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Edward Arnold "Eddie" Chapman (16 November 1914 – 11 December 1997) was an English criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers codenamed him Zigzag in acknowledgement of his rather erratic personal history. He had a number of criminal aliases known by the British police, amongst them Edward Edwards, Arnold Thompson and Edward Simpson. His German codename was Fritz or, later, after endearing himself to his German contacts, its diminutive form of Fritzchen. ==Background== Chapman was born on 16 November 1914 in Burnopfield, County Durham, England. His father was a former marine engineer who ended up as a 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 skipped school to go to the cinema and hang around the beach.〔 Aged 17 Chapman joined the Second Battalion of the Coldstream Guards where his duties included guarding the Tower of London.〔〔 Chapman enjoyed the perks of the uniform, but soon became bored with his duties. After nine months in the army, when he was granted six days of leave, he absconded with a girl whom he met in Soho. After two months the army caught up with him, and he was arrested and sentenced to 84 days in a military prison (The Glasshouse) at Aldershot. On release, Chapman received a dishonourable discharge from the army.〔 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 petty crime, fraud and petty theft and, after several run-ins with the law, finally received his first civilian prison sentence, two months in Wormwood Scrubs for forging a cheque.〔 He became a safecracker with 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 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 Lukes Mews where it had its door removed using gelignite. He had affairs with a number of women on the fringes of London high society and then allegedly blackmailed them with photographs taken by an accomplice. Well along into his criminal career he 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 attempted unsuccessfully to continue his crooked ways. 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 undercover 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). It was later that same night, unbelievably, that he committed the slapdash burglary for which he had to immediately begin serving two years in a Jersey prison. This proved to be an ironic twist of fate which ultimately spared him at least 14 more years' imprisonment in a mainland prison afterwards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eddie Chapman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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