SAVE THE CHILDREN
Born Margaret Gibbons in Liverpool, she was always known as Peggie. Her father, John, was a brewery bookkeeper and her mother, Anne O’Sullivan, was a homemaker. Peggy was the third of seven children.
As a child, Peggie lived on Fontenoy Street, Liverpool, which was always in chaos as the Birkenhead Tunnel was being built very close by.
Peggie was present when King George V and Queen Mary officially opened the tunnel in 1934.
Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Mill Road, Everton.
Peggie was educated at a nearby convent school. She was a perfect pupil and got good qualifications (all merits and distinctions). She was desperate to become a teacher but by now her father was seriously ill with a chronic bronchial disease, and, as the oldest daughter, she was expected to look after him.
She kept the family’s meagre income going with a succession of jobs such as working for an agricultural food supplier and then for City Catering which supplied all of the canteens along the Liverpool docks.
Her father, John, died in 1940.
During the Blitz, Mill Road Maternity Hospital was severely damaged by bombs. Peggie remembered with horror seeing women fleeing from the burning building, clutching their new-born babies.
She got a job making radios and other electrical equipment for the Automatic Telephone and Electric Company.
Peggie met a docker, Michael Lynch, at a dance and they were married in 1947.
They had four children very quickly, so were given a council house in West Derby. Two more children were born there.
In 1960, Michael was crushed to death by the crane he was operating in a railway goods yard. Peggie was just 36 years old and had six children, aged between one and ten (Peter, Ann, Kate, Mike, Joanna and Tim).
It was suggested she put her children into care, but she refused. She carried on – supported by the rest of her family.
When the children were all of school age, Peggie went back to work, getting a job at Littlewoods, distributing mail order catalogues.
Peggie made the decision to become a foster parent. She started when she was in her early 40s.
Initially, the children were often tiny babies whose mothers were unmarried Catholic girls.
Over the years, Peggie fostered dozens of children. When fostering finally became too much for her, she became a receptionist at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, greeting and meeting patients. She did this job until she retired.
Peggie finally stopped work in 1983. She then devoted her life to her garden (“the best front garden in the street”), to crosswords and to supporting her beloved Everton football club. She was a regular at her local Tesco’s, where all the staff knew her – and she always sported her ‘lucky’ black hat.
Peggie was very hands on and resourceful, managing on her own to repair anything that broke in the home. The fan belt on her spin drier broke so she replaced it with elastic from a no-longer used chair.
She lived independently until she was 94 and spent a happy last 3 years in a nursing home.
Many of the children that Peggie had fostered attended her funeral.
RIP – Really Impressive Parenting
