Happy 100th Birthday, Peggy Metaxas!

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Join me in sending birthday greetings to this proud centenarian today

Portrait by Sarah Ainslie

 

There is a quiet cul-de-sac to the east of Vallance Rd, positioned half way between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, where all the East End’s stray cats  – and sometimes stray humans – end up. But, fortunately for them, Peggy Metaxas, is waiting to offer a plate of food or a cup of tea before putting them on the right path again. Peggy has been presiding here as long as anyone can remember, so I went along recently to enjoy a cuppa and slice of Victoria sponge and learn the extraordinary story of how she arrived in this benign spot.

‘I was born here in the East End in 1925. My parents already had one girl, my sister Gwendoline, who was three when I was born. My father Edward John Axton worked in the docks, he was from a bright family – a teacher, a swimming instructor, a shopkeeper, a dragoon and a musician – but he was the one who held family together. Being the eldest, he worked to get them all into education.

In 1922, when my sister was born, things were pretty bad because of the Depression and so my dad followed in his father’s footsteps to get a job in the docks. He was only twenty. Things got so bad financially he used to go round the streets to find wood and make dolls’ furniture, little prams and cots and blackboards. I remember him saying to me, ‘I learnt how to put the blacking on the board so it never came off when the children cleaned the board.’ He would go down Brick Lane and sell them. I was very proud of my dad.

He married my mum, Maud Agnes Elizabeth Hendall, in 1921. She was a very good cook and a very careful, correct person. I think she was born too late, she should have lived in the Victorian times because she did not fit in. The people in that area of Bow where we lived were working class but not low working class. Next door to us in Belhaven St was a man who was a sailor and, when he came home on leave, I went next door and sat on his knee while he told me stories of where he had been. It was the first time in my life I had seen tattoos and that fascinated me.

My father did not earn much money but they had enough for the rent – six shillings and eight pence a week – and the insurance – two shillings a month – which was so important, and coal money, you had to have that. A little pile of coins would go up on the mantelpiece and that you never touched. They insured us children, that was what people did, they insured their babies. I remember standing at the door when the insurance man came for his money and my mum gave him half a crown. And he put it between his teeth and bit it and broke it and said ‘I’m sorry ma’am.’ I have since thought that he did a switch and my mum knew. I remember it so well because to me it was a tragedy. It was a couple of weeks savings from my dad’s pay and without it we would be out on the street. My mother was crying, she went to see the neighbour who said, ‘Don’t worry Maud, it will sort itself out.’

My father did not have much overtime but, when he did, he put money by and once a year we went to Southend or Margate. This was before he became a ‘ganger’ which gave him regular employment. He had to go to the docks at five in the morning and wait to be called. He walked or jumped on a tram.

It was an enjoyable few years, which is amazing to me that I can recall because I was only two or three. We left when I was five because the owners of the houses where we were living wanted to sell them. It was only a small terraced house with two bedrooms for three of us and my mum and dad, so my parents jumped at the offer of a council house in Dagenham. It was still only two bedrooms but it was new and we had a bathroom.

I grew up there until 1939 when I was evacuated because Dagenham was one of the first places to be bombed. They were getting all the kids together to send them west of London and I went with my brother, who was three years younger than me, to Cirencester in Gloucestershire. There was no war yet but the the government was thinking to get the children out. Me and my brother were separated and placed with different families. I was about fourteen. It was not ideal, so my father came one day just before Christmas with a green leather overcoat and he said, ‘That’s for you.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s get your brother, we’re going home.’ My sister who was three years older than me was working by then, she had a job in a photographer’s studio in Fenchurch St.

At Dagenham, I sat for the scholarship exam and I won a scholarship to Brentwood. I stayed at home and my mum had another child. When the bombing started my father prepared, as most men did, by building an air shelter in the garden. He brought home some car seats from Brick Lane and made it really nice. He also joined the Home Guard, putting out incendiary bombs, and he got quite ill because he was working in the day and doing this at night. It was a really busy time.

One day when the bombings were really heavy, I was in the shelter with my dad. He said ‘This is ours’ and it was indeed. The bomb dropped in the garden next to ours, everything blew with the force and the windows were blown out. We had two chickens, Mary and Phoebe, they were blown sky high.

My dad said, ‘This is no good. Leave it to me.’ He did not now London at all, he only knew the East End. He got a train to Baker St and another to Uxbridge. He got off at Eastcote, he had no idea where he was. He turned left and he saw all these new house being built there. He saw a watchman sitting at a brazier and asked him, ‘Is there any chance…?’ ‘They are going to rent them out’ said the watchman. So my dad gave him ten bob and got a key. ‘I’m don’t know if I’m allowed to do this,’ said the watchman and probably he was not. My father went back and said to my mum, ‘We’re moving.’ He got a lorry for our things – the piano had to go – and my mum and I went in the lorry and my sister and my brother sat in the front with my dad. That’s how we moved to Middlesex and I left the East End, until I came back in the nineteen-nineties.

In 1957, I got married and emigrated to Canada. My sister and my brother had already gone to Toronto. They encouraged me and my husband George who was in the diplomatic service at the Greek embassy. We met when we worked in the same office at the embassy, I was a receptionist and dogsbody. George was at university in Athens, then he had to do his military service but his aunt who knew the naval attache arranged for him to come to London instead, decoding for the Admiralty. He learnt English and typed in English and Greek and he was a dear. We got to know the diplomats and the ship owners, and they got us a passage to Canada. We stayed thirty years and had a family there.

I do not know why I came back really. It was a long way from England and a long way from Greece. In Canada we moved so many times because George could not get a job. He did not have a profession because he had only worked in shipping for the Admiralty. Eventually he got several good jobs, working for Olivetti and Air Canada. He was a good man and he tried hard but I always wanted to settle down and have a dog. It took us ten years, until 1967, to get a house of our own and by then our kids were teenagers. We had three mortgages and we did not spend a penny, not even a newspaper, until we paid off all the mortgages. We made it. Then one day George said, ‘Let’s go back to England, where we are near Canada and Greece.’ He wanted to come back more than me. I was not unhappy but I wanted more. Yet my mother had died and my father remarried, so there was no house or mum and dad, it was starting all over again.

I stayed with my aunt in Bethnal Green, and put my name down for a council house and came and went to Toronto and Greece. In 1999, George died in Canada and then I came back for good because by that time I had been offered a council flat. It took me time but I love it here. I have family friends from years ago and here I am now. I feel attached to the East End, it is like family. I like it here. I think I will stay here now.

I have learnt during all these years that have got to love people. There is always another side to everything even when people say something bad, which they do, because that person is not like them. I am grown up now and I have learnt you cannot judge people. I found someone sleeping next to my bin, I did not call the police, I gave her a chair and a cup of tea. This poor old woman, she was somebody. I have thought of her since, ‘What happened to her?’ You can only do what you can do. I do not smoke but I used to keep a packet of cigarettes because passersby used to see me brushing the path and ask me for one. I would say, ‘Would you like to sit down for a cup of tea and I will find you one?’ I would never say, ‘No.’ The road ends here and sometimes people wander down this street and do not know where to go.’

Belhaven St, Bow, where Peggy was born (photograph by Tony Bock)

Peggy in 1925

Peggy as bridesmaid at her aunt’s wedding, 1928

Peggy with Aunt Beatrice, 1929

Peggy on the ferry, 1930

Peggy (centre) with her family at the seaside, 1939

Peggy, 1944

Peggy & George at the beach, 1948

Peggy & George’s wedding, 1949

Peggy with her children Peter & Kate, 1956

Peggy & George, 1996

Peggy and her daughter Kate, 2025

New portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie