Editing Eddie Chapman (section)

==Background==
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Chapman was born on 16 November 1914 in [[Burnopfield]], [[County Durham]], England. His father was a former marine engineer who ended up as a [[Public house|publican]] in [[Roker]]. The family (Chapman was the eldest of three children) had a reputation for disobedience, and Chapman received little in the way of parental guidance. Despite being bright, he regularly played truant from school to go to the cinema and hang around the beach.<ref name=Macintyre5/>

Aged 17, Chapman joined the Second Battalion of the [[Coldstream Guards]], where his duties included guarding the [[Tower of London]].<ref name=Macintyre5/><ref name=Tallandier23/> Chapman enjoyed the perks of the uniform, but soon became bored with his duties. After nine months in the army, having been granted six days of leave, he ran away with a girl he met in [[Soho, London|Soho]]. After two months the army caught up with him, and he was arrested and sentenced to 84 days in [[Aldershot military prison]]. On release, Chapman received a [[dishonourable discharge]] from the army.<ref name=Macintyre6/>

Chapman returned to Soho and spent some time working casual jobs, from barman to film extra, but his lifestyle outstripped his earnings – gambling debts and a taste for fine alcohol soon left him broke. He slipped into fraud and petty theft and, after several run-ins with the law, finally received his first civilian prison sentence, two months in [[HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs|Wormwood Scrubs]] for forging a cheque.<ref name=Macintyre6/> He became a [[safecracker]] with London [[West End of London|West End]] gangs, spending several stretches in jail for these crimes. The gangs utilised [[gelignite]] to gain entry to safes, leading Chapman and his associates to be known as the "Jelly Gang". One of Chapman's "Jelly Gang" crimes was carried out with the help of James Wells Hunt, whom Chapman met during a stint in prison. The execution of the crime involved Chapman disguising himself as a member of the [[Metropolitan Water Board (London)|Metropolitan Water Board]] in order to gain access to a house in [[Edgware Road]], from which he made his way into the shop next door by smashing through the wall. He then extracted the safe, which was transported to Hunt's Garage at 39 St Luke's Mews, where it had its door removed using gelignite.

Chapman was arrested in [[Scotland]] and charged with blowing up the safe of the headquarters of the [[Edinburgh Co-operative Society]]. Let out on bail, he fled to [[Jersey]] in the [[Channel Islands]], where he unsuccessfully attempted to continue his criminal career. Chapman had been dining with his lover and future fiancée Betty Farmer at the Hotel de la Plage immediately before his arrest and, when he saw plain-clothes police coming to arrest him for crimes on the mainland, made a spectacular exit through the dining room window (which was shut at the time). Later that same night he committed a slapdash burglary for which he had to immediately begin serving two years in a Jersey prison, which, ironically, spared him at least 14 more years' imprisonment in a mainland prison afterwards.