nearly every day, where they would chat over tea and cakes in the morning room or stand in the garden when it was warm. On the evening of 15 July 1958, Nigel Walley went to visit John and found Julia and Mimi talking by the front gate. John was not there, as he was at the Blomfield Road house. Walley accompanied Julia to the bus stop further north along Menlove Avenue with her, telling jokes along the way. At about 9:30, Walley left her to walk up Vale Road and she crossed Menlove Avenue to the central reservation between two traffic lines, which was lined with hedges that covered disused tram tracks. Moments later, Walley heard "a loud thud", and turned to see her body "flying through the air"—which landed about from where she had been hit. He ran back to get Mimi and they waited for the ambulance, with Mimi crying hysterically. Julia was knocked down and killed by a Standard Vanguard car, driven by an off-duty constable, PC Eric Clague, who was a learner-driver. Clague was acquitted of all charges and given a short suspension from duty. When Mimi Smith heard the verdict she was so incensed that she shouted "Murderer!" at Clague. Clague later left the police force and became a postman. John could not bring himself to look at his mother's body when he was taken to the Sefton General Hospital, and was so distraught that he put his head on Smith's lap throughout the funeral service. He refused to talk to Walley for months afterwards, and Walley felt that John somehow held him responsible. Lennon was buried in Allerton Cemetery, in Liverpool. Her gravesite was for some time unmarked, but it was later identified as "CE (Church of England) 38-805". The graveyard's location is approx. 1.19 miles east of 1 Blomfield Road. Baird said that the Stanley family hoped to finally put a headstone on her mother's grave, which she hoped "will be a private affair for the family and not for the public". A headstone was subsequently placed on Lennon's grave (replacing a wooden cross), with the words "Mummy, John, Victoria, Julia, Jackie" inscribed. Effect on John His mother's death traumatised the teenage John and, for the next two years, he drank heavily and frequently got into fights, consumed by a "blind rage". It contributed to the emotional difficulties that haunted him for much