Jack Monroe 6 Wiki

Birth: Jack was born on 17 March 1988 in Southend, Essex. Her birth name was Melissa "Mel" Hadjicostas, legally changed to Jack Monroe in 2012. She appears to have since changed her name again to Jack Hadjicostas, as this is the name she uses while working at Southend Council and used in a house purchase that fell through. She also sometimes calls herself Jack Xatzinikolas (a name from her father's side of the family, who are Greek Cypriot.)

Family: She was brought up by a high-ranking firefighter father and a mother who was a nurse until she became disabled and could no longer work. Jack's parents were foster carers for over 20 years, and her father received an MBE for his services to fostering. He has done a number of media pieces about the difficulties of fostering, with emphasis on the financial impact it’s had on him, having to extend his owned property and replace front doors. Jack was published in the Guardian criticising their foster children, calling them feral. She has an older brother who is/was an RAF officer, and two much younger adopted siblings.

Grandad: Her paternal grandfather was a landlord who owned a number of properties and restaurants around Essex, including the BellaPais Southend, not to be confused with the current one in Colchester. In his will he left an estate worth £1.8million upon his death in 2012. Included in this were a row of houses (at least 3, possibly 4 as per this sign), rented out as 'villa guest houses' to tenants on benefits. According to a local Southend news article, the properties were extremely run-down, had not been maintained since the 60s, and had to be completely renovated after they were sold.

When Jack pretended to be working class during a televised debate, Edwina Currie pointed out that Jack's grandfather was wealthy. Jack screamed “My Grandfather is DEAD” in place of an actual rebuttal (from about 32:00 in this clip). Then she wrote a whingey open letter as a response a few days later. Jack likes to hint at her status as a "third generation immigrant" on her grandfather's side; and will occasionally announce an attempt to "reclaim" her Greek-Cypriot heritage.

Middle class roots? Jack's parents have a detached five bedroom house in an affluent part of Southend. Her father describes his occupation as a landlord on Companies House. The family’s Land Rover was navy blue. Jack used to describe her upbringing as middle class in her earlier blogs. In Hunger Hurts she references a £4-5k Omega Seamaster watch gifted to her by the family for her 21st birthday. Despite this, Jack now says she is from a poor, working class background. See below for more on that.

School: Jack went to a grammar school (Westcliff High School for Girls). After receiving 4.5 GCSEs (the half GCSE is in RE), she left school in 2004. She has given multiple different accounts of why she left when she did, see wiki page 8 for more on that. Jack claims to have struggled at school because they failed to accommodate her autism and ADHD. Again see wiki page 8 as she's said at different times that she was either diagnosed as a child and not told about it; or not diagnosed until she was an adult. Either way, how was the school supposed to know? At the time Jack went there in the late 90s-early 2000s, there was little awareness of neurodiversity, especially in girls.

Hunting for fame? In 2007 when Jack was aged 19, a profile in her previous name appeared on the StarNow talent hub. She didn't mention particular skills or talents, or looking for any specific kind of performing work - seemingly, she was open to anything that would get her attention. Around this time she tried out acting classes (mentioned on her StarNow profile), music (writing songs and appearing in a photoshoot for what looks like a girl band), and modelling (she had photos taken for a portfolio.) She claims she auditioned for The X-Factor. After her son was born, she continued to perform at open mic nights and began trying to establish herself in local politics. All of this leads us to suspect that she just wanted to be famous by any means possible - it was never really about campaigning against poverty.

First jobs: Jack went through a large number of casual jobs after leaving school. A detailed list can be seen in "Jack's Jobs" on wiki page 10. She has said she worked in a chip shop, department store, supermarket, warehouse, and at various cafés and bars during this time.

After a few years of temp jobs, Jack somehow (read: Daddy) got a job in the control room for the fire service in 2007. She revealed during a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival that she failed her first interview but was then given an opportunity to sit in the control room and observe how the job worked, following which she passed a second interview "with flying colours." It's unclear whether all potential candidates are afforded this opportunity or if it is a privilege reserved for relatives of the Head of Fire Investigation. She's repeatedly stated that she earned £27k (see here in "Hunger Hurts"). That's worth almost £47,000 in 2024 and was a highly paid role for a 19-year-old with no qualifications.

When Grenfell happened she cosplayed as an ex-firefighter who helped on the ground ("I've seen a lot of fucking fires"), as detailed in her since deleted blog post. She has also claimed she was training as a firefighter before she left the Fire Service, but this is doubtful because she says she can't swim and has no driving licence, which are prerequisites for the job.

Jack first came to public attention in July 2012 when her blog post "Hunger Hurts", about her life in poverty with her then two-year-old son, went viral. After being featured in the national press, she became known as a food writer and anti-poverty campaigner. Initially, Jack said she was middle class and her experiences proved that no one was safe from poverty. Here are some examples:

• When she was a child, her mother drove a Land Rover, and the family spent summer holidays at an aunt's "large and sprawling" house with a big garden. (Blog post, June 2012)
  
  
• Describing herself as "a middle class voice with (...) a story of survival" (Song/poem, September 2012.) Jack wrote this about herself after she had been interviewed on local radio about her experience of poverty. She was then aged 24 and didn't yet have an audience to play to.
  
  
• "I'm a middle class, well educated young woman who fell a bit by the wayside (... Poverty) can happen to anyone." (Speech in the Houses of Parliament and a Guardian article, June 2013) But a month later, she was the "working-class girl who won a place at a posh grammar school" (Guardian article, July 2013) in the exact same newspaper.
  
  
• "The rain isn’t miraculously any less wet when you don’t have a coat with a hood, or an umbrella, or three quid for the bus, just because Mummy and Daddy are still married, or you went to a grammar school." (Blog post, August 2013. Warning for graphic discussion of suicide.) Jack wrote this in response to an article suggesting that she deliberately portrayed an image of poverty palatable to a middle class audience. In her response, Jack did not deny being middle class; just said that it didn't make poverty less gruelling.
  
  
• "My parents are still together, they’ve always worked, I’ve always worked, I had a decent well-paid job." "There is (...) no familiarity in her path into poverty. As one of her neighbors in this seaside town in southern England put it, 'She could be anybody’s daughter.'" (The New York Times, January 2014.)
  
  
• She studied both ballet and martial arts as a teenager - so evidently, her parents could afford this (Blog, May 2014 and October 2015.)

Around 2014, Jack's story changed and she began saying she was working class and had grown up in poverty. This coincided with her beginning a relationship with the chef Allegra McEvedy, who is a millionaire from generational wealth. Examples:

• Jack couldn't join in cookery classes at school because her parents could not afford the ingredients: "I knew we weren’t well off. (...) We had so many mouths to feed." A teacher bought ingredients for her, including a bottle of vermouth, so that Jack could rejoin the class. Most schools would have serious concerns over a teacher who brought in alcohol for an underage student, even for cooking. (Blog post, April 2014.)
  
  
• After "fitting in marvellously" at primary school with children from a nearby council estate, Jack became "the poor kid" at her grammar school. She and her brother were driven to school in her father's van and walked six and a half miles home because their parents could not afford the bus fare. Jack's parents often missed dinner so their children could eat, and her father had to hitchhike to work. Her mother, who became disabled when Jack was four, lived on "pittance benefits" because Disability Living Allowance didn't exist yet. (Unfiltered podcast, February 2018.) DLA was introduced in 1992, the same year Jack was four; and she would have qualified for free transport to school.
  
  
• "(I'm) a working class girl whose first job was cleaning tables at the local Wimpy on a Saturday and working weekdays in a chip shop." (Blog post, July 2020.) She's said elsewhere that her grandfather owned the chip shop!
  
  
• Jack grew up in "a flat so small (...) it now can't be legally let as a dwelling." Her family didn't have enough food and often missed meals. Her father hitchhiked to work and had three jobs so his family could survive. Her parents were not paid for fostering, and struggled until Jack's grandfather died "relatively young" and left his guest house to her father. (Twitter thread, August 2022). She has contradicted this at least twice. In this Twitter thread she said that the only property her father inherited is the flat they used to live in; again saying it is so small it can't legally be rented as a dwelling. But here she claimed that he now rents the flat to a formerly homeless person.
  
  
• "Class, (Jack) says, has always confused her (...) as a child, she didn’t realise her parents were struggling for money much of the time." "I only realised what middle class looked like when I lived with Allegra." (Guardian interview, January 2023.) Allegra can be considered middle class because her family isn't aristocracy. This doesn't mean she is "real" or "typical" middle class and anyone less privileged than she must be working class!
  
  
• "I was the poor kid at the grammar school (...) My tights would rip, my shoes would wear through, the strap on my bag would break." (University College London podcast, March 2023)
  
  
• Jack grew up believing she was middle class because her parents were careful to hide their poverty - "We always had dinner on the table, but my parents didn't always eat with us. We always had clothes, but those clothes came in bin bags from people from the local church." (Greenbelt Festival, August 2023)
  
  
• (Referring to a criticism of her in the Daily Mail) "Working class people (supposedly) don't eat pasta (...) we eat canned spaghetti." (Bluesky, December 2024)

Even a cursory glance at Jack's description of poverty shows that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Foster carers are strictly vetted; it would be very concerning if her parents were able to keep taking in vulnerable children at a time when they could barely feed their own family. Grammar schools are academically selective state schools, and admission is through the 11+ selection exam, which is open to children of any background. Like most grammar schools, Jack's old school attracts affluent parents who can afford coaching to help their child pass the 11+; but also has a mix of ordinary middle class and working class students. She makes it sound as if she were a poor scholarship student at an expensive fee-paying school, which isn't the case.

Much of Jack's tale of childhood poverty is contradicted by an interview her father gave in 2006 about his experiences as a foster carer. He said that by then he had been fostering for almost 14 years, i.e. starting when Jack was aged 3-4. He owned a 5-bedroom house and large car to accommodate the foster children. He and his wife received some payment from local authorities, but it wasn't enough, and he estimated that he'd spent around £100,000 of his own money on the expenses of fostering. Evidently, he wasn't poor, and he had that money long before Jack's grandfather passed away (in November 2012 at the age of 75, as confirmed by his obituary in local press.)

Jack's parents chose to spend their money on fostering, which is probably why she didn't have holidays abroad and designer clothes as a child. She may well have seen herself as "poor" next to some of her classmates, or thought of Allegra as ordinary middle class. But there is a vast difference between saying that "class depends on context" or that you aren't well off in comparison with a wealthy person, vs the impoverished upbringing Jack describes. She has also made stigmatising and ignorant comments that you wouldn't expect from someone who grew up poor and working class; see "Bad politics" on wiki page 1.

Jack's son, known as "SB" (Small Boy), was born in April 2010 after she had a brief fling with a friend. She's given conflicting stories about this, including that their long-term contraception failed; they had a one-night stand at a family wedding (Greenbelt festival, August 2017 - around 40:10 in the audio and Unfiltered podcast, February 2018 - around 28:35 in the audio); and that her son was actually born after she did sex work, which she suggested in a 2016 interview. See 2016 section on wiki page 7. At the 2023 Greenbelt Festival, she gave the bizarre story that her son was conceived after she ate too many poppy seeds in a curry, suggesting it had a narcotic effect. She thought it appropriate to tell this story at a religious event in response to a child asking about her career!

At the time she got pregnant, she had three jobs, earned almost £40,000 a year, and could afford designer furniture and a three-bedroom apartment. Her main job was as a call handler for the Fire Service. She's since repeatedly tried to suggest she was a firefighter or was training to be one. Becoming a firefighter requires a full driving licence and being able to swim. But she claims she cannot swim and has never learned to drive or taken the test (see page 6.)

Jack has stated that while pregnant she lived with an abusive girlfriend; see 2016 section on wiki page 7.

Jack left her job in the Fire Service in November 2011. This was ostensibly because she could not get childcare around her irregular shifts, which affected her mental health and her son's welfare. She's stated (warning - links discuss suicide):

• "Trying to organise childcare for night shifts 30 miles from your home is bloody impossible." She requested different options such as flexible working or a job share, but was refused each time. (Comments on a Guardian article, October 2013).
  
  
• "Working two day shifts and two night shifts, on different days and nights every week, with an 18 month old boy to look after, was next to impossible by myself." "I hung in to my job for months (...) Up to three different people would look after (my) baby in a day." "I resigned from a hospital bed at 2 o'clock in the morning. My GP had signed me off sick with stress a fortnight before." "My health and my son’s welfare came before trying to cling on to a £27,000 salary." (Conservative Party conference speech, October 2013.)
  
  Her son was born in April 2010. If she returned to work when he was 18 months of age, that would be October 2011. If signed off sick for a fortnight, the maximum time she could have spent back at work was six weeks (four weeks, if she resigned in mid-November - see below.) How, then, did she hang on for "months" struggling to manage?
  
  
• "No one would look after a child during her night shifts — which were hard to predict, week-to-week (...) Her attempts to negotiate flexible working hours and alternative positions came to nothing." (Evening Standard, November 2013.) In the public sector, shifts like this are planned over the long term to allow staff to organise their lives, including childcare.
  
  
• "(Jack) wrote her resignation letter from a hospital bed (...) because she didn’t know how to both earn money and raise a child as a single parent." (The Times, November 2015)
  
  
• "DWP deemed I had 'made myself workless' so withheld benefits for 12 weeks. The fire service paid 2 weeks in advance and 2 weeks in arrears. I resigned on the 17th November." (Twitter, August 2018.) She clarifies here that the "2 weeks in advance and 2 weeks in arrears" system meant she had to return half her wages when she left.
  
  Under the UK benefits system, single parents with a child below school age are not required to be in work. Jack would not have had benefits withheld for leaving a job, and would not have been expected to look for work until her son was school aged. While unemployed in 2012 she repeatedly stated (see this example and this one) that the Job Centre had told her she was "exempt" from the requirement to look for work while claiming benefits.
  
  
• "(I was) not coping with the demands of a rolling shift system, 15-hour nights, a baby, and working 30 miles from home." (Vogue, January 2021)
  
  
• "(While working shifts) I had to check all the time that the childcare arrangements had worked and that my son was safe and sound (...) At six months old he wasn’t really very aware of it." "She visited a doctor and was immediately signed off with stress, but Ms Monroe wanted to 'make her job work.' A month later, she felt she had to resign and did so from her hospital bed." (The Telegraph, February 2021.)
  
  This means Jack would have returned to work in October 2010 and resigned in November 2010. What, then, was she doing for the whole of 2011? Blog posts published in 2012 consistently state that she had been out of work since November 2011, not 2010. She also suggests here that she spent only a month at work before resigning. Again, that's not long to make numerous requests for flexible working, job share, and other alternatives as she said she did.
  
  
• "He'd decided it wasn't in the best interests of the service to rescind my notice." (Twitter, February 2021.) In this version Jack appealed her previous resignation with the support of senior colleagues and Occupational Health, but the Fire Service declined and she lost her job.

She's also suggested that she was sacked (again mentioning a senior colleague trying to save her job), or was about to go into the RAF before she got pregnant. Court documents presented during her libel trial against Katie Hopkins state that Jack applied for the RAF at the same time as her brother, but wasn't accepted. Either way, she states that the loss of her job led to her falling into extreme poverty for two years.

In December 2011, a few weeks after leaving the Fire Service, she invited other parents to a coffee morning at her home. She advertised in a local Facebook group: "cake provided for Mummies and Daddies and lots of toys and CBeebies for kids." Yet, when she published "Hunger Hurts" in July 2012, she stated that the previous December she'd had to turn off her heating at the mains. Later, she described Christmas 2011 as follows: "I was alone in a freezing cold flat with no television, no presents and no food in the fridge (...) I had no tree, no decorations (...) I was unemployed, broke, and broken. I hadn’t bought a single present for my one-year-old son and, instead, let him go to his father’s for the day, knowing I could not give him a Christmas myself." (The Mirror, December 2013.)

In response to a blogger asking how Jack could host a coffee morning in December 2011 yet be destitute a couple of weeks later, Jack said she "had been in a well paid job til that point, so wasn't instantly flat broke." She accused the blogger of being "weird" and "creeping" on old posts. If Jack has chosen to share something publicly, on the internet or in print, then she should expect that others may find it and ask questions. Her interview with Simon Hattenstone in January 2023 again referred to this particular contradiction, suggesting that questioning her is mean-spirited trolling and nitpicking. When she has repeatedly used tales of poverty to build a public platform and make money, it's perfectly fair to ask why those stories don't add up.

In 2012, Jack could not get work, and ended up in poverty. She has said that during this time she had no heating or utilities, couldn't afford food, and was repeatedly evicted or threatened with eviction. In her viral blog post "Hunger Hurts", she describes having to unscrew her lightbulbs and unplug her fridge, sell or pawn everything she owned, and go hungry so her son could eat.

She was living near her parents and siblings in Southend and has described them as a close family, so it seems strange they didn't notice that she was living in such poor circumstances. She stated in the New York Times that she became "very good at hiding things" by keeping her home and her son's clothes clean and making excuses as to why she was going without. But things like Jack missing meals for days, or her and her son not having shoes or coats, would be harder to hide. She's given conflicting stories as to why her parents did not help her:

• "Her parents dropped off bags of food and clothes, and berated her for not telling them sooner. But with two young adopted children to feed, they could only help so much." (The New York Times, January 2014)
  
  
• "Too proud to ask her family for help, she turned off the heating, sold her furniture, television, her son's toys, tried to avoid the landlord and queued up for the first time at a food bank." (The Guardian, February 2014)
  
  
• "I didn't ask for help because I was terrified that in the middle of the night, a social worker would come and take my child away." (Greenbelt Festival, 10:10 in the audio, August 2017.)
  
  
• "(My parents) get dragged through comment sections, 'ooh, where were you when she was starving, where were -' I didn't tell them, that's where they were!" (Unfiltered podcast, February 2018.)
  
  
• She didn't tell her parents because they weren't well off and she knew they would "drop everything to help (her) out", which she didn't want them to have to do. However, when she went to the food bank for the first time, one of the volunteers was her parents' friend from church; forcing Jack to tell them herself (Sophie Ellis Bextor podcast, February 2018.)

The Greenbelt Festival story is especially interesting - she's told this elsewhere as well. She said that after growing up in a household full of foster children, who would often be taken away by social workers in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, she knew the same would happen to her son if anyone found out she was poor.

Social services do not normally take children into care just because of poverty; they don't have the resources to do this. If there were a risk that Jack's son could have been removed, social services would have told her, and would have first considered if he could live with his father or grandparents. (Jack's parents were still fostering children at that time.) Social services also offer support to struggling parents so that things don't escalate to the point where they cannot take care of their children any longer. They do not only get involved with the families of "bad" parents! You would expect Jack to have known this as her parents were experienced foster carers.

She has repeatedly described her son's father as a supportive co-parent, and she published an article in the Guardian to thank him, calling him "the most decent man (she's) ever met." Yet, she says that he didn't support her financially, and that she refused to let SB live with him even temporarily.

• "(Her son's) father, who is in a new relationship, does not pay child support despite being in full-time employment. But he looks after his son two nights a week as well as buying him shoes and clothes. (Jack) feels her ex does all he can." (The Mirror, December 2012.) This doesn't explain why she has repeatedly claimed her son had to wear hand-me-downs or shoes that were falling apart. Note that Jack has never called herself "Jackie"; she says the newspaper insisted on referring to her as that because they thought their readers would be confused by a woman with a masculine name!
  
  
• "Why did I not just put (my son) in care and be done with it? What on earth was I thinking, not wanting to be separated from my child?" (Comment on a Guardian article, October 2013.) This was in response to someone asking why he couldn't have lived with his father temporarily until Jack's situation improved. Seemingly, she felt he was better off in a home with no food, heating, or utilities.
  
  
• "(Her son's) father looks after him two days a week in lieu of maintenance." (The Guardian, February 2014). In other words, they had shared custody, which is a separate matter from maintenance.

In 2014, a poster on Mumsnet alleged that he did pay maintenance and supported Jack while she was struggling, but for the sake of their son he hasn't challenged her narrative publicly. (We suspect this was either SB's father himself, or his then-wife.) Tattle doesn't allow linking to Mumsnet but the post text can be found here.

As Jack tells it, she preferred to let her son live in poverty than ask her family for help, or ask his father to pay maintenance. She was afraid he might be taken into care because she was poor, yet even that didn't motivate her to tell anyone about her situation, despite having parents who worked closely with social services and could have advised her. Either that, or there's more to the story than she is saying publicly.

Key events

• March 2012: Jack began a blog, initially called "Our Southend" and focused on local politics. Her first blog posts included recipes for blondies containing matcha and macadamia nuts (which are not cheap ingredients), and a soup made with leftovers from her Abel & Cole veg box. She got a job in a pub, but had trouble with finding childcare and dealing with Job Centre bureaucracy.
  
  
• May 2012: Jack had to leave the pub job or she would have lost her top-up benefits. Days later, she got another job in a coffee shop, only to be dismissed after a couple of weeks with no explanation. She took part in "Live Below the Line", a challenge to live on just £1 a day for food (equivalent to extreme poverty) to raise money for charity - admitting that it was difficult and she did not normally live that way.
  
  
• June 2012: Jack went on holiday, suggesting her family or friends knew about her situation and were willing to pay for her. She was now volunteering full time.
  
  
• July 2012: Jack shared a blog post titled "Hunger Hurts" about the plight she found herself in. She talked about having no heating or utilities, being hounded for rent arrears, and her two-year-old son going hungry. The post gained some traction online but did not instantly go viral.
  
  
• August 2012: Jack held an "Open House Sale" in an effort to clear her debts. She sold: "Everything. My sons bed. My own shoes. Almost all of my books, clothes, crockery, the light fittings, everything. And my beautiful, wooden, upright piano." The light fittings weren't hers (she lived in a rented apartment) - we wonder what the landlord had to say about that?She was interviewed in local press and on the radio about the sale.
  
  She's not sure whether she sold:
  
  Her crockery - According to "Hunger Hurts" she sold most of her crockery before the sale in August 2012. But in 2013 she shared this photo of a collection of crockery she said she'd had for years and had used in a photoshoot. (Who would buy used crockery for more than a few pennies anyway, unless it's designer/valuable? You can get brand new crockery in pound shops or on Amazon for very little.)
  
  Her bed - She either sold it (warning: link discusses suicide) and was left to share a mattress with her toddler, or didn't manage to sell it because no one wanted it.
  
  Her guitar - Either one of the first things she sold when in poverty, or was still with her in December 2013 after numerous house moves.
  
  Her camera - Did she sell it in 2011 to pay for "a few days rent and some food" (sic) or did she still have it in 2012 at the time of the sale, when her mother asked her to keep the camera? In November 2012 (see below) she quit her job to work as a self-employed writer and photographer, and evidently had a camera.
  
  Her TV - She now claims she didn't have one in 2012. But in September 2012, after the sale, she said on her blog that she hoped plans to broadcast Southend Council meetings would go ahead so that she could watch at home. (She has also stated she didn't have a laptop at this time and only had an old mobile phone.)
  
  
• September 2012: Jack was still receiving Abel & Cole veg boxes, which are expensive; at that time they cost around £10, the same as her food budget for a week. She got another job and "threw (her) son at anyone who would have him" while she was working. That's a far cry from the previous year when part of the reason for leaving the Fire Service was that he was being "passed around like a package" and she was worried he would be traumatised by being in childcare.
  
  
• October 2012: Jack had been living in Royal Mews, an upscale building in an affluent part of Southend, since before her son was born. She now wanted to move, saying on her blog that she could afford her £725 monthly rent but it wasn't good value for money. Later in the month she announced she had found a new home which was "cheaper, but nicer" and very close to Royal Mews. She was leaving partly because her landlord at Royal Mews had threatened her with eviction.
  
  She mentioned that friends had lent her the money to pay a deposit so she wouldn't have to accept a place in social housing. Yet, just a few weeks earlier, she'd claimed that her friends had helped her pay her rent. It seems strange that she preferred to rent privately; with social housing, she'd pay lower rent and would not be at risk of eviction.
  
  
• November 2012: Jack had been hired as a columnist for two local newspapers. She had left her job to become a freelance writer and sell crafts and photography through her business "The Bread and Jam Foundation", which she initially said would be non-profit with the proceeds going to charity. Evidently, she wasn't worried about paying the rent on her new home, or repaying the friends who lent her the deposit. Her chosen line of self-employed work would be precarious for anyone, and it's surprising that someone who was living in poverty with a toddler would choose to give up a regular income (even on a low wage) to do this. Was she expecting an inheritance, as her grandfather had just passed away?
  
  
• December 2012: In an interview with the Sunday People (now the Mirror), Jack spoke about living in poverty with her son. She stated on her blog that after a year of not having hot water, heating, or enough food, she was no longer in serious hardship: "Gone are the bailiffs, and gone is the fear of losing everything. Thanks to stringent budgeting, a £10 a week food shop and an Excel spreadsheet, I’m managing." She stated she spent Christmas with her parents and could afford heating and some treats from her fee for the Sunday People article.
  
  She further claimed to have lost her garden and fridge freezer, despite saying in October that her previous home did not have a garden. She's since said many times over the years that she could not afford to run a fridge when she was poor, and went as long as two years without a fridge. See below.
  
  Tattlers who knew Jack at this time have alleged that they were surprised by the Sunday People article, as they were not aware of her being poor. She had custody of her son for only half the week, and regularly travelled to London for photography and modelling work or nights out; she was active in lesbian social circles and looking for a partner. Regardless of whether that's true, Jack herself stated in 2013 in her newspaper column that she was online dating and on subscription sites. There's no reason why poor people shouldn't have a social life - but Jack claims that she couldn't even afford food or utilities at this time.

Over the years, her account of events of her life in 2012 has changed considerably from what she documented on her blog at the time.

Eviction

When Jack left her Royal Mews apartment in October 2012, she mentioned on her blog that she had been threatened with eviction - see this post and this one. (In the UK, Section 21 is a controversial "no-fault" eviction where the landlord isn't obliged to give a reason.) Jack indicated she had fallen into rent arrears when her benefits were delayed, and even after she repaid the money, her landlord still threatened to evict her.

Since then, it's unclear whether she was threatened with eviction or actually evicted, when and how many times this happened:

• "When the BBC reported that she would be paid £25,000 for her book deal, the housing benefit office suspended payments until it saw her book contract, nearly causing her to be evicted" (Guardian article, July 2013) In situations like these, local authorities are expected to make decisions based on proof of income - not reports in the media. She would almost certainly have been asked for details before they decided if her benefits should be suspended.
  
  
• "The friend who paid my rent instead of having work done on her house when I was under threat of eviction." (Facebook post, April 2016.) This post, in which Jack spoke about buying a bike for an autistic teenager in order to repay other people's past kindnesses to her, went viral. She has deleted the original, but it's been circulated many times. She mentions someone buying her son shoes when Jack couldn't afford "a new one" (rather than "new ones") - did she originally write a different version of events and then change it? Why couldn't his father buy him shoes, since Jack said that was their arrangement?
  
  
• "(In July 2012) I took myself into my bathroom, with my eviction notice from my flat that I was getting kicked out of because I couldn't pay the rent any more." (Greenbelt Festival, 18:13 in the audio, August 2017.) Warning - this part of the speech discusses suicide in detail.
  
  
• "I was evicted from my flat (...) because I was deemed to have made myself deliberately unemployed by having a baby within the confines of a job whose flexible working patterns were a paper policy rather than a reality." (Blog post, July 2020.) Again, after leaving the Fire Service, Jack stayed in her home for almost a year and then chose to move after being threatened with eviction. She would not have been denied benefits on the basis of leaving her previous job, as she was a mother of a child below school age.
  
  
• "I’ve rented 22 properties (...) and several of them I was served No-Fault eviction notices – Section 21 notices – for no fault of my own. Some of them just didn’t want a tenant who used benefits." (Evidence given to the Work and Pensions Committee, March 2022)
  
  
• "I had my housing benefit withdrawn almost a dozen times in 1 year alone (... and) ended up being evicted because of it." (Twitter, May 2022). Jack did not mention this on her old blog, so it's not clear when it happened. She's likely talking about 2011-12, when she was threatened with eviction over rent arrears. In this time period she legally changed her name, and changed jobs several times, all of which could have caused delays while her benefit claim was re-evaluated.

Food bank

Similarly, she isn't sure when she first visited a food bank, despite having told the story many times. (Warning - links discuss suicide)

• Describing her own story and how she first went to the food bank after a failed suicide attempt: "you go to queue at the food bank with your son in tow. You can’t cope any longer." "That was February, just gone." (Blog post, August 2013) So, the first time she visited a food bank was in February 2013.
  
  
• "I was referred to my local food bank by a Sure Start children’s centre that I attended with my son on a Wednesday (...) I was reluctant to go at first, reluctant to admit that I had hit rock bottom – but I couldn’t afford not to. So one morning in October 2012, I finally went." (The Mirror, December 2013)
  
  
• "In July 2012 (...) I picked up my son. We walked to the local food bank." (Greenbelt Festival, 17:47 in the audio, August 2017.) Therefore, she began using a food bank in or before July 2012.
  
  
• "My food writing was an accident, dredged from (...) a scrabbled together soup from a food bank parcel." "That was the 31st of July, 2012. There were 100,000 food bank users in the UK at the time (...) the queue that snaked around the block 100 deep, every day, at the one I went to." (Twitter, April 2022 - Part 1, Part 2.) This is the same story from the Greenbelt Festival, and again places her first use of a food bank before July 2012.
  
  
• "(I) first used a food bank a few months later, Spring 2012." (Twitter, August 2022)

Fridge

Jack has repeatedly said that while in poverty she could not afford electricity and had to keep her fridge unplugged

• "I think back to this time last year. When you've got to the point where you have unplugged your fridge and you have unscrewed your light bulbs and you have sold everything you own ..." (The Guardian, July 2013)
  
  
• "I didn't mind putting an extra jumper on if I had food in the fridge. It was the point where I had an extra jumper on and no food in the fridge that I realised things had gone badly wrong." (The Guardian, October 2013)
  
  
• "I don't imagine the chief executives of any of the big six (energy companies) called before MPs on Tuesday has ever had to unplug their fridge because they simply can't afford to run it." (The Guardian, October 2013.) Yes, that's two different stories in the same paper within the same month! In the same article she says, "It wasn't too long ago myself that I was sitting with my back to my front door, hissing at my toddler to be quiet because there was a man on the other side of it hammering with his fist." If you didn't want someone to know you were there, why would you sit right next to the door?
  
  
• "I unplugged my fridge and put furniture in front of the storage heaters so that I wasn't even tempted to turn them on." (Huffington Post, November 2017.)
  
  
• "My worst year, I didn’t have a tree, didn’t have any decorations, I couldn’t buy any presents, I had unplugged the fridge, turned the heating off, taken out the light bulbs." (The Independent, December 2017.) She's ostensibly referring to December 2011 - just a couple of weeks after she was hosting a coffee morning at home.
  
  
• "I lived with (...) no fridge for TWO YEARS." (Twitter, December 2019)
  
  
• "When I was in a similar situation, I unplugged my fridge and freezer because I couldn’t afford to run them." (Grazia, September 2020)
  
  
• "I unscrewed the lightbulbs, unplugged the empty fridge, sold my son’s shoes and drank his formula milk." (PoliticsHome, February 2021)

But at the time, back in 2012, she wrote on her blog:

• "I’ve got seven sweet potato beanie bakes in the freezer, and small boy likes them, so I tell myself that we’ll be okay." (May 2012.) At this time, she had lost two jobs in quick succession but was claiming benefits and evidently able to keep the fridge and freezer running.
  
  
• "(My son)'s been known to help himself to (fromage frais) from the fridge." (December 2012.) She did have work by then, but evidently, her fridge wasn't off for two years.
  
  
• "I’ve moved house, to a cheaper flat in a less salubrious area (...) I’ve lost my garden, my patch of outdoors, and my big fridge-freezer and washer-dryer." (December 2012.)

Even if she did turn her fridge off at some point, it evidently wasn't for long, and certainly not for as much as two years. Especially since in 2012 she often posted recipes using perishable food that needs to be kept in a fridge.

Key events

• January 2013: Jack told the local newspaper that her £10 a week food budget was enough to feed her and her son comfortably and even have friends over for dinner regularly.
  
  
• February 2013: Jack began a full time job as a trainee journalist with her local newspaper after continued financial difficulties that ultimately forced her to withdraw her son from nursery.
  
  It's funny to notice how her mother's comment on this was reminiscing about Jack writing on the ceiling as a child. If her daughter and grandson had been living in abject poverty wouldn't you expect her to mention her relief that Jack had a job?
  
  
• March 2013: The Telegraph sent writer Xanthe Clay over to interview Jack and have lunch with her. The article, "My 49p lunch with a girl called Jack", brought her to national attention and she credits it for kick-starting her career in the media and being offered her book deal.
  
  Jack took part in a sponsored event for charity to sleep outside in aid of homeless people. On her blog and in a promotional video for the charity, she said she had never been homeless, but realised that she was lucky not to have ended up on the streets.
  
  Jack wrote that she could finally afford to celebrate her and her son's birthdays now that her circumstances had improved.
  
  
• May 2013: Jack announced she had signed a book deal with Penguin.
  
  She won a prestigious award from Fortnum & Mason for her blog, which she happily accepted at an awards ceremony. Only six months previously, she had campaigned against Fortnum & Mason on animal welfare grounds because it sells foie gras.
  
  She again took part in "Live Below the Line". She repeated this in 2014, and 2015, and shared photos of her meals and food shopping throughout the challenge. Each time, she said she found it difficult and that even though she was poor, she didn't normally live like this. Live Below the Line lasts five days, and Jack stated she had £10 a week for food, so she was living on half her usual budget.
  
  
• July 2013: A year after she wrote "Hunger Hurts", Jack gave an update on her blog. She said that in the last year her situation had improved and she was now in work. She stated that she still lived on £10 a week for food, and that she had spent Christmas 2011 sitting alone in the dark with no heating or lights.
  
  She told the Guardian that she was almost evicted earlier in the year because her benefits were suspended after her book advance came through, but had ultimately remained in her home.
  
  
• September 2013: Jack began a job as a full time columnist for the Guardian. At this time she left the Southend Echo because she'd received an influx of other writing and media work.
  
  
• November 2013: Richard Littlejohn published a hit piece about Jack in the Daily Mail. Littlejohn falsely suggested that Jack had chosen to leave her Fire Service job as it was easier to live on benefits; and that her son's father was not in the picture. Jack published a response where she said it took her 18 months to find work after leaving the Fire Service. She did not mention that she found a stable job 10 months later (in September 2012), but by November was doing well enough that she could afford to leave to become self-employed. In this article she also admitted that she made some money from advertising on her blog, but has since said that she has never made money from it.
  
  
• December 2013: Jack appeared in a Sainsbury's ad campaign for Christmas but was criticised for "selling out." She claimed she had only paid herself the living wage for the campaign, and had donated the rest of the money to Oxfam and her local food bank. Here's a promotional video she made for them.
  
  She shared a blog post saying that she was grateful to no longer be in poverty, and could afford a Christmas tree, food, and presents for her son. (Warning - link discusses suicide.) In the Mirror, she repeated the story that she spent Christmas 2011 alone in her dark, freezing flat with no food or utilities.
  
  For New Year's Eve, she wrote about her success in 2013 including writing and media work, audiences with politicians, her book deal, and the Fortnum & Mason award.

By all appearances, Jack still had some financial troubles in 2013, but the worst was over. Her financial situation improved and she became increasingly successful. But in retrospect, she's since described 2013 as a year when she was still desperately poor.

• "The past few Christmases had been all over the place for my little family, and 2013 was the first year I felt able to establish my own small traditions (...) although I didn’t have a tree." (The Guardian, December 2014.) She did have a Christmas tree in 2013 and had shared pictures on her blog!
  
  
• "(I was in) prostitution and stealing food to survive, 2013 (...) Evicted from my flat with my three-year-old." (Twitter, December 2019. Warning - link discusses suicide.) Her son was three in April 2013, so she would have had to be evicted at some point between then and April 2014. See below: she's alternately said that in spring 2013 she was either evicted from her home, or had to leave after cuts to her benefits.
  
  
• "I've been homeless, lived in dogshit poverty." (Facebook, March 2021.) It's unclear when this supposedly was. In March 2013 she said she had never been homeless; since then, she has had a successful media career and always had a home.
  
  
• See 2020 section on wiki page 7: In a blog post titled "You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal", Jack shared photos taken when she was doing "Live Below the Line" and living on an amount equivalent to extreme poverty for charity; but claimed this was what her everyday life in poverty was like and that she lived like this for months or years.
  
  
• "I spent consecutive days missing meals for a two year period of my life, so I don't really get hunger cues." (Twitter, June 2022.) In other words, saying the poverty lasted into 2013.

Housing situation

Jack announced on her blog in May 2013 that due to changes to the benefits system, she had lost most of her Tax Credits. She had decided to move into a house share so she could continue to afford her son's nursery fees. But on July 23rd an article in the Guardian gave a different story as to why she'd moved. See 2012 section above - Jack now said her benefits were suspended after the media reported on her book deal.

Jack claims she lived in a house share with a group of Polish women. Living with strangers is hardly suitable for a 3-year-old, and for obvious reasons, most people wouldn't want a housemate with a toddler. Her blog indicated that she'd spent at least two weeks testing recipes for her book, which would be difficult in a shared kitchen. She said on July 3rd that she had been in the house share for a month; but the Guardian article came with a photo of her in her old apartment. That photo was seemingly taken some time in June, judging by her hairstyle and the timing of the article. We think it is more likely she moved later in June or in July, and the following year, Jack herself said she had moved in July 2013. If she didn't move until July, why did she say at the time that it was earlier?

An interview with Jack in an Australian publication came with a photo of her and her son in their bedroom, which was an attic room with a skylight. Her parents' house has an attic skylight the same size and shape, as you can see from Google Street View or photos. (Their address is on public record because her father uses it for business.) Did she in fact move back in with her parents? The address being public might have been a reason for her to lie about where she lived/when she moved, but then why make up stories instead of simply not giving details?

In August 2013, Jack announced she had just got engaged and would be moving in with her partner. This was a very short space of time, as they'd been together for between two and seven months - Jack had stated in January that she was single and in June that she was in a relationship. The engagement ended in October 2013. By the time this article was published in mid-November, Jack and her son had moved out into a temporary rental property but they could not stay there long because it was about to be sold. Within the space of a year, they had moved between four different homes and were about to move again - they couldn't stay long in the temporary rental because it was about to be sold. (See 2014 section.)

By 2018 Jack's version of events had changed once more. She now said that when she was poor she had to move from a nice apartment into a mouldy one, then sleep on a friend's sofa, then live in a house share. (Warning - link discusses suicide.) Back in 2013, she never mentioned sleeping on a friend's sofa; and if she did do this, it would have been for a very short period. In the same article she stated that living in a house share negatively affected her mental health: "I made myself minimal, I hid in my room." If we take it at face value that Jack moved into a house share at the beginning of June 2013, then she lived there for less than three months and by her own admission, she often stayed over with her girlfriend during that time.

Once again, the issue here is her changing stories. In 2013, Jack had an increasing amount of writing and media work, a book deal, and a financially stable partner who owned a home. She did not have to pay rent for around two months while living with her partner (and longer if she did move in with her parents.) She probably wasn't well off yet - but nor was she desperately poor. At best, she did live in a house share for a month or two, but now exaggerates this in order to make it sound like she was in dire poverty. At worst, she made up lies for sympathy/publicity and to maintain the image of a poor single mother that first brought her to public attention.

2014

In January 2014, Oxfam hired Jack to travel to Tanzania as a guest blogger and write about community projects that Oxfam funds there. Her blogs reflected a stereotypical and patronising view of Tanzania and its people, and she publicly equated her own poverty with the situation of people in poor parts of Africa who may not even have safe drinking water.

After staying in a friend's property temporarily, she announced she had moved into a new home and planned to stay there long term and give her son some stability. But the following month, in February 2013, she began dating the chef and restaurant owner Allegra McEvedy after they started flirting over social media. They were already engaged less than three weeks later - Jack was wearing her engagement ring at her book launch party on 3rd March. According to an interview they gave in Diva magazine, Jack moved in less than a week into the relationship, and lost the deposit she had just paid for her new home. Jack had mentioned on her blog that she had needed a guarantor as she had failed credit checks - we wonder what they thought of the situation?

Throughout 2014, Jack continued to get writing and media work. She published two books: A Girl Called Jack in February and A Year in 120 Recipes in October. But in November, she was criticised over a Tweet stating that then-Prime Minister David Cameron "uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends." (Cameron had a severely disabled son who passed away at six years of age.) It was subsequently reported that Sainsbury's had terminated their contract with her. She denied this and maintained that she was only ever contracted for six weeks' work in 2013.

2015

In May 2015, Jack told the Evening Standard that she had recently lost her column with the Guardian and suggested this was because of criticism from readers. She stated she had received death threats and carried a knife - why would you publicly admit to carrying an illegal weapon? This didn't stop her arguing with others in comments on the Guardian website, including saying that Allegra was not a millionaire and did not own a restaurant. It was on public record that Allegra owned a restaurant in London; and she did have a net worth in the millions, as she owns a very valuable house and sold the restaurant chain Leon for a large sum.

In June, Jack and Allegra ended their relationship and Jack returned to Southend. She may or may not have been in financial hardship after this:

• "Money, these days, is tight again," "I had to borrow money from a friend this month for my rent," "One of the reasons I moved back was to (...) cut my outgoings. To have a bit of financial security," "Everything I own is pretty much in this room." (The Times, November 2015.) She confirmed in this article that the breakup with Allegra was in June.
  
  
• "Finally, finally, the last box out of 3 luton vans and 7 estate cars is unpacked from a moving operation that started in June." (Instagram, January 2016.) She claimed here, and again on social media repeatedly, that she lived in a one-bedroom flat. But the Times interview confirms it had two bedrooms and was bigger than she suggested.
  
  
• "She loved living in London but (...) seems to have had a growing sense of unease about it." (The Guardian, July 2016). Jack suggested that she could have afforded to stay in London but chose to go back to Southend.

Jack appeared on an episode of The Week and debated with former MP Michael Portillo about poverty. Subsequently saying he had told her she "should have kept her legs shut" and not got pregnant. This was false; what he actually said was that social policy shouldn't encourage people to have more children than they can afford (a typical argument you would expect from a Tory.) See a transcript here.

By her own admission, Jack bought a Burberry trench coat and Burberry Brit jacket in a shopping spree in 2015 - costing approximately between £6k-£7k. She also went on holiday to the USA with her friend Linda Riley and got several tattoos. But at Christmas, she wrote that she spent less than £10 on her son's Christmas presents because she wanted him to understand the value of money! Also saying they were "shit-poor" for the first three Christmases of his life. This includes Christmas 2010 (when she was either working for the Fire Service or still on paid maternity leave), 2011 (when she'd only just left her job and recently hosted a coffee morning), and 2012.

Jack had continued to periodically write a column for the Southend Echo until August 2015. A writer in the Daily Mail had expressed the opinion that Jack shouldn't be allowed to call herself Dr; and the Echo published a letter from a reader who agreed with this. Jack does have the right to style herself Dr Jack Monroe (Hon.), but it is common courtesy not to use the title outside of the awarding university.She wrote an irate response to the Echo on her blog, and subsequently left the paper. The Echo has since allowed many comments critical of Jack to be published on its website.

Gender transition

In February 2015 Jack shared this photo in response to critics suggesting she was "cis" (not transgender.) Her wording implied that people should assume her to be trans/non-binary because she had short hair and tattoos. Many trans people dislike this kind of stereotyping, and reject the idea that being trans is just being gender non-conforming.

Later that year, Jack came out as non-binary via her blog in October 2015. She announced she used they/them pronouns and the title Mx (she now mostly uses she/her.) In the blog post, she stated that:

• She wore a binder and wanted to use hormones and have top surgery
  
  
• One of her past relationships ended because her fiancée didn't like the idea of her transitioning. Jack said this wasn't recently or with someone in the public eye; so presumably, it was the policewoman she was engaged to in 2013.
  
  
• She had been shaving her hair and wearing boys' clothes from an early age, but also had a feminine side and liked to wear dresses and lipstick. Again, it is unhelpful and reductive to equate being gender non-conforming to being trans/non-binary. Also note how she'd previously described herself as a girly child who liked teddy bears and wanted a princess themed birthday party.
  
  
• Jack did not find the Fire Service accommodating to LGBT people, and was pressured to wear a skirt at her "passing out" ceremony in 2008. She began training to become a firefighter, and felt more comfortable with her body as she grew muscles. She then left the Fire Service and finally felt able to change her name and adopt a more masculine style.
  
  As a public sector body, the Fire Service has many initiatives to accommodate LGBT staff, including gender-neutral uniforms. Jack would not have had a passing out ceremony, which are for firefighters, not support staff. See 2010 and 2011 sections; she wouldn't have been accepted for training as a firefighter because she can't drive or swim. She has also suggested that she returned from maternity leave only around six weeks before she left her job, that she spent some of this time signed off sick, and had to commute for several hours a day. That wouldn't have left her with much time for training.
  
  
• Her family had been mostly supportive, apart from an uncle who called her a homophobic slur and said she looked like a gay man because she wore a suit to her brother's wedding.

The blog post linked to two photographs that she asked media outlets use in any future articles about her - also saying they must contact her for hi-res copies and pay the photographer, her friend Fox Fisher (a trans/non-binary activist.) Why was she using her transition to sell photographs?

Over the next couple of years, she made many inconsistent statements about her trans identity. E.g. she was either thinking about a breast reduction, or definitely wanted full top surgery. Or she wasn't intending to transition to male, but her genitals were going to change.

• "The Disney Belle dress she tried to wear for Hallowe’en but couldn’t (due to testosterone therapy and working out to make her physique more masculine.)" "Surgery to remove her breasts is what she wants most. She is already on testosterone, and seeing changes to her voice and stamina." (The Times, November 2015) Jack bought, and wore, the dress the previous June. If she was seeing physical changes on testosterone, then she must have been taking it for at least a couple of months already.
  
  
• "She wears a chest binder most days (...) and is contemplating a chest reduction." "Monroe is taking testosterone." "'She' is fine (...) I’m not transitioning to male. So I don’t feel I need to be referred to as 'he.'" (The Guardian, June 2016)
  
  
• "(Jack) prefers the gender-neutral pronoun 'they' and title 'Mx.'" "Monroe has worn a chest binder for years and is considering a breast reduction", "(Jack) started taking testosterone," "I have facial hair now." "I'm not going into the ins and outs (to my son) about how my genitals are going to change." (Huffington Post, September 2016) In this article she says she needed testosterone anyway for a hormone imbalance. But in a July 2016 Q&A on Mumsnet she claimed she naturally had "alarmingly high" testosterone, and heavily implied she was intersex. If she has high testosterone why would she need to take more?

During this time, her press appearances and photos on social media did not show any signs of the physical changes she said she was experiencing (facial hair, a deeper voice, and bigger muscles.)

Jack has since reverted to she/her pronouns and has not mentioned hormones or medical transition since 2017. In a 2020 interview she said she took testosterone for only 6-9 months, and never intended to medically transition, just "knock some of (her) edges off." This doesn't fit with the details she gave previously - she had seemingly started hormones by around September 2015 at the latest, yet was still taking them by September 2016. She later said in 2024 that she had to stop testosterone for health reasons but still considered herself an "ally" to trans people. A trans person is still trans whether or not they take hormones! For someone who said she hated her breasts so much that she wore a binder every day and was strongly considering top surgery, Jack has no problem using a photo of her breasts to promote a blog post. Or getting giddy when someone commented on them in public.

There's nothing wrong with detransitioning, or finding that your gender identity changes over time. But, as with all things, Jack can never quite keep her version of events straight.

Frequent house moves

Over the course of 2012-2015, Jack moved house several times; she's said that this was due to poverty and eviction. But was it? See 2012 and 2013 sections for more details:

• October 2012: Still in poverty, Jack moved into a cheaper apartment under threat of eviction. At the time, she said it was nicer than her old home at Royal Mews; but now describes it as mouldy.
  
  
• June/July 2013: Jack ostensibly moved into a house share but may in fact have moved back in with her parents.
  
  
• August 2013: Jack moved in with her partner, who she had been dating for between 2 and 7 months.
  
  
• October 2013: She broke up with her partner and moved into temporary accommodation.
  
  
• January 2014: Moved into a new flat.
  
  
• February 2014: Moved in with Allegra in London, just a week into their relationship.
  
  
• September 2014: SB started school in London with Allegra's daughter.
  
  
• June 2015: Jack had broken up with Allegra and she moved back to Southend with her son.
  
  
• October 2015: Finding SB a school place had been difficult because they moved so late in the school year. Ultimately, he went to live with his father in a nearby town and went to school there - as was apparent from the father's public social media. Jack maintained publicly that she was still his primary caretaker.
  
  
• June 2016: SB went back to live with Jack and moved to a school near her in Southend.

That's seven house moves for Jack, and nine for her son, in less than four years. He also attended three schools in two years. Only two of these house moves were due to financial hardship; all the others resulted from her deciding to very quickly get engaged and move in with a new partner, only for the relationship not to last long. While she may have been unlucky, it's dishonest to portray this as her being forced to move because of poverty or eviction.