John Lennon’s Mother Was Killed by an Off-Duty Policeman

Though John Lennon’s mother wasn’t around for much of his childhood, they’d become close in his teen years. He was in a band called the Quarrymen (along with Paul McCartney) at the time of his mother’s death. Just months prior, he had told McCartney: “How can you sit there and act normal with your mother dead? If anything like that happened to me, I’d go off me head.” Then Julia Lennon was hit by a car driven by an off-duty police officer. After that, Lennon did all but lose his head. 

How John Lennon’s mother died

In 1958, Lennon was still living mostly with his Aunt Mimi, but staying at his mother’s house sometimes as well. One evening when John was out with a friend, Julia came over to her sister’s for dinner. She left to catch the bus around twilight. At the same time, John’s friend Nigel Whalley made his way over to Mimi’s to see if his friend was there. He ran into Julia just outside of Mimi’s and the two chatted for a bit. They said goodbye and Julia started for the bus again. When she was about 200 yards from her sister’s house, she was hit by a car. 

“The quiet of the summer night was split by the terrible sound of screeching brakes and a heavy thump,” reads The Beatles biography The Love You Make by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “Nigel Whalley turned at the gate of Mendips just in time to see Julia’s body rise up into the air above the hedges and come down on the other side. By the time Mimi got over to the tram tracks, Julia was dead.”

Julia Lennon was hit by an off-duty police officer 

The car was driven by an off-duty policeman. Mimi was adamant that he went to trial. Whalley acted as a witness, “but the testimony of a young boy didn’t seem to impress the judge very much and the driver was acquitted.”

Mimi was enraged at the outcome of the trial. She screamed and cursed at the police officer from the spectator’s dock. She threatened to beat him up with her cane. 

John was there too, but he watched in dejected silence. He knew no amount of screaming could bring his mother back. After that day, John slipped into a pit of darkness. 

John Lennon’s reaction to his mother’s death

John took his mother’s death incredibly hard. He fell into a deep, angry grief. 

“When he went back to art college six weeks later, he was meaner than ever,” reads TLYM. “Fellow students remember seeing him sitting in the solitude of a rear stairwell, staring out the window and crying. He kept himself in a pain-killing stupor of alcohol and, more often than not, spent the whole day a little drunk.”

He seemed to target people experiencing homelessness, those with physical ailments, and the elderly with his ridicule. 

“His typical behavior would be to walk up to a hapless paraplegic he encountered on the street and make cruel jokes about his useless limbs,” reads TLYM. 

Everyone except for members of the Quarrymen stayed far away from John. That is until he met Cynthia Powell.