Editing Hattie Jacques (section)

===Early life: 1922–1944===
{{multiple image | align = right| direction = vertical | header_align = center | footer_align = left | footer_background = | image1 = Hattie Jacques Sandgate blue plaque.jpg| width1 = 200 | caption1 = [[Blue plaque]] at the house where Jacques was born: 125 High Street, [[Sandgate, Kent]]|alt1=blue plaque commemorating Hattie Jacques | image2 = 125 High Street, Sandgate (2).JPG |width2 = 200 |caption2 =125 High Street, Sandgate}}

Jacques was born Josephine Edwina Jaques on 7 February 1922 at 125 Sandgate High Street, [[Sandgate, Kent]].{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=1}} She was the youngest child of Robin Rochester Jaques, an officer in the [[British Army]] and later a [[flying officer]] in the [[Royal Air Force]], and Mary Jaques ({{nee}} Thorn), a nurse who served in the [[Voluntary Aid Detachment]] (VAD).{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=2}}{{efn|Robin was born into relative affluence in [[Newcastle upon Tyne]]. His father Joseph Rochester Jaques was a billiard room manager from [[Northumberland]] who married Florence King, the daughter of a Devon-born bookseller.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=2}} Hattie's maternal grandfather Joseph Thorn (1875–?){{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=8}} was a jeweller who lived at 65 Brompton Road in London. The address is notable today for being the current business premises of the upmarket jewellers [[Mappin & Webb]].{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=8}}}}

The Jaques family were predominantly non-theatrical, with the exception of Mary who appeared in the small role of Harry Hathaway in the Christmas [[pantomime]] ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' at the Palace Theatre, [[Cologne]], in 1920.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|pp=2–3}} Mary enjoyed the theatre, and took Jacques to live performances from an early age. The result had a "profound effect" on the young girl, particularly a love of dance.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=12}} Robin Rochester Jaques, who attained the rank of [[flight lieutenant]] with the RAF, was a keen sportsman and became a semi-professional footballer. He signed to [[Clapton Orient]] and [[Fulham F.C.]], but his career was cut short when he died in a flying accident on 8 August 1923.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|pp=4–5}}{{sfn|Joyce|2004|p=137}} Upon his death, Mary, Jacques and her elder brother [[Robin Jacques|Robin]] moved from [[Newton, Lincolnshire|Newton]] in [[Lincolnshire]] to London,{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=6}} where Jacques was sent to the Lady Margaret primary school in Chelsea. In July 1930 Jacques started her secondary schooling at the [[Godolphin and Latymer School]] in [[Hammersmith]],<ref name="D Tel: Lewis" />{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=13}} and also attended a local dance school, the Dean Sisters Academy, where she was a principal dancer in the academy's shows.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=13}} She left Godolphin and Latymer in the summer of 1939 with unremarkable grades.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=17}} She continued intermittently with amateur theatricals, and in May 1939 appeared with the Curtain Club in Barnes in productions of ''[[Fumed Oak]]'' and ''Borgia''.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=16}}

At the outbreak of the [[Second World War]] Jacques became a nurse in the [[Voluntary Aid Detachment]] (VAD); she served in a mobile unit in London, attending bombed sites during [[the Blitz]].{{sfn|Merriman|2007|pp=17–18}} After a reorganisation in the VAD,{{efn|The VAD mobile units, based in communal air raid shelters and [[London Underground]] stations, were discontinued in June 1942.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=19}}}} Jacques sought new work and, in the summer of 1943, she became a [[welder]] in a factory in north London,{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=22}} a job that lasted until the end of the year.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=23}} Around this time she became romantically involved with an American soldier, Major Charles Kearney. Jacques later claimed that the pair had been engaged and that Kearney had been killed in action,{{sfn|Merriman|2007|p=35}} although her biographer, Andy Merriman, discovered that Kearney had a wife and children in the United States when he had proposed to Jacques, and had returned to them after the war.<ref name="D Tel: Lewis" />{{efn|The couple last saw each other in March 1945, and last corresponded with each other in May of the same year.{{sfn|Merriman|2007|pp=33–34}}}}