Miss Bluebell

Margaret Kelly was born on June 24, 1910 in Dublin's Rotunda Hospital. Her parents left her as a baby with Mary Murphy, a spinster nurse, saying that they would be back for her in three months. They never returned; and Mary Murphy, already caring for two sisters and a brother, moved with her to Liverpool when she was four years old. "A priest told the family that my parents were a young couple who were going abroad and couldn't take the baby with them for a while," Margaret Kelly recalled. "I wasn't left in the street, but I was certainly abandoned." She kept her parents' surname but made no attempt to locate them, believing it to be their responsibility to search for her. She did not consider her childhood to have been deprived. "I was always well-dressed," she said. "Mary Murphy saw to that, and I always had enough jam butties to eat." Nevertheless, young Margaret suffered from such poor health that it was decided to send for a doctor; and it was he who gave her the nickname "Miss Bluebell". Struck by her sharp blue eyes, the GP told her adoptive mother: "If I was her mother, I'd call her Bluebell". The doctor recommended ballet classes as a means of putting some strength into Margaret's spindly legs and, at six, she was sent to Madame Cummins's dance school for lessons, which were paid for out of her earnings from doing odd jobs. After displaying abundant talent, she joined "The Six Little Darlings" at the age of 12 for a production of Babes in the Wood at Newquay.