Was John Lennon's an only child?

John Lennon never lived with other children, but he had a total five half siblings. Two of these he never met while a third he only saw on one occasion.  

From the age of five, John lived permanently with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George in a large suburban house. His two half-sisters: Julia Baird (née Dykins; born 5 March 1947) and Jackie Dykins (born 26 October 1949) were a bus ride away in the same city.  

Jackie & Julia Dykins

John was always aware of these (half) sisters and began seeing them regularly in his early teens.

Paternal half-siblings

John's biological father, Alf/Freddie Lennon re-entered his son's life in 1964 at the height of Beatle mania. The reunion did not go smoothly. John was then enraged by a newspaper article in which was outraged to his father’s photo in the Daily Express.

Freddie Lennon with a suspiciously light dish-washing load

there he was, washing dishes in a small hotel, very near where I was living outside London. The front-page news was: ‘John’s dad is washing dishes, why isn’t John looking after him?’ I said, ‘Because he never looked after me.’

A few months later a down-at-heel Freddie unexpectedly reappeared. This time he called at Kenwood, the Lennon family home in suburban Surrey.

Now it was Cynthia’s turn to be startled by a man who “looked like a tramp with my husband’s face”. With exquisite English decorum she made him tea and cheese on toast and later cut his “long, stringy locks” of hair.

That’s My Life by Fred Lennon

Again, John responded with a furious rejection of all overtures from his father. Again this was followed by second thoughts and contact.

An uneasy truce survived until Freddie recorded a cash-in single “That’s My Life (My Love and My Home)” at the end of 1965. John broke off relations with his father. He also instructed Brian Epstein to do all he could to ensure that My Life never made the charts (mission accomplished).

Soon after his estrangement with John, Alfred (53) became engaged to a nineteen-year-old Rolling Stones loving students, Pauline Jones. Three years later the couple appeared Kenwood, with Alf explaining they needed funds for a planned elopement.

 

On the eve of John's 30th birthday, he invited his father to lunch at his home in Los Angeles  

When Alf Lennon arrived with his young partner (Pauline) and their eighteen-month-old child, John was furious. The meal abruptly terminated and the visitors were escorted from the house. 

This would be the only meeting John had with his half brother, David Henry (born 1969). He would never meet another brother, Robin, born two years later full story here