After Jack died, Polly did not have enough money to keep the whole Lennon family together, so she placed two of her children, Alfred and Edith, in the Blue Coat School Orphanage.

When he was 15 years old he left the Bluecoat orphanage and found a job as an office-boy, but preferred to visit Liverpool's many vaudeville theatres and cinemas, where he knew the usherettes by name.

Alfred, who was dressed in a bowler hat and holding a cigarette holder, saw "this little waif" sitting on a wrought-iron bench.

[15] They were married in the Bolton Street Register Office, and on the marriage certificate Julia stated her occupation as 'cinema usherette', even though she had never been one.

They spent their honeymoon eating at Reece's restaurant in Clayton Square (which is where his son would later celebrate after his marriage to Cynthia Powell),[16] and then went to a cinema.

Whilst away he graduated from bellboy to steward, and on his return to Liverpool moved into the Stanley home in Newcastle Road.

John Winston Lennon was born at 6:30 pm on 9 October 1940, on the second-floor ward of Liverpool Maternity Hospital at Oxford Street.

[13] Alfred first saw his son that November when he returned from working as a merchant seaman on troop transports during World War II.

He claimed that he had sailed from the United States to Bône, North Africa, but was arrested for stealing one bottle of beer from the ship.

He eventually served on a troopship from North Africa to Italy before finally boarding a ship that was making its way to England in 1944.

[4] Julia had started going to dance halls in 1942, and met a Welsh soldier named 'Taffy' Williams who was stationed in the barracks at Mossley Hill.

[19] Julia took his advice, and often gave her young son a piece of chocolate or sugar pastry the next morning for breakfast that she had received the night before.

[25] In June 1946, Alfred visited Mimi's house at 251 Menlove Avenue and took his son to Blackpool for a long "holiday"—but secretly intended to emigrate to New Zealand with him.

According to author Mark Lewisohn, Lennon's parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home as Alfred left again.

A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said that the dramatic scene, often portrayed with a young John Lennon having to make a decision between his parents, never happened.

[8] In 1958, when Alfred was working with Charlie Lennon in the Barn Restaurant in Solihull, their brother Sydney sent a newspaper clipping from the Liverpool Echo reporting that Julia had died.

He was working as a kitchen porter at the Greyhound Hotel at Hampton Court, in Middlesex, when someone pointed to a photograph of John Lennon in a newspaper asking whether he was related to him.

[6] When the Beatles were filming a scene for A Hard Day's Night in the Scala Theatre in Soho in April 1964, Alfred walked into Brian Epstein's NEMS office in Argyle Street with a journalist.

While waiting, Cynthia made Alfred tea and cheese on toast, and offered to cut his "long, stringy locks" of hair, which he allowed.

[34] John was annoyed when he arrived home, telling Cynthia about Alfred's visit to the NEMS office a few weeks earlier.

After Christmas, in 1965, John was embarrassed to learn that Alfred had made a record: "That's My Life (My Love and My Home)", released on 31 December 1965.

[37] Three years after meeting John in the NEMS office, Alf appeared at Kenwood again with his fiancée Pauline Jones.

[38] Alfred asked John if he could give Pauline a job, so she was hired to help, looking after Julian Lennon and also the piles of fan mail.

In 1990, Pauline published a book called Daddy, Come Home, detailing her life with Alfred and his meetings with John.