A DOCUMENT which may have provided the inspiration for the Beatles classic Eleanor Rigby has been sold at auction for £115,000.

The 1911 document, a monthly salary sheet of employees at the old Liverpool City Hospital Parkhill, Liverpool, lists the wage of E Rigby, scullery maid, and was duly signed by the lady in question.

It was sent by Paul McCartney in 1990 to music teacher Annie Mawson after she wrote him a long letter telling how much the Beatles music meant to the pupils with special needs whom she taught and asking for financial help with their tuition through her Sunbeams Music Trust n Penrith, Cumbria.

It arrived nine months after she had made the request, after the completion of his 1989 world tour.

Mystery has always surrounded the origin of why McCartney chose the name, although a grave bearing Eleanor’s name was discovered at St Peter’s Church, Woolton, in the 1980s.

Some Beatles experts believe this may have influenced McCartney who knew the churchyard and indeed first met with John Lennon there in 1957.