Bob Hindley, Maureen’s father, was in his late 40s when his younger daughter began hanging around with David Smith. Having served as an aircraft fitter attached to the Parachute Regiment during the war, he found it hard to adjust to civilian life after being demobbed. For a time, he was employed as a labourer at Beyer Peacock and earned extra money fighting in the local ‘blood tubs’ until an accident at work left him a semi-invalid. He became a morose drunk, spending his days shuffling between an unhappy home and the vault of the Steelworks Tavern. His marriage to Nellie Maybury was a tempestuous one, fraught with blistering rows and physical violence on both sides, while neither of his two daughters were inclined to spend much time with him, taking their mother’s part instead. Maureen was the less academic of the two girls, with a lackadaisical attitude to life. Born on 21 August 1946, she was timid as a child and relied on her elder sister, the tomboyish Myra, to protect her from neighbourhood bullies.
