Morrissey is imagining a time he briefly shared a flat with Myra Hindley in Gorton in the early sixties. With 'Suffer the Children' already likely to upset people with the same dark subject matter, Moz here shrewdly veils the identity of the story's villainess. However, as with many other early Smiths lyrics, there are clues left out in the open to be discovered, much like a criminal who secretly wants to be caught so that he is i) finally stopped and ii) so people can see how clever he is. Why 'Jeane' rather than another name? According to the City Fun zine from May 1983, this was simply coz Moz needed a single syllable name to rhyme with 'clean', and that the original, reproduced lyric had been 'YOU will never be clean, Jean' [my italics]. Perhaps he had also seen his auntie that afternoon ;0). Coincidentally, a few years later Moz formed a fascination for Jean Ritchie, author of the Hindley biography 'Inside the Mind of a Murderess', with whom he corresponded through 1988.
Myra, or Jeane, is the psychopathic villain of the story, coaxing Moz into strangling a local ruffian who is then buried beneath the floorboards of the ground floor flat on Friendship Ave (her own later accounts reverses the roles). The episode sends Myra over the edge of sanity. Her buried traumatic memories surface via her obsessive cleaning but the incident is never repeated or referred to again until this song—and of course until Myra finds work the following year at Millwards Merchandising, where she meets her next partner in crime. The unlucky pair move out of the two-room flat after less than six months together.
So how can you call this a home
When you know it's a grave?
As you tidy the place
But it will never be clean, Jeane
But I think you know
I really think you know
I think you know the truth.
Their cohabitation was between May and September 1960, so in reality there was unlikely to have been ice in the sink. Rather, this line is a metaphorical reflection of her actions and of her true character, which cannot merely be washed away...
Morrissey is imagining a time he briefly shared a flat with Myra Hindley in Gorton in the early sixties. With 'Suffer the Children' already likely to upset people with the same dark subject matter, Moz here shrewdly veils the identity of the story's villainess. However, as with many other early Smiths lyrics, there are clues left out in the open to be discovered, much like a criminal who secretly wants to be caught so that he is i) finally stopped and ii) so people can see how clever he is. Why 'Jeane' rather than another name? According to the City Fun zine from May 1983, this was simply coz Moz needed a single syllable name to rhyme with 'clean', and that the original, reproduced lyric had been 'YOU will never be clean, Jean' [my italics]. Perhaps he had also seen his auntie that afternoon ;0). Coincidentally, a few years later Moz formed a fascination for Jean Ritchie, author of the Hindley biography 'Inside the Mind of a Murderess', with whom he corresponded through 1988.
Myra, or Jeane, is the psychopathic villain of the story, coaxing Moz into strangling a local ruffian who is then buried beneath the floorboards of the ground floor flat on Friendship Ave (her own later accounts reverses the roles). The episode sends Myra over the edge of sanity. Her buried traumatic memories surface via her obsessive cleaning but the incident is never repeated or referred to again until this song—and of course until Myra finds work the following year at Millwards Merchandising, where she meets her next partner in crime. The unlucky pair move out of the two-room flat after less than six months together.
So how can you call this a home When you know it's a grave?
As you tidy the place But it will never be clean, Jeane
But I think you know I really think you know I think you know the truth.
Their cohabitation was between May and September 1960, so in reality there was unlikely to have been ice in the sink. Rather, this line is a metaphorical reflection of her actions and of her true character, which cannot merely be washed away...