Maggie Mennie (right) with brothers Joe and Fred, 1920s (c) Alison Murray.
Alison Murray shares the story of her charismatic and resilient grandmother from Poplar, who lived a particularly vivid life.
My grandmother, Maggie Mennie, was born when the new decade was just over a month old. The image of the ‘Roaring 20s’ conjures up one of flapper girls, sleek cars and the smooth sound of jazz but these would not have been that familiar in the East End of London. The social and cultural changes that took place after the First World War promised much but before the decade was out, the General Strike of 1926 showed that discontent and inequality were rife and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 crushed many dreams of a more prosperous life.
The winter of 1919/1920 was unusually mild in London. But as February approached, a cold front moved in and by the time my nan arrived on Friday 6th February, born in their tiny cramped and draughty house in Sophia Street, Poplar, the temperature had dropped to -2 degrees. The usual, gleeful details shared when a new baby arrives like hair colour and weight, are lost in time. Perhaps these were not so important as the relief of a safe delivery and a healthy baby.
My nan was born into a close and loving family. My great-grandmother, Margaret Jackson (born Hegarty) was an Irish Catholic immigrant from Cork. Sophia Street and the neighbouring Rook Street were Irish Catholic strongholds, described in a police notebook in 1897 as:
‘A regular Irish den…all the vices of the Irish, rampant, murder, rows of fat, brawling women shouting at one another, with many hatless, toothless, dirty children’
My great-grandmother would have been horrified at this description. The photo of my nan aged 7, with her brothers, Joe and Fred, does indeed show them ‘hat less’, but I was always struck by the lace curtains at the window and apparently, the step was kept scrupulously clean. My nan’s dress does look a little raggedy, but I wonder how easy was it to keep my tom-boy of a nan looking tidy? I love the look of defiance on her face; my great-grandmother used to say woefully, ‘they broke the mold when they made Maggie’ and this was not meant so much as a compliment but as an expression of exasperation at her willful and determined daughter.
My nan would see the number of her siblings rise and fall in a way that would be unimaginable today. My great-grandmother would eventually give birth to 13 children, with six of them reaching adulthood. My great-grandfather, always known as ‘Pop’, was a kind and gentle ex-Navy man who loved his wife and family, and that counted for a lot in a time where money meant for food would often end up being spent in the pub.
Childhood was brutally short and by the time my nan was 13, her mother had found a job for her in a local factory. My nan understood the need for money but regretted this for the rest of her life. Always a voracious reader, she loved learning and history in particular. I wonder what she could have achieved if she had been born in a time when a working-class girl could not only stay at school, but go on to university?
Maggie met my grandad, Alec, when they were teenagers. With her long black hair and luminous green eyes and his golden blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, they must have made a striking couple. Their idea of a ‘hot date’ was to join in with the protests at the Battle of Cable Street on 4th October 1936. They were both from poor immigrant families and knew how it felt to be ‘outsiders’. My nan could never say the names ‘Mosley’ or ‘Mitford’ without making it sound like an insult. Their fight with fascists was about to get much darker than a couple of teenagers hurling insults in a crowd.
Sometime in the late 1980s, my nan was asked to record some war memories for her great-nephew’s school project. My mum kept them and I was lucky to find them tucked away in her handbag, complete with her membership to various bingo halls and her bingo markers. For me, these are an absolute treasure. While I knew some of the stories, I was not familiar with all of them, and the fact that they are in Maggie’s handwriting gives them a new resonance. I can hear her voice when I read them. We talked about the war many times and I told her that I thought I wouldn’t be very brave. She would look at me darkly and say ‘You just had to get on with it’ I have thought about her words many times as we face these scary and uncertain times with the current Covid-19 crisis. I’m getting on with it nan!
Her notes begin with Mr Chamberlain declaring war in September of 1939. No sooner had this been announced, than the air raid sirens sounded. She described how her and her dad filled the bath with cold water and dipped blankets in the water fearing a gas attack. How scary this must have been for him. He had suffered lung damage in a mustard gas attack in the First World War. This turned out to be a false alarm and they headed off to the pub. She told me this was the first time she had smoked a cigarette and drank alcohol. I can’t say I blame her.
Her notes go on to describe how the rest of the family are in Kent, hop picking, or ‘down hopping’ as it was always to referred to. All the buses and trams had stopped running, so my grandad and my nan’s sister’s husband cycled down to them with shopping and supplies. They all return and then begins what was known as the ‘Phony War’. This was an eight-month period with only one limited land operation but this ended with the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10th May 1940.
My grandad was enlisted and was sent to France to join in the evacuations at Dunkirk in June 1940. Thankfully, he returned and my grandparents married on the 6th July in St Mary’s & St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Poplar. Their wedding cake was bread pudding, made with donations from neighbours and as her younger sisters had been evacuated, new bridesmaids had to be found. Sadly, no wedding photos survived, all lost when their home was damaged in V2 attacks.
The women all went ‘down hopping’ in the late summer of 1940 and her notes record them watching the dogfights as the Battle of Britain raged above their heads. A German plane was shot down and she tells of the women, with ‘children in tow’, rushing to get him. She describes him standing, with pistol in hand and unafraid of the gaggle of women and children surrounding him. The police led him away and the women and children cheered. She records that he only looked about eighteen and was ‘some mother’s son, just doing what he was ordered’.
My nan was four months pregnant with my mum when my grandad left to go to the Middle East with the Royal Engineers. He would not return for some time. My nan was sent to Tyringham House in Newport Pagnell to have my mum. By this time my grandad was listed as ‘missing’ and my nan would give birth to her first baby, alone, far from home and not knowing if her husband was dead or alive. She told me that the saddest thing was not being able to proudly show off her beautiful 10lb baby. I can only begin to imagine how hard this was for her. Another testament to her courage and pragmatism.
Back in London my nan made the decision not to have my mum evacuated. She figured that as my grandad was missing, it was just the two of them and they were staying together. Each week she would have to go to the War Office in Whitehall and check the list of missing and dead. If he was listed as ‘missing’ she still received her money, if not, the money stopped. In her notes she recalls:
‘off we go to look down the list of the dead. Not there. Look down the missing list, there he is. Pension saved. Big deal!’
Her notes also shed light on some of her more mundane concerns. She tells of cooking one Sunday lunch when my mum was just a baby. A rocket fell on North Street, two streets away and the ceiling fell in on her. ‘NO DINNER!’ she writes. She always did like her food.
Maggie began working as a post woman in the City of London. She enjoyed the work but was less than impressed with the men left behind working there who ensured the woman got all the top floor flats and the heaviest parcels. She knew every street and alley in London and carried on delivering mail even when the bombs were falling all around her. She writes of a time when an explosion sent her and all her post flying. A lady took her in and made her a cup of tea and once the all clear was sounded, helped her reclaim the post that was strewn everywhere. She then carried on with her rounds.
Not that there wasn’t fun to be had. She writes of delivering a Christmas turkey early on a dark Christmas Eve morning. She tapped on the door and called out ‘post!’ A man’s voice replied ‘shove it under the door’ she had to explain that a turkey was not going to fit under the door, when the door unexpectedly opened and a man stood there in ‘Just a little vest, showing EVERYTHING! I chucked the turkey up the passage and ran.’ This was not to be her only encounter with a naked man. Many years later, she was working as a lavatory attendant and one night was confronted with a man wearing a raincoat and nothing else. Completely unfazed she told him ‘put some clothes on you silly sod, you’ll get pneumonia’.
My grandad sent an air graph from Alexandria when my mum was two years old telling my nan that he was indeed still alive and wondering whether he had a son or a daughter. He told her that he had been suffering with a toothache when the baby was due and he wondered if this was when my mum was born. It turns out that it was.
The war ended and my grandad came back with health conditions that would plague him for the rest of his life. My aunt Valerie was born after the war and for a time they lived in a prefab. My nan was honoured to meet Nye Bevin when he visited in his role of Health and Housing Minister. She was always very politically aware.
I was born in 1965 and for a time, my parents, grandparents, brother and aunt all lived in a tiny house in Andrew Street, Poplar. The toilet was outside and the tin bath also housed eels my grandad caught on the Thames. Bath night meant finding somewhere to put the eels!
We all left the East End at the end of the 1960s as part of the slum clearance programme. We moved to Downham in Kent, or the ‘other side of the water’ as my nan called it. She would never live in the East End again but would be a frequent visitor. Her mother, brothers and a sister remained living there and she loved nothing more than mooching round Chrisp Street market and she loved pie and mash even more.
Reading back through her notes, I am reminded of her courage, resourcefulness and pragmatism. She was wise and the best keeper of secrets ever. A useful ally for a teenager! The events of her life and times shaped her beliefs. She had experienced poverty, war and discrimination not just as a Catholic but as a woman too. She was also the most fun with a razor-sharp wit, dark sense of humour and a rebellious streak that never left her. She would be thrilled at the thought of a museum telling the stories of East End Women. ‘About bloody time!’ I can hear her saying.
Sources
www.british-history.ac.uk - a digital library based at the Institute of Historical Research, free to individual users until 31st July 2020.
www.wunderground.com/history - historical weather data.
Author
Written by Alison Murray.