Posted - June 07, 2010
Everyone who knew Maggie, who died in January aged 87, remembers her with a smile. Born in St Ebbes, she served during wartime in the Wrens at HMS Raleigh, and for the rest of her life she would still regularly wear her tiny Wren’s hat (which was placed on her coffin). She then worked at Lucy’s factory where she became a shop steward. Maggie lived with her brother Reg at 71 Cardigan Street and when, in the late 1960s, the house was demolished to make way for the school field, they moved down to number 61.
After retiring from Lucy’s, Maggie kept busy doing housekeeping work and became a firm favourite in many families whose children regularly visited her. Her birthday was 12 August, the start of the grouse shooting season which, she said, explained her formidable capacity for Famous Grouse whisky, whose bottles lined her living room. She was a familiar figure in the Baker’s Arms and later The Globe where she was a key member of the darts team. A firm royalist, Maggie acted as Jericho’s ‘queen’ during the 2002 Golden Jubilee party (pictured above). She also loved a bet, always backing the Queen’s horses, and had been part owner of a greyhound. She was also a huge fan of Arsenal, and of John Wayne whose movies she played frequently.
Famously hospitable, Maggie would welcome the neighbours every Sunday morning for drinks party and lunch, and her birthday parties went on for several days. Although she was confined in later years by a fall, nothing much would get her down. When she refused a sip of whisky during her final illness her friends knew they were saying goodbye.
