From left to right: Christopher, John V, Benjamin and Emmett Jaques.

Thomas Jaques was a farmer's son of French Huguenot descent. His forbears found refuge in England sometime after 1685. Thomas was born in 1765. He finished his schooling, left in a wagon for London to seek his fortune. He was an ambitious lad of fifteen. Thomas became an apprentice to a bone and ivory turner. His natural ability showed itself early as he exhibited talent for the traditional Huguenot craftsmanship. Thomas worked as an apprentice for 9 years until his employer died. Thomas, now thirty, was so well-versed in his craft that he could take on the business and established himself as "Thomas Jaques, Manufacturer of Ivory, Hardwood, Bone, and Tunbridge Ware. Thus, it is from this date, 1795, that John Jaques marks its official beginning.

His decorative card illustrates his bold ambitious nature as well as his meticulous attention to detail. Materials of his trade were not-endangered and Thomas worked in wood and bone as well as ivory, handcrafting carved snuff-boxes, brushes, paper knives, etc. and Tunbridge Ware. In 1795, a son John was born. He was the third of 7 children, neither the oldest or the youngest, yet he was the offspring who would carry on and expand the family business. At 15, John was apprenticed to his father and 5 years later partnered him in the firm, which became "T. and J. Jaques, Wholesale Ivory Turners". By this time they were using the unique wood Lignum Vitae. Their business card of 1816 shows an enterprising expanse of products and materials.

As the father and son partnership prospered, so the family grew. John married, and in time fathered a son, John Jaques II. He too, was apprenticed as a young man to the family firm, which by now expanded into additional premises in Hatton Garden. It is Hatton Garden in approximately 1838 that the Jaques began in earnest to teach the world to play.

In 1839 JJ One, schooled by his father Thomas in ivory and wood turning, recognised the need for what no other turner had achieved - a classic, simple design in chessmen. Until that time, there were two extremes, excessively elaborate and costly or rudely turned and daubed pieces in which rank was indicated by height alone. Nathaniel Cooke, proprietor of the Illustrated London News originated designs that he brought to John Jaques and together they chose a middle way in which the identity of each piece was made plain and could be reproduced with ease. The knight was the greatest and most significant improvement. Mr. Howard Staunton, one of the famous exponents of the English school of chess, was so struck by the clarification that he allowed his name and signature to authenticate every box of pieces produced by Jaques. Thus the name of the Staunton chess men.

John Jaques' son John Jaques II was the ingenious mind behind the origin of most of their indoor games; Happy Families, Tiddley-Winks,(note spelling on box) Ludo, Snakes and Ladders and developed a very large demand for dominoes, draughts and backgammon, all of which the company produced. While JJ One (as the family refer to him) will always be recognised for his major contribution to chess, the subject of a subsequent chapter, the son was undoubtedly his father's equal in imagination, craftsmanship and enterprise. John II's originality and business acument were rewarded with the Freedom of the City of London in 1869. This was richly deserved, for this same man who lightened long evenings with new and clever indoor pursuits also taught the world to play croquet!

John Jaques III entered the family firm in 1884. He was a very keen athlete. He grasped a new mood enthusiastically and began to shift the emphasis of John Jaques into entirely new arenas, production of sports equipment for cricket, tennis, football, hockey, badminton and archery. Stimulated by JJ III's forward-looking thrust, the company thrived. And in order to accommodate the necessary new machinery, he moved Jaques into larger premises to Kirby Street. He installed modern machinery for the rapid development and happy fulfilment of his great-grandfather's claim: Bowling Green Bowles Turn'd Correctly, as written on that 1st business card of 1795.

It is no surprise that the one indoor game which the athletic JJ III spearheaded was an active one: ping-pong, also known as Table Tennis. John Jaques had originally marketed this game as Gossima, presumably because of the featherlight ball. JJ III saw its vast and delightful possibilities. He rechristened it Ping-Pong. But JJ III's catchy onomatopoeic name eventually gave way to the more dignified Jaques Table Tennis. This more serious name linked it closer to lawn tennis. Jaques continues to lead the market, providing excellent equipment for what has become a standard activity in schools throughout the world.

Methods are always regarded as "modern" in one's own time. Only by later generations are they seen as traditional. As mass production came on stream it became more of a challenge to maintain the integrity of the more traditional aspects in terms of materials and methods. It is a credit to JJ III, to his son JJ IV, and to his sons John V and Christopher, that the increasing pressure is not to alter the innovation and craftsmanship of finest quality. John IV was a master turner. His talent was exceptional, best exemplified by his personal creation of a miniature Howard Staunton chess set, hand-carved out of ivory for Queen Mary's Doll's House at the Queen's request. Scaled precisely to 1/12 of the original.

John IV's energy was prodigious. Jaques has expanded the world of play for people of all ages, in all walks of life, and in practically every corner of the world. In 1965, John Jaques passed safely and successfully into the hands of his sons John V and Christopher. Today Christopher and John's sons and daughter are forging ahead, and they look with confidence to the future, knowing that as the oldest sports and games manufacturer in the world, they continue to be in a unique position to teach the world to play!

John Jaques owes its survival to the company's inventive and little-known role in the deadliest game of all.

The work was top secret, commissioned by the government during the second World War through MI 9, the clandestine Intelligence Department responsible for "Escape and Evasion". Its function was to help prisoners of war and downed aircrew escape from and evade the enemy.

Even a child knows that playing a game means abiding by certain rules. Without rules there can be no winner. To "throw away the rulebook" is to invite chaos.

And yet war, which is nothing if not chaos and destruction, oddly resembles a game with its own strict set of regulations. According to the Geneva Convention, signed in 1929, prisoners were to be treated humanely; they had the right to correspond with their families, and, of primary significance to this story, the maximum disciplinary penalty any prisoner could receive, even for escaping, was thirty days' solitary confinement.

So it was well within the rules of war that John Jaques worked with a Major Clayton Hutton and assisted MI 9 in helping prisoners escape. The strategy was literally a game-plan: Jaques' games and equipment were specially crafted to conceal key elements of vital escape kits. Major Clayton Hutton's schemes were ingenious, and "Clutty" visited John Jaques IV on several occasions to dicuss his "toys".... Neatly sandwiched between the cardboard of Jaques Ludo or Snakes and Ladders, invisible to the unsuspecting Germans, was a map. Tightly furled within the wooden handle of a cleverly split Jaques Lacing Awl, (awls were used to tighten laces on pre-war footballs), precious currency was secreted. Even the pegs of Jaques' game of Deck Quoits were hollowed out; into each one was inserted a tiny working compass.

Prior to the arrival of any of these innocent-looking gifts, the prisoner would have received a coded message in his correspondence alerting him to this hidden escape kit.

Thanks to such ruses, some 35,000 members of British, Commonwealth and American armed forces who had been taken prisoner, shot down or otherwise cut off in enemy-held territory managed to regain the Allied lines before the end of the war.

Had it not been for this essential war work, Jaques' whole business would have been considered non-essential, materials impossible to obtain. Games and sports were, after all, not a priority. But worse was to come. Christopher Jaques relates his father's shattering experience, shared by so many others: "It was an ordinary morning. My father had travelled to work by underground, in the usual way. He emerged from the tube, turned the customary corner into Kirby Street, and on looking up, saw nothing there! Jaques' entire facotry had been levelled by a series of bombs. This was the Blitz, 1941, and what had been our base for decades was totally demolished. Only the company safe survived - it had crashed through from the top to the bottom floor, and within this burning metal cell lay a charred barely preserved treasure: John Jaques' original Pattern Book, the design source of everything we had created from 1795 to 1870."

John IV took the fragile pages to a restorer who, by a complicated wax process, saved all but 3 of its valuable, sixty-five pages of original drawings.

The very next day John IV assembled the staff who, with great enterprise, set about looking for new premises. Thanks to their energy and with the help of the government, whom Jaques in turn continued to help throughout the war, the company was able to relocate and resume operations a mere month later in Thornton Heath, Surrey.

To avert suspicion, Jaques was encouraged to continue making its regular lines of games and sports equipment. Oddly enough, the Germans never queried why a company manufacturing non-essential products was still operating. Perhaps they chalked it up to the renowned eccentricity of the British to who games and sports have always meant serious business!

One such "war game" remains in the family's possession - it was, as Lewis Carroll's Alice might say, a "curious" cribbage board indeed, opening to reveal a long slim panel, carved out, awaiting a vital piece of the MI 9 escape kit: the potentially lifesaving hacksaw blade. Christopher describes his awe and surprise as a young boy when shown the secret of this cribbage board, one which his father must have brought home sometime after the war's end. The Jaques family has kept it as a souvenir of those difficult days when so many lives were forfeited, so many old established businesses destroyed.