Lilian Bailey (later Bader) was born in Liverpool, England, to a Barbadian-born Royal Navy veteran father and an Irish mother.
Lilian Bailey was born on 18 February 1918 in Liverpool, England, at a time when Britain's small but established Black population faced significant social and institutional prejudice. Her father had been born in Barbados and served in the Royal Navy, while her mother was of Irish descent, making Lilian part of a mixed-heritage family in a city with a long maritime and multicultural history.
Orphaned at a young age, Lilian and her siblings were raised for a period in a convent orphanage, an experience that shaped her early resilience and independence. Growing up as a mixed-race child in interwar Britain, she encountered the everyday racism and limited opportunities afforded to Black Britons of the era, circumstances that would later make her wartime achievements all the more remarkable.
Her early life set the stage for a career defined by persistence in the face of institutional barriers. Despite her father's honourable naval service, Lilian would later be excluded from war work specifically because of his Caribbean origins—an injustice she would overcome through determination to become one of the first Black women to serve in Britain's armed forces.