page_title: Cynthia Lennon
section_title: Relationship with John Lennon
hierarchical_section_title: Cynthia Lennon / Art college / Relationship with John Lennon
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ye Cracke pub in Liverpool, which Lennon and his future wife regularly visited.
context_page_description: Cynthia Powell Lennon was an English artist best known as the first wife of John Lennon and the mother of Julian Lennon.
  Born in Blackpool and raised in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, Cynthia was accepted into the Junior Art School at the age of 12 and later enrolled at the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon also attended the college, and a meeting with Cynthia in a calligraphy class led to their relationship. When John was performing in Hamburg with the Beatles, Cynthia rented his bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After Cynthia became pregnant, she and John married on 23 August 1962 at the Mount Pleasant register office in Liverpool and the couple lived at Kenwood in Weybridge from 1964 to 1968, where she kept house and participated with her husband in a London-based social life. In 1968, Lennon left her for Japanese artist Yoko Ono; as a result, the couple's divorce was legally granted on 8 November 1968 on the grounds of adultery.
  She married Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini in 1970, divorcing him in 1976. In 1978, she married English engineer John Twist, but divorced him in 1982.
context_section_description: After a college party to celebrate the end of term, Lennon asked Powell if she would like to "go out" with him. She quickly replied that she was engaged to a young man in Hoylake; he replied, "I didn't ask you to fucking marry me, did I?" He later approached her and asked if she would go to the Ye Cracke pub. She was confused when he ignored her all evening, but eventually invited her into the group with a joke.
  They began dating, with Lennon now referring to her as "Cyn". In the autumn of 1958, she ended her engagement to be with him, and he ended his relationship with another art student, Thelma Pickles. His jealousy could also manifest itself in violent behaviour towards her, as when he slapped her across the face (causing her head to hit a wall), after watching her dance with Stuart Sutcliffe. After the incident, she broke up with Lennon for three months, but resumed their relationship after his profuse apology.
  Her work at art school began to suffer, and teachers told her the relationship with Lennon was doing her no good. Lennon continued to be casually inconsiderate towards her, later saying, "I was in sort of a blind rage for two years. I was either drunk or fighting. It had been the same with other girl friends I'd had. There was something the matter with me." Tony Bramwell—a friend of Lennon's since his youth—later said: "Cynthia was beautiful, physically, and on the inside. Although she knew he [Lennon] was apt to find love on the road, she was totally dedicated to his success... and extremely influential. He was insecure and Cynthia was there to pump him up, to buttress, sort of, his weak side."
  The Beatles' first Hamburg residency took place in 1960, with Lennon writing frequent and passionate letters back home to Powell. After returning home, Lennon's aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith, threw a hand-mirror at him for spending a lot of money on a suede coat for Powell. Smith later referred to her as "a gangster's moll", and was often unpleasant towards her. The Beatles went to Hamburg for a second time in 1961, and both Powell and Dot Rhone (Paul McCartney's girlfriend at the time), visited them two weeks later, during the Easter holidays. They had to stay up all night because of the long sets, both taking Preludin to stay awake, which the group was also taking. Lennon and Powell stayed with Sutcliffe's girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, at her mother's house. After the trip to Hamburg, Powell's mother Lillian said Powell's cousin and husband were emigrating to Canada with their new-born baby, and that she, Lillian, would be going with them while they studied to become teachers. Powell waited until Lennon came back from Hamburg before she asked Smith—who had taken in lodgers before at 251 Menlove Avenue—if she would rent a room to her. Smith rented out the box-room above the front door (which had been Lennon's bedroom), but insisted she also do chores around the house. After her student grant had run out, she took a job at a Woolworths store in Liverpool in order to pay the rent. In the same year, when Lennon was 21 years old, he received £100 (equivalent to £2,200 in 2020). from his aunt Elizabeth Sutherland (whom he called "Mater") who lived in Edinburgh, and went to Paris with McCartney. Powell could not accompany them as she was studying for her final exams.
  When Lennon went to Hamburg again in April 1962, she found a bedsit in a terraced house at 93 Garmoyle Road, Liverpool. Shortly after having failed her art teacher's diploma exam, in August 1962, she found she was pregnant with Lennon's child. She later explained that she and Lennon had never used contraception, had never talked about it, and did not think about it at the time. When she told Lennon he said, "There's only one thing for it Cyn, we'll have to get married".
caption: The Ye Cracke public house
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