Behind The Scenes

Researching the family of singer–songwriter Lulu

Singer–songwriter and actor Lulu returned to Scotland to learn about her roots. She was brought up in postwar Glasgow among the sectarian strife that plagued the city. She wanted to uncover more about the life of her mother, and why she had been fostered

Newspaper Articles

Lulu searched britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk to find out more about Helen Kennedy’s mother, Helen Orr. She learned that she was a leading light in the Orange Order, and the Belfast Weekly News reported that a minute’s silence was held at her lodge to mark the death of her daughter.

Scottish BMD Records

Scottish parish and civil records have all been placed centrally on one website, scotlandspeople.gov.uk. We were able to locate a record of the death of Lulu’s maternal grandmother, Helen Darling Cairns (née Kennedy), which showed that she died at the age of 31 from peritonitis when Lulu’s mother Elizabeth was only eight years old.

Passenger Lists

Lulu also researched her grandfather, Helen’s husband Hugh Cairns. She was Protestant and he was Catholic, as well as an unskilled labourer who was in and out of prison. One of these occasions was in 1928, around the time Elizabeth was given away. Lulu located passenger lists (see the Record Masterclass on page 56) showing Hugh leaving to find work in the USA in 1922, but returning soon after to his family in Scotland.