Jackie Forster - Early History

Early History

Jackie's father was a colonel in the Army Medical Corps and she spent her early years in India. When she was six, she was sent to boarding school in Britain at Wycombe Abbey and then to St Leonards School in Fife. During the war, she played Lacrosse and Hockey for Scotland.

Jackie became an actress and joined the Wilson Barrett repertory company in Edinburgh before moving to London in 1950. She attended the London's Arts Theatre Club was in various West End productions and films before developing a successful career as a TV presenter and news reporter under the name of Jacqueline MacKenzie.

From 1957 she was on a lecture tour in North America for part of the year and was in Savannah, Georgia, when she had her first lesbian affair. Despite this she married the author Peter Forster in 1958, but the marriage was over within two years as she accepted her true sexual identity. They divorced in 1962 and she went to live in Canada.

Quoting Jackie on her early lesbian experiences, she said 'I didn't see myself as being a Lesbian, or her, because I didn't look as I imagined they did, and nor did she. We weren't short back and sides and natty gent's suiting. I got the image from The Well of Lonliness, like we all did. There were drug stores around the States, with these pulp books, lurid stories about lesbians who smoked cigars and had orgies with young girls. I thought, Where are these women? We never met anyone we knew were lesbians. There were no other books that I found about lesbians, no films that we ever saw: nothing at all'.

In 1964, Jackie returned to Britain to work for Border Television; and then eventually moved in with a girlfriend and her children in London.