The surprising Maggie Tuttle

We were browsing through Maggie Tuttle’s ‘Children Screaming to be Heard’ blog the other day, and mulling over whether that is, in fact, the very worst possible name for a ‘charity’, let alone a blog, when our eyes lit upon a post headed ‘Prisoners have all human rights, children have none‘.

But that’s not the song Maggie was singing back in 1973. Back then, she seemed much more interested in, ahem, prisoners’ rights.

In fact, Maggie was famous, not for being one of Sabine and Belinda’s henchwomen, but for being at the heart of a news story that made it into papers worldwide.

According to The New Scientist (12 July, 1973),

One of the nastier pieces of news in recent weeks (and the near past has had its fair share of nasty news) is the information that the Home Office has seen fit to reject the request of the wife of a long-term prisoner that it should be made possible for her to have a child by her incarcerated mate by the technique of artificial insemination. No reasons were given for officialdom’s surly refusal to comply with this sober and sensible request.

The wife, whose name is Margaret Tuttle, is aged 30. She is a former beauty queen of Islington, and is therefore, presumably, a woman of some physical virtue, as well as being, quite clearly, a person possessing much more than the ordinary amount of courage and imagination. So it might be thought that she is exactly the kind of mother the authorities would be proud to support as a progenitor of a badly needed generation of Britons of a kind and caste able to ensure our national survival and prosperity in an increasingly tough and competitive world.

Her husband, James Tuttle, is serving an 18-year sentence for armed robbery. Mrs Tuttle has said (according to the Times of Wednesday last week), “I will be 40 and too old to start a family again when Jimmy comes out of prison.”

Margaret Tuttle already has one boy, but has said “I want a baby to safeguard against anything happening to my son. I am starting a campaign to see if I can make the Home Office allow prisoners’ wives to have babies by artificial insemination.” Thus she not only displays the kind of responsible attitude toward parenthood and family planning which we are supposed to foster and applaud—she obviously also cares about the desires and the disabilities of her fellow citizens.

She is plainly a jewel—a good woman—and good women make good mothers and rear good children.

(Note to Abe: the above is intended as satire. Just to be clear.)

If you’re so inclined, you can read the article in its entirety, here. We have to admit that we found it pretty entertaining.

Well! That set us back on our heels, we can tell you!

We’ve known Maggie as a bosom buddy and staunch defender of convicted paedophile Brian Pead, who attempted to offer a 14-year-old girl he’d met and befriended online £300 to have sex with him. The ‘girl’ turned out to be a policewoman—whoopsies!—and Pead was duly charged and convicted. But never mind: Maggie stuck by him, and has written countless diatribes explaining that Pead was framed, I tell you, framed!

Oh, and of course Maggie is also at the helm of the charity ‘Children Screaming to be Heard’ (see previous note re. appalling choice of names), one of the ‘affiliate organisations’ of Belinda’s faux-charity, the Knight Foundation. As far as we can tell, the point of the charity is to provide ‘safe houses’ for children who abscond (or are absconded) from foster care.

Funnily enough, Maggie’s charity seems to to have been allowed to go to seed just a little:

According to our in-house expert, ‘It is a criminal offence not to submit annual documents when required by the Commission. Charities who fail to file their documents for two or more years face a statutory inquiry by the Commission.’

Oddly, we note that Children Screaming etc. is now in the process of folding up its tent and leaving town:

…and yet, the ‘Donate’ button is still prominently displayed on the charity’s website:

Two possibilities seem likely: either Maggie started the charity and has been pocketing the money, but failing to file accounts, knowing that the overworked Charities Commission would be unlikely to bother her for a couple of years before she packed it in; or Maggie is simply unable to file the accounts, and is actually too incompetent to run a charity.

Hard to say which is more likely, really.

In any case, we’re astonished at the depth and breadth of this woman’s life to date: from campaigner for armed robbers’ rights to procreate, to BFF of convicted paedophiles, to director of a dodgy charity…let’s hear it for Maggie!

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