Mary Patricia Mohin was born to Owen and Mary Mohin in Fazakerley (north Liverpool) on the 29^th of September 1909. Her mother, Mary Mohin, died in childbirth in January of 1919 when young Mary was ten years old. Her father remarried around 1920. Mary was opposed to this union, and at the age of 13 went to live with her mother’s family in Wavertree, not that far from the Penny Lane Roundabout. In her twenties, she studied nursing and eventually found a specialty and a career in midwifery. As Mark Lewisohn would put it, “She reached 30 still a ‘spinster.’”¹

By the time Mary married Jim McCartney in 1941, she had known or at least been aware of him since at least 1925. Her cousin, Bert Danher, played in Jim McCartney’s jazz band and was married to Jim’s sister, Annie McCartney. The families knew each other well. As could surely be said about countless couples of the time, it was the war that brought Mary and Jim together.

Two Weddings and an Air Raid

Jim’s sister, Gin (Auntie Gin from Paul’s “Let ‘Em In”), had married Harry Harris in June of 1940. A celebration of the newlyweds was held at the McCartney home. Jim was, of course, there. As was Mary Mohin. If not for the events of the evening, it may have simply been a pleasant party, a nice memory and nothing more remarkable than that. Bob Spitz described Mary as “poised and gracious, but soon settled quietly in an armchair, an unseen presence.”² But sometime between 9pm and 10pm depending on which source you use, air raid sirens sounded. “Usually, an all-clear blew within the hour, but this time emergency measures lasted all night, so the McCartneys and their guests hunkered down in the cellar until dawn.”³

Jim and Mary began to get to know each other better that evening and began dating soon after. Jim’s band had never really become professional and by 1940 had been defunct for several years. He had made his living as a cotton salesman until the UK government made the wartime decision to nationalize the cotton industry. He dived into the war effort, as a fire watcher and a lathe-turner on a production line for British fighter planes [Jim was 38 years old and had suffered a ruptured ear drum as a child, making him exempt from military service]. Mary continued her nursing career and was always aware that the need for medical personnel could take her away to her own military service at any time (this didn’t end up happening). In the midst of it all, Mary and Jim were married on the 15^th of April 1941.

Children

“He looked awful, I couldn’t get over it. Horrible. He had one eye open, and he just squawked all the time. They held him up and he looked like a horrible piece of red meat. When I got home I cried, the first time for years and years.” – 1942 Father of the Year, Jim McCartney⁴ 😉

On the other hand, Philip Norman wrote, “The baby was perfect, with a placid, impish smile and big eyes just like his father.”⁵ In any case, on the 18^th of June 1942, James Paul McCartney, first child of Jim and Mary, was born at Walton General Hospital. Since Mary had worked there as a nurse, she was given a private room. Eighteen plus months later, on the 7^th of January 1944, the family was joined by Peter Michael McCartney (Mike). Paul had a younger brother and the family was complete.

Mary had mostly taken time off of work to raise the young children, sometimes taking on the position of “health visitor,” where she would treat minor complaints in people’s homes. But by 1947, she went back into the full-time work force, with the Liverpool Corporation’s Municipal Midwifery Service. The position came with a rent-free home, so the McCartneys moved in at 72 Western Avenue in Speke, in a brand-new neighborhood very near to what is now Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Jim was also fortunate at this time to return to the cotton industry. The pay was not as much as it had been before the war, but with two full-time incomes and no rent, the family was doing well compared to very many families in the area.

Unfortunately, though Liverpool had great plans for the new neighborhood in Speke, things did not go smoothly. As Mark Lewisohn would put it, “…the sudden shunting together of a great number of under-privileged families from slum areas exacerbated and aggregated social and domestic problems on a grand scale, and with post-war Liverpool’s unemployment running at twenty thousand those issues were immediate.”⁶ Meaning gangs and violence.

In 1950, Mary decided that the boys needed more attention, and she therefore wanted to be home nights and weekends. She would step down from her job and take the position of “health visitor” once again. But they would have to move. This time it was to 12 Ardwick Road, still in Speke. Paul would remember moving around during his childhood this way: “My mum was the upwardly mobile force. She was always moving us to a better address…she always wanted to move us out of rough areas.”⁷

Family Life

Paul’s lasting memories of his mother are of kindness and affection. “If you ever grazed your knee or anything it was amazingly taken care of because she was a nurse. She was very kind, very loving. There was a lot of sitting on laps and cuddling.”⁸ On Sundays, the family would gather. Mary would cook a roast for lunch while Jim sat at the piano (which had been bought second-hand from Nems, the Epstein family store), smoking his pipe and playing the old songs he used to play with his jazz band. Then they’d listen to BBC Light Programming on the wireless, “shows with many different types of popular music on record and with lots of live sessions, light classical music, comedy, variety, talks, quizzes, magazines, panel-games, and a little sport.”⁹ Oftentimes there were family get-togethers that included many of Paul’s aunts, uncles, and cousins.

In April 1956, Mary was at her most successful in moving the family “out of the rough areas.” They would move to Allerton, into a nice three-bedroom home! Allerton was a much more distinctly middle-class area of Liverpool. Their new address was 20 Forthlin Road. It was the last house Paul lived in before moving to London when The Beatles were gaining national recognition. The home is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public by going on an official tour.

There is more to tell about Mary McCartney and family, and you can expect to see that in a few weeks’ time. As you likely already know, that part of the story will not be particularly uplifting.

As always, thanks for being here and reading. I really do appreciate it. Please leave comments to let me know what you think and to add any relevant information to the discussion. Please follow or subscribe to

The Synthesizing Substack

For over 60 years, books, magazines, newspapers, and more have been telling the story of The Beatles. So why is it that the stories they tell are not always the same? Let's find out! - presented by Andrew Martin Adamson

By Synthesizing The Beatles

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Next up: Revolution 9. Really looking forward to that!!!

- Adamson

Photo: 20 Forthlin Road. Photo by Andrew Martin Adamson, 27^th of June 2017.

Quotes:

1) All These Years, Volume One: Tune In, Special Extended Edition, by Mark Lewisohn (Little, Brown; London; 2013), p. 41.

2) The Beatles: The Biography, by Bob Spitz (Little, Brown; New York, e-edition 2012), p. 72.

3) Ibid., p. 73.

4) The Beatles, by Hunter Davies (W.W. Norton, New York, 2009 ed.), p. 23.

5) Shout!, by Philip Norman (Fireside, New York, 1981), p. 14.

6) Lewisohn, pp. 115-116.

7) McCartney: Yesterday and Today, by Ray Coleman (Boxtree, London, 1995), p. 24.

8) Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, by Barry Miles (Henry Holt, New York, 1997), p. 6.

9) Lewisohn, p. 119.