Audrey Callaghan, Baroness Callaghan of Cardiff

Audrey Elizabeth Callaghan, Baroness Callaghan of Cardiff (; 28 July 1915 – 15 March 2005) was the wife of British Labour prime minister James Callaghan. She served as a Labour councillor and later became a campaigner and fundraiser for children's health and welfare. Early life 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 Her husband James had been elected a Member of Parliament for Cardiff in 1945 and she was at his side throughout his career. She was somewhat derided, described as "the Yorkshire Pudding", ostensibly for her skill in cooking, but also as a reference to her perceived poor dress sense and mildly disorganised appearance; she was ridiculed for her hobby of keeping pigs. Audrey remained very private, and shunned the limelight. However, she was engaged with her husband's jobs and was said to be instrumental in dissuading him from resignation after the 1967 devaluation of the pound.