Eleanor Rigby's Signature?

"Eleanor Rigby" is the most beautiful song on an album that many consider the best Beatles album of them all. Actually, many fans and critics consider Revolver to be the best album of all time. There's little disagreement that "Eleanor Rigby" is one of the best songs on Revolver.

Paul McCartney is usually credited as the primary writer of Eleanor Rigby (though John Lennon took exception that).

Paul has said many times that Eleanor Rigby was a fictional character. Yet Paul once owned a document signed by Eleanor Rigby. The 1911 document is a payroll sheet signed by an "E. Rigby" after collecting her pay at Liverpool City Hospital. The image mostly fits. She was working as a maid at the hospital, washing pots and pans. However, she was only 16 years old, hardly an age where she should have thought that her life was going to be forever lonely.

Why did Paul own the document? Why did he donate it to a music charity in 1990 when he knew what the perception would be?

Fame Bureau, the company auctioning the document, believes this Eleanor Rigby was the same Eleanor Rigby buried in 1939 in a Liverpool graveyard next to the church where Paul was introduced to John.

Pauls response, "If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove that a fictitious character exists, that's fine with me."

The document is expected to bring as much as $750,000.

Regardless of what Paul actually thought or thinks he thought while he was composing the song, the facts don't look like coincidence to me.

The document is historically significant.