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12.56am
10 December 2014
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John and Paul went off to Paris after the former had been given £100 for his birthday by a relative who was a dentist in Edinburgh, Scotland.
£100 was a huge sum of money to give as a present back then. Do we know who the dentist was, and what was his relationship to John?
1.11am
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1 May 2011
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From 'Many Years From Now'
On 2 July 1961, the Beatles returned to Liverpool after thirteen exhausting weeks at the Top Ten. On John Lennon 's twenty-first birthday, 9 October 1961, his aunt in Edinburgh sent him £100, about two months' wages for the average worker in those days. John decided to use some of the money for a hitch-hiking trip to the Continent intending to go first to Paris then hitch on to Spain; so the day after playing the Village Hall, Knotty Ash, Liverpool, he and Paul got out on the road and stuck out their thumbs. They reached Dover and took the ferry to Calais, but hitching was almost impossible in France so they took the train to Paris. Paul had picked up quite a bit of German in Hamburg and had taken German and Spanish at school but had not studied French. John had taken a few months of French, but had not paid attention, so between them they barely spoke a word.
Here names her as John's Aunt Elizabeth.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
2.40pm
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14 April 2010
Offline Hildy said
Do we know who the dentist was, and what was his relationship to John?
The dentist was Bert Sutherland. He was married to Julia 's sister Elizabeth - the family called her Mater. John visited them in Edinburgh during summer holidays as a schoolboy. Bert was Mater's second husband.
To the fountain of perpetual mirth, let it roll for all its worth. And all the children boogie.
