Margaret Fairchild

Margaret Mary Fairchild (4 January 1911 – 28 April 1989), also known as Mary Teresa Sheppard, Miss Shepherd and M T Sheppard, was a British homeless woman. Her life was depicted in the 2015 film The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett in which she was played by Dame Maggie Smith. Smith had previously played her in a 1999 play of the same name and a radio adaptation for BBC Radio 4 in 2009. She had also been a concert pianist and nun. Margaret Fairchild was born in 1911 in Hellingly in East Sussex, the daughter of Harriett ( Burgess; 1879–1963) and George Bryant Fairchild (1866–1944), a surveyor and sanitary inspector. Her brother was Leopold George Fairchild (1908–1994). A gifted pianist, according to her brother, around 1932 the middle-class and well-spoken Margaret Fairchild studied at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in Paris under the virtuoso Alfred Cortot, and it has been said that she later played in a promenade concert;"Maggie Smith on the real Lady in The Van: 'Nobody will ever understand why she ended up like that'", 'The Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2016. however, she does not appear in the BBC's online Proms performance archive. In 1936, as Mary Teresa, she became a novice in the Convent of the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls on Gloucester Avenue in Regent's Park (later the Japanese School in London and now the North Bridge House School), a short distance from Gloucester Crescent where she famously returned decades later. Later in 1936 she was at St Joseph's Priory on Harrow Road West in Dorking. In 1939, Fairchild was a Religious Sister and schoolteacher at St Gilda's Catholic School in Yeovil, Somerset. Her brother related that in the convent Fairchild was forced to abandon her love of music and playing in order to concentrate on her faith and she left the order following a breakdown. Her fellow nuns described her as "argumentative". During World War II, Fairchild was trained to drive ambulances by the ATS, which began her love for vehicles and driving.