was deeply worried about John’s lack of progress at art college, and more than that: when taking his coat to be dry-cleaned, she had found a packet of Durex ‘rubber Johnnies’ in one of the pockets, a precaution doubtless inspired by what had happened to Barbara Baker. Fishwick was the only person to whom she showed the packet, opening a tightly clenched hand to reveal it and asking, ‘What do I do about this?’ His advice was not to make too big a thing of it—which she evidently took, for on this occasion, at least, he recalls, there was no fiery argument between aunt and nephew, no door-slamming exit by John to seek sanctuary at Julia’s.
Sunday, 15 July, brought Merseyside warm, sunny weather that showed the woods, golf greens and trim hedges of Woolton at their lushest. John, on holiday from college, was around the house in the morning but, as Fishwick remembers, ‘drifted off later with some friends’. Mimi’s only visitor was Julia, who dropped in that afternoon for a cup of tea and a chat as she invariably did. It wasn’t until late evening—past 9.30—that she left to catch her bus back to Allerton. The longest day of the year had been only three weeks earlier. Dusk was only just starting to fall.
Julia’s bus stop was in Menlove Avenue, about 200 yards from Mendips’ front gate, on the other side of the busy two-lane road, with no pedestrian crossing anywhere near—though a 30-mph speed limit was in force. Usually Mimi walked to the stop with her, but this evening she said she wouldn’t if Julia didn’t mind. ‘That’s all right, don’t worry,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Just then, Nigel Walley turned up at the front gate, looking for John. But John had not returned home all afternoon—and, in fact, was now over at Blomfield Road, waiting for his mother’s return. Julia explained this to Walloggs, adding in her flirtatious way, ‘Never mind. You can walk me to the bus-stop.’
Mimi watched from the front door as they strolled off together, Nigel chuckling at some remark of Julia’s. They parted at the junction with Vale Road; Nigel turned right towards his home while Julia crossed Menlove Avenue’s southbound lane to the central reservation. This marked the route of the old tramway, where John and his Outlaws used to play their urchin games, and was now grassedover and planted with a hedge. Julia stepped through the hedge and was halfway across the northbound lane when a bulky Standard Vanguard sedan, registration number LKF 630, loomed out of the twilight. Nigel heard a screech of brakes and a thud, and turned to see Julia’s body thrown high into the air.
The noise was loud enough to reach Mimi and Michael Fishwick in the kitchen at Mendips. ‘We looked at each other and didn’t say a word,’ Fishwick remembers. ‘We both just ran like hell.’ They found Julia lying in the road, with a stunned Nigel Walley kneeling beside her. Nigel would always be haunted by the memory of how strangely peaceful she looked, with a stray lock of her auburn hair fluttering in the summer breeze. The impact seemed to have left no mark, though Fishwick could see blood seeping through the reddish curls; she was still just barely alive. ‘[But] when I ran across the road and saw her,’ Mimi remembered, ‘I knew there was no hope.’
An ambulance arrived within minutes to take Julia to Sefton General Hospital. Mimi got into the ambulance, still wearing the slippers in which she’d rushed out of doors. Fishwick joined her at the hospital later, bringing her some shoes and her handbag. Her immediate concern was that he should telephone other family members with the news, so that one of them could break it to John. ‘She didn’t want John to find out just from a policeman turning up at the door.’
Unfortunately, that was exactly how it happened: a constable in a Praetorian-crested helmet, knocking on the front door of 1 Blomfield Road and asking John in embarrassed officialese if he was Julia’s son. At this unspeakable moment, the only person with him was the member of his extended family he least cared about: Bobby ‘Twitchy’ Dykins. ‘Twitchy took it worse than me,’ John would recall. ‘Then he said “Who’s going to look after the kids?” And I hated him. Bloody selfishness. We got a taxi over to Sefton General, where she was lying dead…I talked hysterically to the taxi-driver all the way, ranted on and on, the way you do. The taxidriver just grunted now and again. I refused to go in and see her. But Twitchy did. He broke down.
‘It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. We’d caught up so much, me and Julia, in just a few years. We could communicate. We got on. She was great. I thought “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. That’s really fucked everything. I’ve no responsibilities to anyone now.”’
Michael Fishwick met Mimi at the hospital, then took her to Blomfield Road, where John’s aunts Nanny and Harrie and their husbands had now arrived. Mimi collapsed into her sisters’ arms while Fishwick was given a large whisky by one of the eversubordinate menfolk. When John finally left the house, it was not to return home but to seek out his old girlfriend, Barbara Baker, and tell her the news. As Barbara would recall, the two of them went into Reynolds Park and ‘stood there with our arms around each other, crying our eyes out.’ Late that night, Mimi’s next-door neighbour, a Mrs Bushnell, saw John playing his guitar in his usual place out on Mendips’ front porch—the only real form of comfort or healing he could find.
Julia’s death was recorded by a brief announcement in the Liverpool Echo, which allowed Bobby Dykins to claim her as the spouse she’d never officially become:
Dykins—July 15th—Julia, died as result of car accident, beloved wife of John Dykins, and dearly beloved mother of John Winston Lennon, Julia and Jacqueline Dykins, 1 Blomfield Road, Liver pool 19.
Julia’s funeral took place at Allerton Cemetery on the following Friday, 20 July. There was a bitter argument between Twitchy and her sisters when it emerged that he had intended her to be buried in a pauper’s grave, subsidised by the city corporation. Instead, the four women clubbed together to pay the funerary expenses. Among the mourners were John’s cousin Liela, his childhood playmate and secret teenage crush. Now a medical student at Edinburgh University, she had been summoned by telegram from the Butlins Holiday Camp where she had a holiday job as a chalet maid. Liela remembered John lying with his head in her lap for most of that day, too numbed to speak or even move.
The car that struck Julia had been driven by an off-duty policeman, 24-year-old Eric Clague of 43 Ramillies Road, Liverpool 18. The matter therefore became the subject of an internal police inquiry by a team that included John’s friend Pete Shotton, currently on attachment to the CID from training college. The officer was only a learner driver and so should not have been out in a car by himself. Since the police of those days were rigorous in prosecuting their own, an accusation of causing death by dangerous driving seemed likely. But no criminal charge of any kind resulted. The whole matter was dealt with by the inquest, four weeks later—though, unusually, this was conducted before a jury, and its proceedings were closed to the press.
Clague attested that he had not been driving carelessly and had been doing no more than 28-mph in the 30-mph zone. Nigel Walley, the only eyewitness, testified that Clague’s car seemed to have been travelling at abnormal speed and to have swerved out of control on the steep camber of the road as Julia suddenly stepped through the hedge. Though himself the son of a police superintendent, he sensed that the court regarded him as too young to be taken seriously. ‘The Coroner seemed to be bending over backwards to help this man who’d killed Julia,’ Mimi remembered. ‘It emerged that he was driving too fast, but you could see it was a bit of a men’s club really.’ When the young policeman was exonerated of blame, Mimi exploded in fury and threatened him with a walking stick. ‘I got so mad…That swine…If I could have got my hands on him, I would have killed him.’
The findings were reported in a further brief Echo news item:
DASHED INTO CAR
Misadventure Verdict on Liverpool Woman
A verdict of misadventure was returned by the jury at the Liverpool inquest today into Mrs Julia Lennon, aged 44, of 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, who died after being struck by a motor car while she was crossing Menlove Avenue on July 15.
A witness, the Coroner (Mr J.A. Blackwood) told the jury, had said that Mrs Lennon had not appeared to look either way before she walked into the roadway. Then she saw the approaching car, made a dash to avoid it, but dashed into the car.
Julia’s