One of Your Own Read online

  Myra began school in 1947. Gran accompanied her on the three-minute walk there and back to Peacock Street Primary, a sooty, two-storey building opposite the foundry. By the age of seven, Myra was allowed to trot to and from school on her own; she was an independent little girl and sensible enough to be relied upon not to wander off. She soon made friends, though most of the boys and girls were children she already knew, having played with them on the street. A few of them thought her bossy and spoilt, and one lad decided to see how tough she really was by scratching his nails down her face. Myra ran away, crying – and it wasn’t Gran to whom she rushed for comfort but her father, who gave her a few tips on how to get the better of her tormentor, then sent her back out to put the theory into practice. In her autobiography, Myra describes the confrontation that followed: ‘I set off up the street to meet my persecutor and I quickly concentrated on the things Dad had told me and shown me. As Kenny’s hands came up, I shot out my left hand, fist bunched, towards his head. As I had predicted both hands went up to protect his face and I lifted my right hand and slammed it into his tummy, hitting his tummy. With a gasp, Kenny Holden’s knees crumpled and, before he could recover, I slammed my left fist into the side of his head. Kenny was so shocked he sat down heavily on the floor and burst into tears. I stood looking down at him, triumphantly.’5 Her detailed account is imbued with gratification at having beaten her opponent, even though the event itself was long past.

  After she had trounced Kenny, her father ruffled her hair and said he was proud of her. He decided to teach Myra how to stick up for herself by passing on a few more boxing techniques. She never forgot his advice: ‘Don’t put both your hands up. If you can’t deflect the first punch with one arm, keep the other one ready to protect your stomach.’6 Professor MacCulloch cites this as an example of Myra being brutalised by her relationship with her father, but Bob Hindley knew that bullies wouldn’t pick on his daughter if she were an equal or bigger threat to them. Myra recalled, ‘He would make me fight back if anybody tried to hurt me. I think he would have liked me to be a boy.’7 Bob’s advice stood her in good stead, not only during childhood but also in prison, where she was frequently the target of attack. Tricia Cairns, who grew up in Gorton but didn’t meet Myra until she was in prison, admits that you either fought back on the streets or risked being bullied. Myra was able to protect herself and other, more timid children, but only used the skills her father taught her in self-defence.

  Myra’s relationship with Bob was still unsteady; his awkward efforts at affection were never a success. She told her prison therapist that when she was eight: ‘I was sitting in front of the fire in my nightie, and Dad picked me up and sat me on his lap. He suddenly kissed my forehead. I was so shocked it made me jump and I knocked his fag out of his hand. It burnt my shoulder and I ran out of the house screaming that he had burnt me with a fag end . . . Poor man, he was only trying to be nice to me, which wasn’t often, and I accused him of child abuse. Mam had a go at him for hurting me, so he gave her and me a beating for causing such a fuss.’8

  She maintained that from then on, rather than letting her parents see when she was upset, she developed ‘a strength of character that protected me a lot from emotional harm . . . from a very early age I learned to keep [emotions] under control, to refuse to cry when being chastised, except in the privacy of my bedroom at Gran’s house, to never let my feelings show, to build up layers of protective buffers, to tremble, rage, cry and grieve inwardly.’9

  Living with Gran proved a godsend to Myra; there were no raised voices or hands itching to slap in the house on Beasley Street – just softly spoken, doting Gran. Photographs from the time show Myra with a disarming, ready grin and, regardless of her parents’ bitter squabbling, she has the look of a confident, happy child, full of mischief and humour. Gorton was her world, familiar as her own reflection.

  Beasley Street was in a cluster of terraces set within Gorton Lane to the north, the privately owned houses of Furnival Road to the south, crofts to the west and Casson Street recreation ground to the east. The area was dominated by the two buildings on Gorton Lane that served as the twin custodians of local life – religion and work: the monastery and Gorton Foundry, with trains shunting by on the railway line behind that led into London Road station (renovated and reopened as Piccadilly Station in 1960). Stippled about the neighbourhood were a broad variety of working men’s clubs, pubs and cinemas. Home was the domain of women, while the streets belonged to the children. Life was a constant routine: the fish-and-chip tang of Friday and Saturday nights, Housewives’ Choice blaring from tinny radios, stray dogs barking, the whiff of Woodbines from the corner shop – even the starlings settling on the rooftops seemed rooted to Gorton.

  Despite the drunken rows Bob and Nellie conducted on the street, the Hindleys regarded themselves as respectable. Nellie was vigilant about her daughters’ clothes and cleanliness, and though she didn’t ‘hold’ with religion, each Sunday Myra was allowed to walk hand-in-hand with her auntie Kath to worship at St Francis’ Monastery, joining a congregation that poured in from every corner of the city. Because Kath fasted before morning Mass, Myra did the same, and entered the great church feeling light-headed with hunger and piety. The monastery captivated her, from the hallowed, luminous beauty of the stained glass to the cool grace of the stone arcades. Each Sunday, Myra sought a place at the end of a pew, hoping to catch a drop of the rich, spicy incense as the priest swung it back and forth along the aisle, and she listened with eyes tightly shut and head bent as the hypnotic cadences of the Latin Mass – which she didn’t understand – rose and fell. When she was a bit older, she visited the monastery alone through the week, lighting candles and peeping at the folded pieces of paper bearing scribbled prayers. She loved watching the Whit parades too, when whole communities dressed in their best proudly bore embroidered banners through the crowded streets.

  Myra was less spellbound by school. She joined other skiving children to play in derelict houses or to run down to the reservoir where ‘we would skim stones across the water or try to build rafts out of old doors’.10 Gran knew about the truanting but ignored it, even when the authorities stepped in; it seems that none of Myra’s family took a great interest in her education. Myra recalled: ‘I remember the school board man coming to Gran’s house. She would tell him I was ill. I don’t know what ailment I didn’t have as a kid . . .’11 But Gran was an asset in other respects: ‘She helped with my schoolwork,’ Myra remembered. ‘I liked reading and writing the best. Gran was the main reason I became good in English.’12

  Myra discovered a passion for books. She enjoyed Swallows and Amazons, and all Enid Blyton’s books, particularly the Famous Five series, identifying with the tomboy character of George, whose best friend was her dog. Gran acquired a collie named Duke, whom Myra loved. Duke disappeared once and was missing for several days. The local newspaper wrote an article about it, and Duke was found, chipper and unharmed, and reunited with his owner and her ecstatic granddaughter.

  Myra’s favourite book was one she had to study at school: The Secret Garden by Manchester-born author Frances Hodgson Burnett. She read the book again and again in her bedroom at night by candlelight, rapt by the story, whose setting is an isolated mansion reached by a ‘rough-looking road’ through a ‘great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them . . . a wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low rushing sound like the sea’.13 Curled up on the tick mattress in Gran’s house, Myra imagined she was Mary, the girl in the book, whose guardian reassures her that it isn’t the sea she can hear but ‘the wind blowing through the bushes . . . It’s a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there’s plenty that likes it – particularly when the heather’s in bloom.’14 It’s the moor through which they drive, and the girl in the story is instinctively afraid of it: ‘On and on they drove through the darkness . . . Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean throu
gh which she was passing on a strip of dry land. “I don’t like it,” she said to herself. “I don’t like it,” and she pinched her thin lips more tightly together . . .’15

  Myra’s best friend was Joyce Hardy, a lively little girl with blonde hair in an urchin cut. Joyce lived on Beyer Street, just behind Peacock Street Primary, and after school she and Myra would play marbles together and buy sweets, if they could afford them, from the herbalist. They used to perform a trick made popular by the comedian Harry Worth: standing in the glass doorway of the dry cleaner’s, extending one arm and one leg to make it look as if they were levitating in their reflection. They invented games based on ones they already knew; Britain in the early 1950s was an ascetic place in which very few people could afford bought entertainments and most had never seen a television. Children were baffled when adults ‘reminisced about eating oranges, pineapples and chocolate; they bathed in a few inches of water, and wore cheap, threadbare clothes with “Utility” labels . . . Austerity had left its mark, and many people who had scrimped and saved through the post-war years found it hard to accept the attitudes of their juniors during the long boom that followed.’16

  The ‘long boom’ didn’t begin until well after Myra left primary school. In her final year at Peacock Street, she was nicknamed ‘Beanstalk’ because she was so tall and lanky. Her hair had grown long and poker-straight, and she caught nits from someone at school. Gran parked her by the sink, rubbed vile-smelling liquid into her hair and dragged a steel comb through the dark-blonde lengths. She got rid of the nits, but when Myra went outside to play she was spotted by Eddie Hogan, who jeered, ‘Nitty Nora!’ Myra was furious. She raced up and pummelled him to the ground while a crowd of yelling children gathered. Gran, hearing the commotion, came out and hauled her off Eddie, who limped away, ashamed at having been beaten by a girl. Myra records this fight, too, in her autobiography, adding with characteristic remembered glee, ‘Eddie never called me Nitty Nora again.’17

  Despite her poor attendance record, Myra’s school marks were good. Records show her IQ rating as 109, above average, and she sat the 11-plus exam at Levenshulme High. Upon arrival, she was overwhelmed by the prospect of grammar school and stared at the pupils in their immaculate uniforms, trying to fathom how her parents would afford such extravagance. She failed the entrance exam, hinting in her autobiography that she did so deliberately.

  Nellie wanted her daughter to attend Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, close to home, but some of Myra’s friends were going on to the Catholic school attached to the monastery and Myra was eager to join them. Bob supported his daughter, but Nellie was vehement: no Catholic school for Myra – that was the deal. Bob tried to sway his wife by inviting an old school friend of his, Father Roderick, to drop by to discuss the matter. The visit was a disaster, as Myra recalled in a letter written while she was on remand; Father Roderick declared that because Bob and Nellie had married in a registry office rather than a church, Myra and Maureen were nothing but bastards. Bob barely managed to restrain his fists as he propelled the priest towards the door. Myra shot off to tell Gran that she was a bastard like her and her mother before her. No amount of pleading, sobbing and shouting on Myra’s part after that could persuade Nellie to send Myra anywhere but Ryder Brow.

  Myra began attending the school – a three-quarter-mile walk from Gran’s house – in September 1953. Although she was unhappy at being separated from some of her closest friends, the more affluent backgrounds of a few classmates inspired her with ambition. She recalled, ‘I felt like a fish out of water at first. All of the other kids seemed to have big smart houses and smart clothes, but I still lived in the same house, with a loo down the backyard. This had quite an effect on me at the time and I remember thinking: one day, I’ll have all of that.’18

  Myra settled in sooner than she had expected and found a new best friend, Pat Jepson, whom she already knew. Pat lived on Taylor Street, just round the corner from Gran’s house. The two girls spent their evenings and weekends together, playing games on the crofts around Belle Vue. Pat recalls: ‘I don’t remember Myra crying or being a bad sport . . . Myra was a strong character. If we were going anywhere, she picked the place to go . . . She wasn’t a violent person, but if she said something it was taken that it was done.’19

  Still taller than average, and skinny, as puberty crept in, Myra developed large hips, and local lads would rile her by shouting ‘Square Arse’ – though few risked saying it within walking distance. ‘Myra wouldn’t let herself be pushed around by any of the boys,’ Pat remembers, ‘She was so tough she frightened some of them off. She was so much a tomboy that I sometimes thought that she wanted to be a boy. On the other hand, she was very intelligent and could hold her own on any subject.’20

  Myra was in the A stream throughout her time at Ryder Brow, although she wasn’t an enthusiastic pupil. English remained her favourite subject, and she loved poetry, but otherwise sat listlessly in the classroom. The headmaster, Trevor Lloyd-Jones, tried to engage her by suggesting that she keep an official class diary. She did as he asked, but without any interest. He set her a second task: writing an essay for a classmate to illustrate. Myra had a gift for creative prose – her essays were often read aloud – and she threw herself into the project. The resulting story, ‘Adventure at Four Oaks Farm’, was exceptional. She let her imagination follow where Blyton and Ransom had led, filling an entire exercise book with the tale of a group of intrepid children. Her friend Jean Hicks drew the accompanying pictures. When Myra handed it in, Lloyd-Jones was delighted and said he was going to have it bound and put in the school library. Her sister Maureen – then at primary school – recalled Myra writing two other essays that were highly praised by the teachers, one about a leopard in a jungle, the other about a shipwreck.

  She was clever and could have excelled at school but was too idle and had no one to properly motivate her. Practical work was never her strong point: she couldn’t draw and her attempts at needlework were wretched. Myra’s friend Pauline Clapton explains that Myra’s talents lay elsewhere: ‘Myra could run very fast and she would have a go at any game. She was always the best in the gym class. She was in the school rounders team and I remember she made up a song that started, “How would you like to be/in the Ryder rounders team with me?”’21

  Anne Murdoch was also in the school rounders team: ‘I didn’t like Myra one bit. She hung around with a gang of girls and was dead cocky. We got off to a bad start: during an early rounders match, I hit the ball and pelted down the field and could hear her screaming at me, “Run faster, go on, faster than that, bloody RUN!” I was fuming and faced up to her, “If I’d run any faster I’d have ended up on my head.” She didn’t like being challenged. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that,” she said. “I’ll hit you with my bat if you’re not careful.” I walked off. After a while we got on all right, but we were never friends. She was still a terror during rounders, though – if Myra stumped you out, you didn’t dare argue. She’d fix you with that glare of hers.’22 Naturally gifted at field events such as javelin and discus, Myra was a strong defence in netball because she was so quick and lithe. Her nimble climbing won her another nickname: Monkey. Boys admired her sporting abilities, but she wasn’t pretty enough to grab their attention otherwise. She was more popular with girls, entertaining them by playing the mouth organ and making up little ditties. Linda Maguire, then head girl at Ryder Brow, remembers Myra as ‘funny and always singing, with long, lanky hair’.23

  Her attendance record didn’t improve, however. Myra begged her mother and Gran to write notes justifying her absences, and when they refused she wrote them herself. On one occasion, she and Pat Jepson skived school and sneaked round to Gran’s house, expecting it to be empty. When they heard footsteps at the door, they fled. In a fit of remorse, Myra decided to confess to Nana Hindley that she and Pat had played truant. Bob’s mother reacted with unusual calmness and proposed that Myra and Pat should spend the rest of the day cleaning Gran’s house on
Beasley Street and Nellie’s on Eaton Street. Gran agreed to the idea when she heard, although she knew exactly what Bob’s mother was insinuating – that she and Nellie didn’t keep their homes in order. But she let it pass and set Myra and Pat to work.

  The teachers at Ryder Brow admitted defeat over Myra’s truancy; one morning Trevor Lloyd-Jones asked the class to give Myra a round of applause: she had successfully attended school for five days in a row. Myra shrugged it off with a grin.

  Although she disliked school, Myra wasn’t unsociable. Her unwillingness to become involved in classroom discussions was due to boredom, not hostility. As a teenager, she got on well with most of her peers and the younger children. She was always happy to spend time with her sister Maureen, who was small, dark-haired and dainty. Maureen copied everything Myra said and did, and the two of them were as close as siblings could be. Maureen was also a nippy little fighter when she needed to be, but was occasionally bullied. In a 1977 letter, Myra reminisced to a friend that she often ‘leathered’ kids who picked on her sister and recalled an instance where one girl had been tormenting Maureen for weeks without anyone else realising; when Myra found out, she chased the girl across a field: ‘She glimpsed me pelting across and started running like the clappers, but I grabbed her before she had time to lock herself in her backyard and pasted hell out of her. Her big brother, who was in my class, came out and, scared though I was of him, for he was the bigger bully, I went for him before he came for me. To my amazement – to say nothing of relief – he threw his sister and himself into the backyard and bolted the door . . . Returning home, filthy and scruffy, I got yelled at by Gran and clouted by Mam, who, when Maureen explained, was full of contrition, but, bristling with indignation, I stole without compunction two of my mother’s Park Drives and decided to run away from home – until about 10, when I returned because I was starving hungry.’ 24