Liverpool Picturebook

Originally Posted by Bob Edwards

Billy Fury, (Ronald Wycherley) 1940–1983, singer and songwriter, was born on 17th April 1940 at the Smithdown Road Infirmary, (later Sefton General Hospital) Smithdown Road. He was the eldest son of Albert Edward Wycherley, a shoe repairer, and his wife, Sarah Jane (known as Jean), née Homer. He attended St Silas's infant school and then Wellington Road secondary modern school. He left school at the age of fifteen, worked as a rivet thrower in an engineering factory and as a deckhand on a tugboat in the Mersey estuary. As a child he suffered rheumatic fever which left his heart weak but that did not stop him from becoming a consummate performer.

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