“There was no excuse”: The almost-unexceptional childhood of Britain’s most notorious murderess
Myra Hindley seemed like any “normal” girl growing up in post-war Manchester. But what exactly gave rise to one half of the most infamous child-murdering couple in British history?
The world remembers Myra Hindley by her mugshot: an image that many have likened to the pure “embodiment of evil”.
Between 1963 and 1965, Hindley and her then-lover Ian Brady abducted and murdered five children around Manchester, England. At least four of the children were sexually assaulted, and at least three had been buried in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor – a vast stretch of moorland in the Peak District.
Brady and Hindley’s crimes have been the subject of numerous movies, books, songs, paintings, plays, and even two musicals. Millions of words have been printed in news and academic publications across the world, attempting to get to the bottom of how it was that the sadistic couple came to cause so much devastation to families across the Northwest.
Even though it is widely understood that Brady was the instigator of the crimes, Hindley’s role as an abductor cannot be downplayed. I have explored her childhood in much more detail in my latest article, and this one will be a simplified retelling of it.
Childhood
Though her childhood was largely uneventful, Myra Hindley still suffered her fair share of tragedy and abuse, and grew up quite quickly. She was born in Manchester on the 23rd July 1942, to Nellie and Bob Hindley, and spent her entire childhood growing up in the Gorton area. Bob was an aircraft fitter in the war and was not around at Myra’s birth or for the first few years of her childhood. Nellie was a labourer and worked hard to provide for her infant daughter – often leaving little Myra with her own mother, Ellen, during the day. Myra and Ellen would always maintain a very close relationship, and Myra would later say that “any good in me comes from my Gran”.
Not long after Bob returned from the war in 1945, Nellie fell pregnant again and eventually gave birth to a second daughter, Maureen, in August 1946. But things between Nellie and Bob quickly became tense. Bob sunk into alcoholism and was both physically and verbally abusive towards Nellie. Ellen eventually intervened, and the three decided that it would be best to separate Myra away from the violence so that Nellie could focus on caring for baby Maureen.
From that point onwards, Myra went to live with Ellen (who lived nearby) but always spent mealtimes and evenings with the rest of her family before Bob got too drunk. Living arrangements like this between families were quite common for the time period – this was not out of the ordinary.
Bob beat Nellie regularly, exposing both Myra and Maureen to this abuse. Even though Myra despised her father for the most part, she did credit him with teaching her how to fight back against neighbourhood bullies. Bob had been a champion boxer during the war, teaching Myra and Maureen how to stick up for themselves.
Myra was a tough and athletic child who frequently defended herself and her sister from bullies and other neighbourhood children. One of these children was a close friend, thirteen-year-old Michael Higgins, whom Myra later claimed she felt “very protective of”. But tragedy struck on one hot summer’s day in 1957 when Michael asked her if she wanted to go swimming in a local reservoir with him. She had already made plans with friends that day and turned him down. Later that evening, she found out that he had drowned after an accident in the reservoir.
Hindley never forgave herself for Michael’s death – she was too distraught even to attend his wake. She turned to Catholicism as a coping mechanism, and her first communion took place in November of 1958 – just over a year after she had left secondary school.
Like Brady, she had worked a few different jobs before ending up at Millwards. Memories of her were not always fond, though. At one job, she was accused of conning her colleagues out of her wages after she claimed to have lost her pay packet, and her colleagues chipped in for her. The first time this happened, they believed it was genuine, but it occurred suspiciously quickly the second time.
Away from work, Myra often went out dancing, playing bingo or going to the cinema like other teenagers her age. She also took judo lessons and was remembered to be notoriously slow to release her grip. Around this time, she bleached her hair for the first time, and it seemed to have an immediate and positive effect on her self-confidence. She started receiving a lot of attention from local lads – one of these new admirers was a boy (and former childhood boyfriend) named Ronnie Sinclair.
In late 1958, she started going out with 16-year-old Ronnie. Ronnie proposed to her on her seventeenth birthday, and she said yes. However, she seemed dissatisfied with how things would go from that point onwards and felt that Ronnie was too immature for her. The engagement was broken off after a few months.
Meeting Ian Brady
In December 1960, Hindley was offered a job as a typist at Millwards Merchandise, a small chemical distribution firm in her hometown of Gorton, to begin in January. On the day of her interview, she met Ian Brady and described it as an immediate “fatal attraction”.
At this time, Brady – who turned twenty-three at the start of the new year – had been working for nearly two years as a stock clerk at the firm. Though Hindley claimed that she instantly fixated on Brady upon meeting him, Brady did not show any interest whatsoever in Hindley for the first eleven months.
This all changed in December 1961, when Brady noticed her reading a book of poetry by William Wordsworth during their lunch break. Impressed by his interest, Hindley repeated this a few days later with a poetry anthology by William Blake, finding out that Brady was a keen admirer of his work. They danced together at the office Christmas party a few days later, and struck up a relationship soon after – although this was a more casual relationship for the first few months with Hindley explaining that she was Brady’s “Saturday-night stand.”
Brady and Hindley grew close over a love of literature and classical music and considered themselves far more cultured than everybody else around them. According to Hindley:
“One thing which we both shared was a dissatisfaction with belonging to the working class and being trapped in it. We could have risen above that; at Millwards he had the prospects of promotion. I could have studied and gained the qualifications necessary for a career climb. But it wasn’t to be.”
Brady had a special affection for the writings of the French libertine and pornographer, the Marquis de Sade (after whom the word “sadism” is named), and had studied widely on nihilistic philosophers. Brady had sexually deviant and paedophilic fantasies, as well as a longing to commit crimes, and he related to Sade’s core tenet – that regardless of the repercussions, people should be allowed to act on their most basic impulses. This eventually crossed over into his and Hindley’s sex life, and they felt compelled by the idea of committing crimes.
Brady and Hindley initially discussed the idea of robberies, and Hindley even acquired several guns for the pair to practise with (though she was a hopeless shot). She also learned to drive on his insistence. However, they were soon put off by the idea and it became confined to their fantasies. If they were going to commit crimes together, they would leave no loose ends and it would be something a lot more sacred in nature. They convinced themselves that their depravity knew no bounds, and they proved themselves correct.
Read more about Brady’s and Hindley’s relationship here. You can also read my full account of Hindley’s early life – including citations for both of my articles around the topic – here.
