She was born in
Maidstone,
Kent, where her father was a director of the Lead Wool Company, a tool company. Callaghan was educated at
Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, then studied cookery at
Battersea College of Domestic Science. She would chair the Maidstone
Labour Party and
Fabian Society. She joined the Labour Party while in her teens and met her future husband in the early 1930s at the
Baptist church
Sunday school where they both worked, then at the Labour Party, but they did not marry until 28 July 1938, her 23rd birthday. They honeymooned in
Paris and
Chamonix, and then returned to rent a house in
Norwood. She worked as a
dietician at an
antenatal clinic in
Greenwich during the
Second World War, a young mother herself. At the same time, she studied economics at a
University of London extension course in
Eltham, with future Labour Party leader
Hugh Gaitskell as tutor. She made a special study of
malnutrition in children and its remedies. ==Career==