Stepney triplets were ray of hope to Blitz-battered Britain
...and a huge shock to tiny mum Amy, 39
IN SHATTERED post-war Britain, they were a symbol of hope for a brighter future. The Stepney triplets – Margaret, Barry and Stephen – were born into the impoverished East End in 1951 and became icons of the baby boom years. After six years of war, their births were celebrated by a nation desperate for good news.
George VI awarded their mother, Amy Oakes, a 39-year-old former railway worker from Stepney, the King’s Bounty – a cheque for three pounds, one for each child. Amy was pictured across every newspaper front page in Britain clutching an armful of babies. Carnation condensed milk, a household staple in the 1950s, sent her a year’s supply.
But now, nearly 70 years on from their birth, in a story worthy of a Call The Midwife plotline, the cockney triplets reveal the secret sadness that blighted their mother’s life.
With the yellowing newspaper cuttings dating back to the 1950s spread out before them, the trio share their fascinating slice of social history.
“Mum was a typical East End woman from Wapping,” says Margaret, who now lives in Gillingham, Kent. “At the age of 23, in 1935, she married her sweetheart John Slater and gave birth to a son called Brian.”
But four years later, war tore Amy’s young family apart. John joined the Queen’s Royal Regiment and toddler Brian was evacuated to the countryside.
Alone and working long hours on the railways, replacing men called up to fight, it must have been a bitter blow to Amy when she received the dreaded telegram informing her of John’s death in Belgium. She struggled on, a young widow and single mum in the heartland of Blitzed Britain, until 1943 when she met and fell in love with fellow railway worker Alfred Oakes.
“Alfred was a bachelor who had grown up in a large family in Hackney,” says Margaret. “He was a wonderfully warm soul and raised Brian as his own.”
Amy and Alfred married in 1946, when they were 35 and 41, respectively, without any expectation of adding to their family beyond hoping for one child of their own.
SO IT was a huge shock to discover in 1950 that Amy, then 39, was pregnant with not one child, but three. Visits came from a midwife weaving her way through bomb-shattered streets on a bicycle, as Amy and Alfred did their best to prepare for their little family of three becoming a family of six.
“Mum was only a little lady, just 5ft 2in,” recalls Margaret.
“So she had to wear a girdle to support her stomach and was in a wheelchair towards the due date.”
When the triplets were born at the East End Maternity Home, the NHS was in its infancy as well. Social changes designed to sweep away the squalor of the past were afoot, but these plans were a long way from being realised.
The East End of 1951 remained a place of poverty, thick smog, bombsites, rationing and disease.
Freezing winters, snowdrifts, floods, coal shortages and endless power cuts made life one long chilly slog for its beleaguered residents. For millions of new mums like Amy, finding enough food was actually tougher after the war as rationing tightened
‘Hours after giving birth to us triplets she was sitting up in bed, knitting us all baby clothes’
up. So Margaret, Barry and Stephen were born into a bleak, grey postwar world. Despite this, rarely were three children so loved. Mum was so proud,” recalls Stephen. “Hours after giving birth to us triplets she was sitting up in bed knitting us all baby clothes.
“She used to dress us all as smart as she could and push us out in a big coach pram, but no one was allowed to breathe on us.” The triplets’ birth stirred up huge interest across the nation.
With no IVF, multiple births were a rare occurrence, and triplets hardly ever seen. The sight of Amy pushing three tiny babies down the street had housewives running from their homes to take a look. Her daily life was one of bonenumbing hard work, however. With no fridges or freezers, women had to shop every day for fresh food.
And there was no washing machine to deal with the constant stream of dirty Terry towelling nappies. “Mum soaked all the nappies, before scrubbing them in a dolly tub, then put them through the mangle before pinning them out to dry in the yard,” says Margaret. “In the East End, Monday was wash day, but in our house it was every day!”
The backyard of their Cephas Street home was a flapping forest of linen and when Amy ran out of space, the neighbours hung up the overflow in their yards.
As the triplets grew, money was tight. Alfred was now working as a bus driver but his wages were under pressure. Somehow, Amy managed to hungry children full.
“Every morning we had porridge,” says Margaret. “Mum’s stews with a suet crust were amazing and she insisted on doing a roast every Sunday.
“Presents or treats were non-existent. Every Christmas we used to get second-hand clothes and hand-painted toys. It was a mark of pride to Mum that we were all well turned out.”
The Oakes triplets’ humble keep four beginnings chime with the fond other East Enders.
“It was a glorious childhood,” recalls Stephen. “We always had playmates out in the streets and would play on the bombsites, using our imagination in the absence of toys.
“Great crowds of us out there playing tin can copper, knock down ginger and hopscotch, until all the mums called you in for tea.
“Because we were parented by not one woman but the whole street, we always felt cared for, safe and loved.
“Discipline was strong back then too. Be saucy to a neighbour and you’d get a clip round the ear. There were always two turban-clad women in their aprons, fags glued to their bottom lips, out on the street, keeping a watchful eye on us!”
Tmemories of many
HE triplets lived just a few streets away from another well-known multiple-birth phenomenon, albeit one with more notoriety.
“The Kray twins [Ronnie and Reggie] lived not far from us in Vallance Road, and Dad knew their dad, Charlie,” says Stephen. “Everyone knew them, but no one dared to speak out against them.”
After school, the triplets got their first jobs, working in the markets of Brick Lane selling birdseed, before going their separate ways to carve out their own identities. Aged 15, Barry joined the Army. In 1974 he became