Death
Julia visited Mimi's house nearly every day, where they would chat over tea and cakes in the morning room or stand in the garden when it was warm. On the evening of 15 July 1958, Nigel Walley went to visit Lennon and found Julia and Mimi talking by the front gate. Lennon was not there, as he was at the Blomfield Road house. Walley accompanied Julia to the bus stop further north along Menlove Avenue, with her telling jokes along the way. At about 9:30, Walley left her to walk up Vale Road and she crossed Menlove Avenue to the central reservation between two traffic lanes, which was lined with hedges that covered disused tram tracks. Five seconds later, Walley heard "a loud thud", and turned to see her body "flying through the air"—which landed about 100 feet from where she had been hit. He ran back to get Mimi and they waited for the ambulance, with Mimi crying hysterically.
Julia was struck and killed by a Standard Vanguard car, driven by an off-duty constable, PC Eric Clague, who was a learner-driver. Clague was acquitted of all charges and given a short suspension from duty. When Mimi heard the verdict she was so incensed that she shouted "Murderer!" at Clague. Clague later left the police force and became a postman. Coincidentally, in 1964, part of his round was to deliver bags of fan mail to the McCartney house at 20 Forthlin Road.
Lennon could not bring himself to look at his mother's corpse when he was taken to the Sefton General Hospital, and was so distraught that he put his head on Mimi's lap throughout the funeral service. Lennon refused to talk to Walley for months afterwards, and Walley felt that Lennon somehow held him responsible. She was buried in Allerton Cemetery, in Liverpool. Her gravesite was for some time unmarked, but it was recently identified as "CE (Church of England) 38-805". The graveyard's location is approx. 1.19 miles east of 1 Blomfield Road. Baird said that the Stanley family hoped to finally put a headstone on her mother's grave, which she hoped "will be a private affair for the family and not for the public". A headstone was later placed on Julia's grave (replacing a wooden cross), with the words "Mummy, John, Julia, Jackie" inscribed.
Read more about this topic: Julia Lennon
Famous quotes containing the word death:
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