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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. On 9 October 1940, during one of the worst periods of air raids, Julia gave birth to a boy, later christened as John. He was born in the city’s Oxford Street Maternity Hospital. Mimi was to recall in vivid detail:

I was dodging in doorways [in] between running as fast as my legs would carry me … There was shrapnel falling and gunfire, and when there was a little lull: I ran into the hospital ward and there was this beautiful little baby.³

Later, according to a relative of Mimi’s who lived nearby, ‘there were 56 people blown to pieces in an air raid shelter’,⁴ while Mimi had to grapple with a number of incendiary bombs that constantly dropped into her garden, tossing wet blankets on the bombs and then stamping them out. This version of events was intended to paint Mimi as a determined, brave and lovable surrogate mother. These certainly weren’t the first efforts to muddy the waters of the true role she was to play in John’s life. The account of the night’s bombing offers up Mimi as a cross between Wonder Woman and Mrs Doubtfire. It is ludicrous and untrue. There were no German bombing raids on Liverpool the night John was born. Although the city was bombed no fewer than 60 times that year between September and December, no raids occurred during the day or night that Mimi gives her account. It seems somewhat perverse that she should want to paint this scene of ‘heroic’ selflessness against a backdrop of real heroics, suffering and deprivation by those in the inner city.

During the air raids on Liverpool, the bombs fell mostly on the docks and industrial areas of the city. This is where the very people whom Mimi had come to look down on lived – the people who stoically bore the brunt of the raids. Mimi’s account of her role during the birth of John and the Liverpool air raid is one that she gave not once, but on a number of occasions. It was not just a case of a single recollection. If it was a straight-forward recollection, inasmuch as there were bombs falling when John was born, leaving out the misinformation of her ‘deadly dash’ five miles across bomb-strewn Liverpool, then this could be accepted. It was neither, though, and as David Bedford points out, ‘Mimi lived eleven years after John had died. And in that time, Mimi reinvented herself. With John gone, she could say anything she liked, without anyone to contradict her.’⁵ Mimi set out to rewrite John’s history at Mendips. Her account of John’s life became a familiar pattern of fabrication and misleading statements. The story of his upbringing at her hands is riddled with inconsistencies.

Freddie’s service on the Empress of Canada, which started on 30 July, only ended on 1 November and he missed John’s birth by some three weeks. Initially, Julia and baby John had moved from Newcastle Road to the cottage owned by Mimi’s husband George. The problem with this move was that while Newcastle Road was ideally placed for transport and shops, the cottage was out in the sticks. It made for long spells of isolation. For Julia it made for greater pressure to get out and about, and out and about is what Julia did. When home, Freddie would accompany Julia to the local dance halls. He was not a dancer himself, but he would be content to watch her dancing with a string of different men. Aware of the pressures on his young wife, stuck at home with a baby, Freddie’s ‘instructions’ to Julia when he sailed away was to ‘go out and enjoy yourself’.

The following year in New York, he shipped out on a short voyage as the chief steward only to discover he was to be demoted to assistant steward. Instead of the short trip, he would be transporting arms and ammunition to the Far East. He consequently jumped ship, hid out in New York City and waited for a liner directly back to Liverpool. Days later he was arrested under suspicion of breaking into a cargo of whisky, locked in the ship’s brig and then jailed at Ellis Island. Released two weeks later, he waited another month before being allocated on the Sammex, which was bound for the Far East again. This time Freddie found himself set up by another crew member on a charge for stealing whisky and cigarettes from the ship’s hold. He was placed for another two weeks in a cell on Ellis Island and then for three months in an army prison camp in Malta. After 18 months away, Freddie made his way back home. What would be waiting there would surprise even him.

With little contact with her husband and even less money, Julia did not sit at home and mope. Insead she decided to ‘live a little’. Returning to Liverpool as part of a convoy in 1943, Freddie stayed at the cottage with Julia and John. One Saturday night this pleasant family scene was interrupted by the sound of knocking on the front door. When it opened, Freddie was surprised to discover a sailor in full uniform with a platinum blonde on his arm. They were both in high spirits, asking for Julia. The couple had come to take Julia out for a drink. Freddie was shattered and begged Julia not to go. His wife was having none of it. ‘I hardly ever go out’, was her response to Freddie’s pleas. Freddie slammed the front door and barred it against Julia leaving. For her part, Julia took her high heels off, climbed on the kitchen sink and out of the window, and proceeded to run down the road, shoes in hand, to catch up with the sailor and his blonde girlfriend.

Freddie’s wartime service in the Merchant Navy was characterised by a complex series of cock-ups and incompetence. The highlight of this odyssey was Freddie giving a ‘star turn’ to wildly appreciative servicemen in a New York bar. He was then carried shoulder-high down Broadway to Jack Dempsey’s bar, where he continued with his show.

Freddie came home to find his young wife pregnant, but obviously not by him. Instead, the father turned out to be a young Welsh soldier called Taffy Williams. At first, Julia claimed that she had been raped. After Freddie confronted the soldier, it was discovered that this wasn’t the case. Taffy offered to marry Julia. She laughed in his face. Freddie offered to accept the child into the family, but Julia refused and instead she entered a Salvation Army hospital in the Mossley Hill area, where she went full term and gave birth to a girl. As previously arranged with the hospital, after six weeks the baby – named Victoria – was eventually given up for adoption to a Norwegian sea captain and his Liverpudlian wife.

Julia would now return to Pop at Newcastle Road. Further conflict was to follow when Freddie, returning from another trip, discovered his wife had been having a six-month affair with Bobby Dykins, who was two years her junior. During this period, Mimi was to make her move for John. When Mimi was interviewed by Hunter Davies, ‘She claimed Julia wasn’t caring for him properly’⁶ and informed Freddie that John had walked from Newcastle Road to her house at Mendips. This was in all likelihood untrue. That an unaccompanied four-year-old would be in a position to navigate two major dual carriageways and make his way along the mile-and-a-half route past a police station seems extreme in the least. Why would Mimi say this? It was the beginning of a long campaign of false accusations, half-truths and lies against Julia and Freddie to gain permanent access to John.

On Freddie’s next return home to Newcastle Road, he was shocked to find Julia in a steady, long-term relationship, now living with Bobby Dykins. Julia hadn’t heard from Freddie for 18 months and took it upon herself to find another man. Freddie must have known this was the end of the marriage. He asked to see John and was informed that he’d spent the last two weeks in Mendips. When he called to see him, Mimi demanded £20 for John’s ‘keep’. This was a month’s wages.

Mimi was critical of Julia for bringing shame on the family with her relationship with Dykins. She seemed to be unusually supportive towards Freddie’s position. What was later to transpire was that Mimi and Pop had been in collusion. Julia’s mother had died in 1941, and since then Pop had been looking to snare one of his daughters to take the place of his wife-cum-housekeeper. At 71 years of age, Pop was becoming incapable of looking after himself. He desperately needed a carer and, as all of his other daughters were unavailable, Julia was the one he chose. Mimi, on the other hand, wanted a child, and she was determined it would be John. The plan was to give Julia a home in Newcastle Road along with Bobby (but if possible without him) and in return she would give up John to Mimi. Before Freddie finally bowed out of the Stanley family, there was the sad spectacle of him taking John to his brother Sidney’s home in Blackpool. The intention was for them both to emigrate to New Zealand. John’s prospective antipodean adventure with his father ended when Freddie was located by Julia and Bobby. John, just five years old, was presented with the traumatic choice of who he would like to live with: his mother or his father. John’s first choice was his father Freddie, followed by a quick reversal. He ran into his mother’s arms. For such a young child, his first few years had been stressful in the extreme. Sadly, things weren’t going to get better.

Following on from Blackpool, Mimi was to argue continually that John would be better off with her at Mendips where a ‘stable environment’ could be provided. Julia vehemently refused. There then followed a campaign by Pop and Mimi to ensure that they both got their way. Julia, much to the chagrin of Mimi, was allowed to stay with Pop at Newcastle Road together with Bobby Dykins. ‘Living in sin’ was anathema to Mimi. Such a state of affairs brought shame on the family, but perhaps there was a method to Pop’s madness. Bit by bit, pressure was applied to Julia to relinquish John into Mimi’s care. She and Bobby could stay and take care of Pop. The pressure to give in was so intense that Julia, John and Bobby moved out of Newcastle Road and into a small flat in nearby Gateacre. This was the chance Mimi had been waiting for. With Pop in attendance, Mimi paid an unannounced visit to the flat. Both declared that it was an unfit place for John to live and Mimi demanded he be placed with her. A campaign of harassment against Julia was to pay dividends. ‘She saw a window of opportunity, and if she’d have let that go, there wouldn’t be another chance,’ states Julia Baird (nee Dykins):

The first time she came round to collect John, my father put her out. The second time she came with a social worker who said – or rather told – Mimi that she could find nothing wrong with John’s staying with his mother. Mimi then probably appealed to the Director of Public Services. She was determined. He asked where John slept. There was only one bedroom and my parents weren’t married. He agreed with Pop and Mimi that John should go and live with George and Mimi at Mendips.⁷

Mimi’s belief was that John living in the same house as his mother’s common law husband was enough to get him away from his mother. Refusing to take no for an answer, she went to the head of Liverpool’s Public Services. The Director sided with Mimi. The result was that five-year-old John was removed by order of the Public Services from Julia, just one summer after he had lost contact with his father.

Mimi would say later that ‘Julia had met somebody else with whom she had a chance of happiness, and no man wants another man’s child’.⁸ But Bobby Dykins showed strong intent to take John on as his own son. He was willing to set up home with Julia and John. If Freddie could be tracked down and agree to a divorce, it was highly likely the couple would marry. And as for ‘no man wants another man’s child’, where did this leave George Smith, in whose home John would be living? ‘Mimi changed John’s school to Dovedale from Mosspits, and took over running his life. Or should that be ruining his life?’ Julia Baird comments.

It was obvious that Julia and Bobby needed a bigger place, where John would have his own bedroom. Julia and Bobby moved back with Pop at Newcastle Road, where John could have his own room. That would solve the problem, so Julia went to Mimi to get John back. Mimi turned her away at the door.⁹

Mimi had acquired John as she has acquired Mendips: by stealth and subterfuge. Her appetite for self-advancement included the ‘ideal family’, which of course included a child. John was to be the final part of Mimi’s transformation into a post-war, Woman’s Own accomplished suburban matriarch. John had now been subject to a tug of war between his parents, having to choose between his mother and father, the introduction of social workers in the battle for his custody between his mother and his aunt, and the introduction of a regimented and cold regime at Mendips. It’s no wonder that he sought solitude in his writing and art.

‘Hypocrite to the core. Flawed. Unbelievable what she put my mother through’, concludes Julia Baird.

[Mimi] had set her heart on having John, no matter what the price to pay, no matter what my mother thought. Mimi just battled away. This was her opportunity to have a child.¹⁰