospital in Oxford Street to have her baby. He was born during a heavy air raid on 9 October 1940, at 6.30 in the evening and he was called John Winston Lennon. Winston was the result of a momentary fit of patriotism. Mimi, who saw the baby 20 minutes after he was born, chose the name John.
‘The minute I saw John,’ says Mimi, ‘that was it. I was lost for ever. A boy! I couldn’t get over it. I went on and on about him, almost forgetting Julia. She said, “All I’ve done is have him.”’
When John was 18 months old, Julia went down to the shipping office one day to pick up her money from Fred, which somehow had been coming through. She was told the money had stopped. ‘Alfred had deserted ship,’ says Mimi. ‘No one knew what had happened to him.’ He did reappear, but Mimi says that was really the end of the marriage, though they didn’t separate until a year or so later.
‘Julia eventually met another man who she wanted to marry,’ says Mimi. ‘It would have been difficult to take John along as well, so I took John. I wanted him, of course, but it did seem the best thing to do. All he needed was a firm anchor and a happy home life. He already looked upon my house as a second home anyway. Both Julia and Fred wanted me to adopt him. I’ve got letters from them saying so. But I could never get them both down to the office together to sign the forms.’
Fred Lennon’s version of his ‘desertion’ and what happened to his marriage is naturally a bit different. He was in New York when the war broke out and heard he was to be transferred to a liberty ship as an assistant steward instead of a head waiter. ‘It meant I would lose my rating. I didn’t mind getting involved in the war, but I couldn’t put up with losing my rating, could I? The captain of the passenger ship I’d been working on advised me what to do. He said, “Freddy, go and get drunk and miss your boat.”’
This is what Fred did, and he ended locked up on Ellis Island. He was told again to join a liberty ship. Fred said he wanted to be head waiter on the Queen Mary. He was at last marched on to a liberty ship, heading for North Africa. When they arrived there, Fred was put in jail.
‘One of the cooks on board had said to me one day, go and get a bottle from his room. I was drinking it when the police arrived. I was supposed to have broached the cargo. I hadn’t. It had all happened before I got on board, but the whole crew got off, except me. Stealing by finding, that was what it was. I defended myself, but it didn’t do no good.’
Fred spent three months in jail. Naturally, he says, his money to Julia stopped. He hadn’t any to send her, but he did send her some letters. ‘She loved my letters. I said to her, there’s a war on, go out and enjoy yourself, pet. That was the biggest mistake of my life. She started enjoying herself and met someone else. And I’d told her to.’
John has vague memories of his days living with the Stanleys, being looked after by his mother while Fred was at sea, although he could not have been more than four years old at the time. ‘One day my grandad took me for a walk to the Pier Head. I had a new pair of shoes on and they hurt me all the way. My grandad slit the heels with a penknife so they would be comfortable.’
He did get the impression from his mother that she and Fred had had some happy times. ‘She told me about them always larking around and laughing. I think Fred must have been popular. He used to send us ship’s concert lists with his name on singing “Begin the Beguine”.’
Julia, according to her sisters, was always singing as well. ‘She was gay, witty and full of fun,’ says Mimi. ‘She never took life or anything seriously. Everything was funny, but she couldn’t see into people until it was too late. She was more sinned against than sinning.’
Fred went back to sea again, after Julia had gone to live permanently with the new man, and John went with Mimi. During one leave Fred decided to go and visit John at Mimi’s house. ‘I rang up from Southampton and spoke to John on the phone. He must have been getting on for five by then. I asked him what he was going to be when he grew up, that sort of thing. He spoke lovely English. When I heard his scouse accent years later, I was sure it must be a gimmick.’
Fred arrived in Liverpool, worried sick, so he says, about John, and went to visit Mimi. ‘I asked John how he’d like to go to Blackpool and go on the fair and play in the sea and the sand. He said he’d love it. I asked Mimi if I could. She said she couldn’t refuse. So I set off with John for Blackpool — intending never to come back.’
Fred and the five-year-old John spent some weeks in Blackpool, staying with a friend of Fred’s. ‘I had bags of money at the time. You couldn’t go wrong in those days, just after the war. I was on lots of rackets, mainly bringing back black market stockings. They’re probably still selling the stuff in Blackpool I brought over.’