Like most children, Sylvia Jeffery loves cuddly toys. Every morning, she climbs out of bed and fetches Angus McCuddles, her favourite, bespectacled teddy bear, who she keeps close to her at all times (unless she thinks it’s too cold for him to go outside).
“I call my flat the teddy hotel,” Sylvia says. “I tell people that if they ever forget my door number, just look through my window, see the teddies, and then you’ll know you’re in the right place.”
Yet Sylvia, a life-long Islington resident, has not been a child since 1952. Now aged 80, she has been collecting cuddly toys for the past four decades. In total, nearly 200 of them fill her one-bedroom apartment in St. George’s, carefully arranged on top of each seat, table and windowsill.
And she’s certainly got a lot of teddies.
And we mean a LOT of teddies.
Literally, there’s so many.
Loneliness, particularly in winter, has become a serious issue for Islington’s elderly population. Some 86 per cent of the borough’s over-65s, according to the council, live alone without any support from local social services. Across London, around 250,000 elderly people do not see a friend, neighbour or family member at least once a week. A recent psychological study of 2,000 middle-aged men and women also found that loneliness, by increasing blood pressure heavily, is twice as likely to kill as obesity.
But Sylvia, largely due to Angus McCuddles, who she perches on top of her grey shopping trolley whenever she leaves Cutbush House, swears that she rarely feels lonely. People approach her in the street wanting to talk about Angus McCuddles, who even has his own pocket money, as most people do today for any friendly-looking dog. “If I don’t take him out, I get people asking, ‘Where’s Angus?’” Sylvia says. “One morning, I was in the Post Office and a little boy was just screaming, ‘Mum, I want to get out of my pram! Mum, I want to get out!’ And then, after seeing Angus, he suddenly went all quiet and reached out for him, so I let the boy have a cuddle.”
Angus McCuddles, the bespectacled Scottish bear is her favourite.
He’s even got a passport
Just in case he needs to rush out of the country on a business trip.
The teddies wear hats…
Glasses…
Even jewellery. They’re pretty well-dressed.
Pat Sparks, Cutbush House’s manager, has known Sylvia for the past 15 years. Over that period, she has seen Sylvia’s teddy collection steadily grow, as well as the other residents’ affection for it. “The residents know how much Sylvia loves her teddies,” she says. “One of them even took Angus to stay with her when she was in hospital last year. The teddies are company for Sylvia. They give her a meaning in life.”
Some of the glasses on show are actually pretty trendy.
She has plenty of friends, as the 50 Christmas cards—addressed to both Sylvia and Angus—around her flat attest. Yet she has no children. She has never had a boyfriend. In fact, Sylvia says she has never even been in love.
“It’s not that I didn’t ever want to have any children,” Sylvia says, sat beside several smiling pictures of her friends’ grandchildren. “You’ve got to love with someone first properly before you can have one yourself, and I didn’t believe in having a baby for the sake of it.” As she speaks, her eyes flick around the toy-filled living room. The cream settee is covered with toy dogs, owls, cats, giraffes and one enormous brown-and-white bear named after Bruce Forsyth, the toy that started Sylvia’s immense collection of cuddly toys. “Anyway, the teddies are my kids,” she says, gesturing around the living room. “They don’t need to go to the toilet. You don’t have to worry about their diets. They don’t ever cry, either. ”
This one isn’t even a bear, but it still takes pride of place in the collection.
For Sylvia, then, her toys help to protect her from the life-threatening loneliness from which thousands of the UK’s elderly population suffer each day. Equally, they are a constant reminder of the children, the family, the lifestyle that she’ll never have. As long as she has Angus, though, Sylvia still seems happy in her own teddy hotel.
Before you go, here’s a picture of that amazing collection in full.
I can understand all this …
I often see Angus McCuddles out and about with Sylvia. He’s a loveable little chap. Amazing he has his own passport.
It’s fascinating to read all about her other bears and toys. Excellent colour photos.