Jack Monroe 8 Wiki

Welcome to Jack Monroe Wiki 8

If you're here and you are new to Jack, please go to Wiki 1, where we have lots of info at the top for new frauen / herren.

Page 8 features curious contradictions, tall tales, and ludicrous lies that don't fit into the timeline on wiki pages 6-7.

There is very little Jack won't lie about, from the pointless/trivial to the offensive. If you've ever followed her on social media or read news articles about her, changing stories or obviously implausible details will quickly become apparent. This page covers just a small selection of examples. Again, all of these are in her own words online or in print.

Types of lies

Here's an excellent post by Tattler Lucky Escape about the different varieties of lie you'll see from Jack. (See wiki page 10 for nicknames used on the threads. SB is Jack's nickname for her son; Big Dave is her father; and LJC is her ex-partner Louisa Compton.)

"In general, I think she employs three broad types of lie:

1) Lies based on fantasy
I think she often invents or embellishes stories in her head which either feel true, or feel like they should be true. Maybe she's upset or ashamed or embarrassed about something that happened, and she comes up with a fantasy of how things would have played out if the upset hadn't occurred.

I think these are similar to pathological lies - and, at the time she tells them, she thinks they're so close to being true that she doesn't feel like she's lying at all. They're also the lies that are the easiest for other people to spot - and they've tripped her up often. "Big Dave fired his cannon in the street" is a good example of the type.

2) Lies based on obfuscating or deflecting or paltering
I suspect these are a learned reaction to being called out over the first type. So she tells a lie based on fantasy, and then reflexively covers it in a layer of tricksily-worded indirection. With these, there's often a possible interpretation of her words that contain a grain of truth, but it wouldn't be their natural meaning. She uses them to build 'gotcha' traps to pre-emptively discredit anyone who might call her out, and to give ammunition to her stans.

Although she tells these deliberately with an intent to deceive, she doesn't believe they're actually lies - and she gets extremely upset when people accuse her of lying because of them. "I've only ever had one cat" is a perfect example.

3) Lies that benefit her, or harm or upset a specific person
These are the nastiest, are often broadcast the most widely, and are the hardest for outsiders to see. Without specific knowledge, they look like they might well be true - and that specific knowledge might only be held by one or two people, who now can't say anything because it would bring them into conflict with literally millions of people who believe the lie. Basically an extreme form of gaslighting, and usually told deliberately.

I suspect her parents and SB's dad have been frequent targets. SB too, probably. Likely LJC during their relationship as well. Many stories about her childhood and upbringing would fit in this category, as would the 2019-era alcoholism stories in the Guardian, and aspects of HH2."

All three types of lie, and more, have/are/will be used by Jack to raise money via Patreon, donations, and fundraisers with no accountability as to where it's gone and what she has used it for.

Lies about her finances/spending

1. Jack has released seven books and has commissions, paid-for public events, had a popular website with adverts before she closed it, and generally a successful career; but claims to only pay herself the living wage and talks about financial struggles.

2. Jack built her media career around talking about her life as a young single mother living in poverty, and she insists she has always been her son's primary carer. Over the years she has repeatedly asked for donations or for people to buy her books, saying that she had a child to provide for. But in 2016, Jack's son lived with his father and went to a nearby school (as was apparent from the father's public social media) while she was claiming he was still with her. It has also been alleged by multiple Tattle posters who knew Jack when she was poor in 2012 that at this time, she and her son's father had shared custody and he spent half of each week with her. This is very different from what she says that she was desperately trying to provide for her child, unable to let anyone know she needed help because she was afraid he'd be taken into care.

3. Jack talks a lot about wanting to buy a "forever home" for her son, saying that their many house moves have caused instability in his life and they have never lived anywhere that felt like "theirs." She claims that they have never even been allowed to paint the walls of any of the rental properties they lived in. This is evidently not true, as she shared photos on social media of her renovated kitchen that she said she designed herself (before, after.) When she won damages in a legal case against Katie Hopkins (see wiki page 6), she said she had bought either a new floor or new carpet and fitted it herself. Why would a landlord who won't even let tenants paint allow them to replace the floor or carpet? See also her overly-defensive response to someone who pointed out that she had painted the kitchen in a previous home.

4. She describes her current house as a "shitty" and "shabby" bungalow, implying she couldn't afford to live anywhere better. It is in fact a spacious three-bedroom home with a big garden - here is a collection of photos she's shared on social media. The house has two floors but is technically classed as a type of bungalow. She initially rented the house with her then-partner Louisa Compton, a wealthy TV exec who is estimated to earn over £200,000 a year as Head of News at Channel 4. Jack said they shared rent and bills equally; but that still suggests that between them they could afford a nice property. A man that Jack tried to buy a flat from alleges she told him she chooses to pay more than £2000 a month in rent so she can live in one of the wealthiest areas of Southend - see wiki page 4.

5. Jack claims to spend only £20 a week on food shopping, but this claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny (see wiki page 1.) Examples:

• Jack once tweeted a photo of what she claimed were all her groceries for the week for three people, adding up to less than £20. This contained very little protein or fat and less than half the recommended calorie intake. A day or two later, she posted about cooking with a host of ingredients not included in that food shop. So many people called her out that she eventually admitted it was a "top-up" shop, but still insisted she didn't need more than £20 a week for groceries.
  
  
• When asked why she supposedly had just £20 a week for groceries when living with a wealthy partner (Louisa Compton), Jack said that they split rent and bills equally and she did not even know what Louisa earned. Aside from it being hardly fair to do this when one partner earns considerably more than the other, why is it that Louisa seemingly didn't contribute any money for food (not even another £20?)
  
  
• We believe a Twitter user who regularly posted about getting takeaways and Waitrose deliveries was an alt account of Jack - see wiki page 7 (@Peeky_Mink.) Meanwhile, Jack was posting on her main account about how she was struggling financially. This is especially hypocritical given that she criticised Alfie Deyes for "poverty tourism" because he can afford to shop at Waitrose.
  
  
• Jack went through a stage of tweeting about having to use things like lard or mayonnaise instead of butter, as she didn't have the budget for it. (Notice how she made a point of saying this rather than just saying she was out of butter!) Meanwhile, photos of her kitchen showed that she did have butter, and people talked about this on social media. On one such occasion Jack "clarified" that she could afford butter but it didn't fit into her £20 food budget. On another, she made a sarcastic comment about "detractors" not wanting her to buy butter. No one cares if she does; we just don't like her twisting words to pretend she's struggling and angle for sympathy/donations.

6. In early 2020, Jack was using a SMEG fridge she said was a gift from a friend. She tweeted about the costs of running a fridge, saying she wanted a smaller 130v model as she estimated it would save her more than £200 a year. But a few months later, in May 2020, she bought another big imported SMEG fridge, costing around £2500. See wiki 5; this was at a time when she had been asking for donations, saying she had lost a year's worth of work because of the pandemic.

7. In one of the many tweets sent around the time of her viral Twitter thread in January 2022, Jack claimed to have never bought a new TV. This is in direct contradiction to a previous Twitter rant in which she alleged a delivery driver had left her new TV on the doorstep.

8. Jack has often said that she buys very little for her son because she can't afford it and/or wants him to appreciate the value of money. This doesn't explain why she's repeatedly shared photos of him wearing new football shirts or expensive trainers, or why pictures of her house show multiple games consoles and things like expensive Lego sets that probably aren't hers. It is unlikely these things come from her son's father, who's on an average income (again, as his public social media shows) and has other children to provide for.

Strangely, Jack doesn't seem to think paying for her son's medical care is a priority - she once tweeted that he was being treated for a health condition and said "NHS, before anyone starts!"

9. On July 15 2022, she shared a blog post called The Curse Of The Poverty Hangover, Ten Years On - a follow-up to "Hunger Hurts." She stated in this post that she could no longer sustain herself as a writer and was desperately looking for any kind of work she could get to pay her bills. She claimed to be paying 94% of her earnings on rent due to her ex-partner (Louisa Compton) leaving her as the sole tenant responsible, and said that she needed to move into an affordable one-bedroom apartment to save money. Also saying her financial situation was so desperate that she could not afford utilities or basic toiletries; forcing her to use to use solar-powered lights intended for the garden, and boil down soap to make her own shower gel. (It would be far cheaper and more practical just to wash with the soap.) Jack had repeatedly pleaded poverty throughout the year, saying she couldn't afford to have the heating or lights on, use the TV, or have baths.

Just a week before this blog post, on July 8, Jack had donated £78 to fellow online grifter iamsarahjjay. That's a lot of money for someone in the situation she said she was in! She did not move home after the blog post, and is alleged to have told a man she intended to buy a flat from that she chose to pay more than £2000 a month in rent so she could live in one of the wealthiest parts of Southend. (See wiki page 4.) Throughout the year she had a number of corporate sponsorships; and her social media showed that she could afford a lot of discretionary spending including a trip to Dublin on a whim, new tattoos, lip fillers, and a designer pedigree dog. Why, then, was she consistently saying she was poor - always with links to her PayPal, patreon, and website "tip jar" up?

10. Subsequently, in January 2023, Jack said in her Guardian interview with Simon Hattenstone that she was now financially solvent again after signing a book deal. Later in the year, she stated at the Edinburgh Festival that she does not accept more than £5000 for a book advance because she fears getting into debt again - suggesting that if she fails to "out-earn" the advance, she would have to repay it. This is not the case. An advance is effectively payment for writing the book; an author would only ever have to repay it if they fail to deliver the manuscript. She is either blatantly lying about never accepting more than £5000, or she has been poorly advised by an agent who for some reason doesn't want to make any money. (The agent earns commission so it's in their interest to try and get the author as big an advance as possible.)

From what Jack had said in 2022 about her financial situation, she'd need a lot more than £5000 to be back on her feet after being so poor that she couldn't afford utilities or even shower gel. Whether she signed a book deal at all is also questionable; as of 2025, there is no sign of any new books by Jack due to be published.

11. On an old Google account, Jack left ratings of places she'd visited and businesses she'd used. This indicates that in 2019-20 she had regular meals/drinks out; stayed in a number of four- and five-star hotels; and visited at least two private members' clubs that both cost over £1000 a year in membership fees. Some of these things may have been for work or compensated, but they definitely were not all - e.g. several of them were during Jack's trip to Edinburgh, which she paid for herself and it wasn't work-related. (See wiki page 7.) This continued into the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when she was asking for donations and saying she had lost a year's worth of work.

12. Jack has visible Botox and lip fillers but repeatedly denies that she gets them. She's tried to pass off her fillers as swollen lips from a nervous habit of chewing, or eating Pringles - yes, really! A clinic for "injectables" named her as one of their customers when she had appeared on TV.

Lies about where her possessions came from

Jack owns a huge amount of stuff, see here for examples of photos that show that her house is very cluttered. Wiki page 10 contains a detailed list of verifiable items she has displayed on her social media. She will often justify having so many possessions by saying that they were gifts, handed down from friends/family, or bought from charity shops for very little money. Even with that, it's still apparent she buys a lot of things - often at times when she is asking for donations or saying she cannot afford necessities.

Here are just some of the numerous examples of her lying about how much something cost and/or saying she got it for free, in a charity shop, etc:

• Burberry scarf (around £350): apparently found "half buried in mud."
  
  
• After spending over £100 on battered old cutlery in January 2022 on eBay and claiming some of it was included by the seller for free, which the eBay listing disproved, Jack gave her grifting tin a rattle within the same week, saying she needed money to fix her website.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cotswold furniture: According to Jack's now-infamous January 2023 interview with Simon Hattenstone, she had a habit of buying furniture in drunken online shopping binges at the worst of her alcoholism. She claimed she sent most of the furniture back when she sobered up, and she and Louisa would share the cost of whatever they decided to keep. She told a similar story when a follower asked about one of her Cotswold sideboards, saying that she'd bought it in a sale and convinced Louisa to pay for half. However, Jack had Cotswold furniture in her house before she moved in with Louisa; and posted about getting another sideboard (worth around £1000) delivered very shortly after they broke up.
  
  
• Dickies boiler suit for her son's Halloween costume (£35-£50 new): Jack said it came from an Army & Navy store. Army & Navy do not normally stock Dickies and would have had far cheaper options available.
  
  
• Neon sign (around £150-£300 depending on retailer): Supposedly a gift that the delivery driver left in Jack's shed, and she didn't know it had arrived until weeks later when her AA sponsor found it in her shed. By then, "the paperwork was eaten by mice" so she has no idea where it came from. Did she expect people to believe this? She was probably counting on her followers not being able to tell the difference between this sign and a cheap one from Amazon etc.
  
  
• Numerous goods she claims to have found in charity shops including a Magimix, new Le Creuset, Denby bowl, and Vivienne Westwood clothes. The bowl was new and still available online; it seemingly came from a dinner set costing around £200. Why would you buy this and donate it on its own just a couple of weeks or months later?
  
  
• Nicole Farhi jacket (at least £200 new): Supposedly cost 50p from a British Heart Foundation charity shop. It's apparent from the photo that the tag isn't attached to the jacket; which looks like it's been placed on a floor but the photo is cropped to give the appearance of it hanging up.
  
  
• Large number of shirts: Jack says she bought these from a "vintage thrift store", suggesting it is a charity shop and the shirts cost very little. In fact the store is a regular vintage clothing shop, sells clothes at a markup, and prices can be high.
  
  
• Dress, seemingly Needle & Thread or a similar brand (around £200-£350): Present from a long-term reader of Jack's blog. She has said many times on the blog that she rarely wears dresses or goes to formal events, so it seems strange that a fan would choose this for her and know her exact size and unexpectedly buy her an expensive gift.
  
  
• Tiffany HardWear pearl hoop earrings (£1150) and Olive Leaf pearl studs (£550) - Initially said the hoops were Etsy "dupes", then admitted they were real and and said her then-boyfriend bought her both pairs of earrings after she lost the dupes. She claimed he worked part time in a shop but Tattler who has connections to him was told he in fact has a C-suite job in a finance-related field.
  
  
• Russell & Bromley "Chester" loafers (£245): Claims to have "accidentally" walked out of a photoshoot still wearing them and then sent an apology to the stylist, who let her keep them.
  
  
• A new treadmill and exercise bike that her son supposedly found in the street
  
  
• William Morris "Strawberry Thief" curtains (ranging from around £65 to £250): She claims these were a gift from a friend, but the curtains are made to measure and are on an obviously awkwardly shaped window.
  
  
• In 2012, when Jack first started her blog, she claimed to have furnished her entire apartment with things she found in the bin shed - including an exercise bike, a double mattress, chairs, a printer and scanner, two bedside tables, lamps, cushions, and a chest of drawers.
  
  
• Sledge - "found" in a garden in West London. We hope she's lying and bought this herself - rather than effectively stealing it from someone's garden!
  
  
• Chesterfield chair - worth £785, supposedly found by Jack in a skip.

The issue here isn't "Jack is allowed to have nice things!" It's that she asks for donations, says she can't afford necessities, and preaches about poverty and wealth inequality - but her obvious, conspicuous spending can be seen on her social media. She owns a huge number of designer goods and spends money on things like lip fillers and high-end furniture, while telling her audience that (for instance) she can't afford utilities or basic toiletries or that she has to use a children's bank card to stick to her budget.

Campaigning

Here are some claims Jack makes about her work as a "poverty campaigner" that don't hold up to scrutiny:

1. She created the "Vimes Boots Index" or worked with the Office for National Statistics to change their reporting on prices
   
   The "Vimes Boots Index" (VBI) is Jack's idea for an index showing how much food prices have risen with inflation. That is included in official figures published by the Office for National Statistics, but she claims these figures are vastly inaccurate and the true increase is far higher. The VBI's title comes from the novel Man at Arms by Terry Pratchett, in which the character Sam Vimes reflects on the hidden costs of poverty, using his military boots as an example. Pratchett's daughter Rhianna, who is in charge of his estate, gave permission for Jack to use the Vimes name.
   
   Jack first mentioned the VBI in January 2022, saying she could compile it over a weekend. A short time later, the ONS announced changes to the way inflation statistics were reported, in order to better reflect what consumers were actually paying. Jack said she was "delighted" by this. A Freedom of Information Act request shows that she did have an informal meeting with the ONS in January 2022, but that's the only involvement she ever had with them. Yet, later that year she claimed in a BBC interview to have been working "in collaboration" with the ONS to accurately reflect the impact of inflation on food prices. In another interview she said that "the VBI is sanctioned and signed off by the ONS." They can't sign off on the VBI because it doesn't exist! All she has ever publicly produced of the VBI is here.
   
   The last time Jack mentioned the VBI was in December 2024, when she stated on Bluesky that she is still working on it and admitted it is a far more ambitious project than she first thought. Nevertheless, her supporters have falsely claimed that the VBI is complete and published, and she has done nothing to correct this lie. It has also been repeated by the economist Tim Harford in his book The Truth Detective (which is intended to teach children about fact-checking!) and by Bryce Elder in the Financial Times. Elder claimed that the ONS's low-cost grocery items analysis is the VBI and that Jack was involved in its creation. Again, how can this be the case when we know she's had no involvement with the ONS beyond a single meeting, and when she herself admits the VBI isn't complete?
   
   
2. Jack successfully put pressure on Asda not to discontinue its budget range
   
   On 19th Jan 2022, Jack tweeted that Asda had removed certain Smart Price items (the budget range) from her local branch in Shoebury. A local Tattler went to check and these items were still on the shelves and in good stock. Photos of items in Shoebury Asda. Jack went on to say that Asda, and other major supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury's, planned to completely discontinue their budget ranges (an argument she also published in the Guardian.) This was supposedly done in an effort to force shoppers to buy higher priced own brands. Sales of supermarket budget ranges vastly increased in 2020-21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis, so continuing to sell them would bring in more money than not.
   
   Shortly afterwards, in March 2022, Asda announced that it had re-branded its budget range as Just Essentials with a new look and wider range of products. Smart Price had been vanishing from shelves because it was being phased out and replaced with Just Essentials - so there was still a budget range on offer. The BBC, Guardian, and other outlets have given the false impression that Jack's reporting put public pressure on Asda to keep its prices low or to introduce Just Essentials. This is not the case. Re-branding and launching a product range takes months or years, and again, the reason why Smart Price was being phased out was as part of the existing plan to replace it with Just Essentials.
   
   Tesco and Sainsbury's also re-designed their budget ranges to look more like brands, in an effort to compete with Aldi and Lidl. For instance, Sainsbury's no longer sells the Basics range - which Jack says she religiously bought when she was poor - but does sell Stamford Street Co. They're the same products at the same price point, just re-named and packaged differently. There is no sign that any major supermarket has, or plans to, completely stop selling a budget range. Jack has never admitted that she was wrong, nor has she corrected the misconception that she did something to keep Asda's prices down.
   
   
3. Jack invented Healthy Start vouchers
   
   In the UK, Healthy Start vouchers entitle families to free vitamins, fruit, vegetables, and milk. The scheme is open to mothers on state benefits, who are pregnant or have children below school age. Healthy Start was first introduced in 2005 (see page 11 of this review of the scheme from 2013.) At that time Jack was 17 years of age, had just left school, and was working odd jobs. She was in no position to change or influence public policy. Furthermore, Healthy Start was a replacement for the Welfare Food Scheme, which had been running since 1940! Evidently Jack did not invent the scheme.
   
   Despite this, her ex-partner Louisa Compton claimed Healthy Start was based on "an idea (Jack) had at a meeting with Henry Dimbleby." At best, Jack did nothing to correct this. At worst, she herself has been privately saying that the scheme was her idea - otherwise, what made Louisa think so?
   
   
4. Jack has been working to expose the truth about austerity deaths
   
   Jack has repeatedly stated that she keeps ring binders full of coroners' reports for deaths caused by Tory austerity policies, implying she had access to confidential details. She claimed to be using these as research for a book, which has not materialised (and probably never will - she last mentioned it around 2017.) In a FOI request to the Chief Coroner's office, it was confirmed that they'd had no correspondence with Jack and she did not have access to any information that wasn't already in the public domain. We hope the whole story was a lie - it would be pretty ghoulish to print out coroners' reports about the deaths of strangers.
   
   
5. She "headlined" an event at the House of Commons for Single Parent's Day 2022
   
   Jack claimed to be "headlining" this event and said it "had her name all over it." This is not true - it was hosted by Rupa Huq MP and Jack's name wasn't anywhere on it. She further said she was admitted without a visitor's pass because the policeman on duty recognised her and called her an "absolute legend." When challenged on this, she admitted that she did have her passport with her and a named MP as her contact.
   
   The charity Gingerbread, in aid of single parents, sponsored the event. When a Tattler questioned why they were partnering with Jack as she wasn't a single parent, Gingerbread said that's OK because they support anyone who "identifies" as one. That makes sense for people whose partner may be working away, have an illness/disability, or not be actively involved in raising the children for whatever reason. But Jack describes her son's father as a very supportive co-parent, and at the time was living with a partner she expected to marry. It's hardly fair to compare her with people who are actually struggling because they lack support.

Threats/bullying/harassment

Warning: Jack likes to talk about being threatened, harassed, doxxed, etc. - often in extremely graphic and unpleasant detail. Expect links in this section to contain graphic descriptions of violence, abuse, uncensored slurs, death/rape threats, and discussion of suicide.

1. Jack regularly claims that she has been doxxed on Tattle, however, while many Tattlers have easily managed to find her house due to the many photos and bits of information she puts on her public social media channels, no one has ever put her address out publicly on this forum.

2. Jack says she has been repeatedly ostracised and bullied because she's a single mother. She says that people assume she is promiscuous, that strangers tell her she "should have kept her legs shut", and her own brother rejected her over it. She also describes her son as "born out of wedlock" as if this is shocking or unusual. But when Richard Littlejohn suggested in the Daily Mail that Jack chose to have a child without a father involved so she could live on benefits, she responded that co-parenting families are common in today's world and no one else gives her a hard time over it. See below for more on the Littlejohn article.

3. In her Black Lives Matter video (see wiki page 7) she said she doesn't experience racism because she is white. But then said in comments that she does experience racism because her father is half-Greek, and her visibly unwashed hands when preparing food are actually just natural skin pigmentation. She has also claimed in a blog post that she gets called slurs for Black people, which seems unlikely, as she is visibly not Black.

4. In 2016, Jack anonymously gave a Buzzfeed interview about her experience of domestic abuse, which included her partner making fun of her for "not being butch." In 2020, she posted a Twitter thread about wearing her Burberry jacket for the first time. She said she had bought it in 2015 but had never worn it until now because her partner at the time (Allegra) told her she "wasn't butch enough" to wear it. Funny how two of her partners came out with the same, very specific comments. Jack had previously worn the jacket in September 2016.

5. Some of her accounts of homophobia/transphobia:

• In a 2013 blog post, Jack claimed she looked so masculine that a thug in a bar thought she was a gay man and punched her; but also so feminine that people couldn't believe she was a lesbian. Which is it?
  
  
• In the blog post where she came out as non-binary (October 2015), Jack said that on multiple occasions, airport security staff in the USA had yelled "what ARE you?" at her because they couldn't understand why a masculine-looking person named Jack had "female" in their passport. It would be obviously offensive to say this, and they could be sued. Even though there was less public awareness about trans people in the early-mid 2010s, staff in a busy airport would still have seen them every day! Did Jack think there were no trans people, or masculine women, in the USA?
  
  
• She gets asked to leave the women's toilets, gay men often flirt with her, and a gay man in Prowler (an "adult" shop) thought she was male and tried to grope her. (Mumsnet Q&A, July 2017. Tattle doesn't allow linking to Mumsnet, but the thread in question, titled "I'm Jack Monroe. Ask me anything" can be found through Google.) Prowler sells sex toys, but it's still a shop, not a bar or club. Anyone trying to grope people in there could expect to be kicked out.
  
  
• After her boyfriend broke up with her, Jack said he had criticised her because her wardrobe made her "look like a lesbian." (Twitter, July 2022.) It seems strange he seemingly didn't know that she had publicly identified as a lesbian for a decade or so before dating him.

7. Along similar lines, Jack claims she frequently gets backhanded "compliments" about how people think she's so good-looking they don't believe she is gay or was ever poor. Does this really happen or is it the not so subtle humblebrag it sounds like?

• "I've been told I'm 'too pretty to be gay'", "I've (...) had close male friends I take to events because I don’t want to upstage the bride." (June 2013)
  
  
• Jilly Luke wrote an article for the website Left Futures, expressing the opinion that Jack presented a "cosy" image of poverty that was palatable to middle class media; referring to Jack being "conventionally attractive" among other things. Jack posted an angry response where she repeatedly highlighted the "conventionally attractive" comment as if it were worse than anything else in the article. (August 2013. WARNING: link discusses suicide in very graphic detail.) In an email exchange with Left Futures, Jack said she reacted this way partly in response to "every Daily Mail commenter that said something similar, every piece of hate mail that said I was too pretty to be poor."
  
  
• "I was told I was 'only in the papers for being gorgeous'" "A Norwegian journalist advised me outside Parliament to 'court the tabloid press because you have a good body.'" (May 2014)
  
  
• "(People say I'm) too pretty to be a real Guardian columnist." "Someone else commented that I had great hair." (May 2014)

8. Jack says that Essex Police actively monitors her social media for any threats to her, as they have a department specifically devoted to protecting public figures. She claims that police will unexpectedly come over to perform "welfare checks" when she has been harassed on social media, and someone was given a prison sentence for threatening her online. (See: Twitter, June 2022; Edinburgh International Book Festival, August 2022; Twitter, September 2022.) In response to a Freedom of Information request, Essex Police stated that while they have a team that deals with online threats/abuse generally, it doesn't monitor anyone's social media (and presumably is not just for public figures.) Since no one has ever seen an explicit threat to her on her social media, it would have to have been in her messages/emails, which she herself would have had to show to the police.

9. In October 2013, Richard Littlejohn published an opinion piece by Richard Littlejohn in which he made various criticisms of Jack. These included falsely suggesting that she had chosen to quit work to live on benefits, and that her son's father is not in the picture. She published a response on her blog and in the Guardian. At different times the Daily Mail has published other criticisms of Jack, including over her comments about David Cameron.

She has since repeatedly falsely claimed that the Mail said things about her they did not:

• "(I have) defended about seventeen different versions of events of how I got pregnant and what happened next, including a Daily Mail piece asking how lesbians get pregnant in the first place." (Blog post, May 2015.) No such article has ever appeared in the Mail. Funnily enough, Jack herself has given multiple conflicting stories around how her child came to be born - see wiki page 6!
  
  
• In a panel talk at the 2017 Greenbelt Festival (from 37:50) Jack said that Littlejohn published a "hatchet job" in which he made "unfounded allegations" about her, her son's father, her parents, and her private life; speculated on how she became pregnant when she is a lesbian; and included "unflattering photographs." She implied he had targeted her because she was transgender - referencing Lucy Meadows, a trans woman in whose suicide Littlejohn was implicated due to an article he had published about her. In fact, Littlejohn's article was published two years before Jack came out as non-binary/trans. He did not comment on her parents or other members of her family, nor mention her being a lesbian. Her own original response to him expressed surprise that he hadn't said anything about her sexual orientation!
  
  
• In April 2017 Jack claimed that she had spoken to the Daily Mail about her past as a sex worker after multiple ex-partners threatened to sell the story to the media. Again, no such article has ever been published.

10. After becoming a vegan, she received graphic death threats from other vegans because she had previously shared photos of seafood she cooked. Notice the similarity between this story and the many others she's told about various threats made against her.

11. She told Simon Hattenstone in January 2023 that, among other things, she doesn't answer her door to strangers; rarely goes out by herself after dark; brings security with her to events; and has received death threats. Despite this, she often posts on social media about where she is and what she's doing, while she is still there! She has repeatedly claimed that she has a bodyguard for any events she needs to attend, however, the bodyguard has never been seen or photographed with her.

Health

Alcoholism/addiction

Autism/ADHD

Mental health

WARNING: Jack often talks in detail about suicide and similarly sensitive aspects of her mental health. Please use caution when navigating this section and all links.

Jack claims to have a number of mental health conditions and to have experienced myriad traumatic circumstances over her life (see a partial list here.) Among her claimed conditions include psychosis and PTSD resulting from poverty. While Jack is not necessarily lying, there are so many inconsistencies that not everything she says can possibly be true; and it's evident that she uses her mental health as a way of deflecting criticism. A Tattle user alleges they were outright told by a journalist that "(Jack's) mental health issues are what are stopping them publishing."

Other health issues

Rheumatoid arthritis - Jack says she was diagnosed in October 2016. She has since claimed to be so severely affected (especially "right foot, hand, knee and hip") it leaves her regularly requiring a walking stick. On International Women's Day 2020 she posted a picture of herself delivering a complete speech standing on tiptoes, stating she always delivers speeches this way and has done for years. Apparently as she can stand like this for 12 minutes (and therefore knows when to start finishing up), due to her previous ballet training.

Heart disease - In 2015, Jack claimed she had recently had three suspected minor heart attacks in a short period of time, and had now signed up to run a marathon. This is obviously implausible and the cookery writer we call TD (Trifle Defender) called out Jack in comments.

Intersex condition - In a Mumsnet Q&A (which can be found through Google), Jack spoke about her trans/non-binary identity. She suggested she is actually intersex, saying she is "female enough to carry a child, male enough to have intimate physical abnormalities and an alarmingly high amount of testosterone." She has never mentioned this again before or since. See wiki page 7 - she says she took testosterone for 6-9 months in 2015-16. If she naturally has high testosterone, why would she need to take more?

Lactose intolerance - Jack claims she has this and that she can only stomach small amounts of powdered milk and can't eat ice cream. But she ate two tubs of Ben & Jerry's at once, drinks whole pints of full cream milk, uses whole milk in coffee, and can eat a full packet of bourbon biscuits that contain dairy. Her excuse for this is that her lactose intolerance "fluctuates." Lactose intolerance can develop with age (however Jack suggests hers is hereditary and her son also has it), but doesn't fluctuate or go away over time.

Anaphylaxis - Jack said at the Edinburgh Festival in 2022 that she goes into anaphylactic shock from stress and needs an Epi-Pen. Stress does not cause anaphylactic shock - she could have meant she has Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) which mimics anaphylaxis. Either way, she'd find it difficult to be prescribed an Epi-Pen. Even people who have life-threatening allergies find it hard to get one as there has been a worldwide shortage of them since at least 2018. She said she kept "2 flights upstairs in a Sainsbury's bag", which wouldn't help her if she were to go into anaphylaxis and needed it suddenly - as commenters pointed out.

A running list of ailments Jack has claimed to have:

• ADHD (severe)
• Alcoholism
• Allergies- tomatoes, onions, shellfish ***Coopsie**
• Anaphylaxis
• Anxiety
• Arthritis (severe)
• Asthma
• Autism
• BFRB
• Bipolar disorder
• Borderline diabetes/hypoglycemia
• Broke 46/47 bones in her foot
• Broken ribs
• Broken toe
• Burnout (severe)
• Chilblains
• Concussion (severe)
• Covid 19 and long Covid
• Depression
• Disfigured leg
• Distended ribs
• Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hereditary)
• Eye injury (see @BeautifulTrauma )
• Fucked up lungs (death rattle)
• Hair loss
• Hay fever (severe)
• Heart problems
• Heart attack
• Hives
• Hypersensitivity (wrists)
• Immunocompromised
• Lactose intolerant
• Mouth ulcers and ouchy mouth (severe)
• Panic attacks
• Poor mental health
• ***Popping Knee***
• Port wine stains
• Psychosis
• PTSD
• ***Respiratory problems***
• Scarring
• Sinusitis (chronic)
• Sprained shoulder
• Sprained thumb (washing up injury)
• Splinter (severe)
• Stutter
• ***Too many Teeth***
• Trauma
• Weakened knees
• Whiplash
• Drug addiction
• Migraines with convulsions / flailing arms and legs
• Seizures
• Rejection sensitivity disorder
• OCD
• 50p sized hole in lip
• Laryngitis
• Shoulder calcification
• Hyper-independence
• Eating disorder (13 years in recovery)
• Hives caused by dogs
• Needs shoulder replacement
• (Mostly eats with a spoon these days)
• Intersex

Tall tales

Train chaos

Jack can never seem to get on a train without incident. Here are just a few of her stories about this:

• Her "chunky Mediterranean arse" saved her when she fell under a train. If your entire lower body were under a train like Jack says, you probably wouldn't stand a chance! No, we don't know what really happened, although a Tattler hazarded a guess.
  
  
• Being asked to look after a stranger's newborn on a train while the parent went to the toilet
  
  
• A man sat next to her in an otherwise empty carriage and made her feel uncomfortable so she kicked him in the shin
  
  
• Numerous, totally not made up conversations she supposedly had with her then five/six-year-old son on trains, such as the nature of God and discussing UNICEF statistics
  
  
• A woman muttered "white trash shouldn't breed!" at her as she was getting off a train. Jack responded "bitch please, this bag is Cath Kidston!" The expression "white trash" is rarely used in the UK, especially not aimed at a Guardian columnist with a Cath Kidston bag.
  
  
• She dropped her iPhone and lost the Tile (a Bluetooth-based tracker, similar to an Air Tag) while on a train. A couple of weeks later she was on a train again, spotted a Tile on the floor and discovered it was hers!
  
  
• She ranted on Twitter about how she was trapped in a train carriage alone after the train stopped in a tunnel and the lights switched off. Saying this had happened to her before and it was lucky she didn't "boot a fucking door in." She then argued with the train company's staff when they replied asking her not to swear.
  
  
• Having to get off a train and sit on a log in a playground to do an urgent last-minute radio interview, accompanied by highly staged photos. This was blatantly "inspired" by two different gags in The Thick Of It (Nicola getting off a train to make calls / Mannion having to stand on a children's slide to use his phone)

Fantasies of violence/assault

One of Jack's favourite stories to tell is how she has supposedly threatened or physically assaulted someone; always without repercussions. She doesn't sound tough or funny, she sounds completely deranged! Examples:

• She carried a knife after receiving death threats. As well as being highly dangerous, it is illegal to carry a knife in the UK - so an interview in the national press wouldn't be the best place to admit to it.
  
  
• Verbally abusing Michael Portillo when the cameras were off while filming The Week. (See wiki page 6: Jack falsely claimed he had told her she "should have kept her legs shut." He did not, as can be seen from a transcript.)
  
  
• In an article about women's safety on public transport (warning - link discusses sexual assault): "For the record, boys, these days I’m yet to meet a man I can’t take down in a fair fight."
  
  
• Throwing a book at her art director's head
  
  
• "Accidentally" kicking a stranger's shin (not on the train; this was two years earlier!)
  
  
• Punching her own brother
  
  
• Throwing a pencil case at Kelvin MacKenzie during a TV appearance

Other

• Her father fired a cannon in a residential street for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. When people pointed out this was probably illegal, she insisted he'd got permission to do it.
  
  
• She and a friend went out to the beach to see the sunrise, but ended up at the MOD firing range at Shoeburyness and she was almost shot. Jack has lived locally for most of her life so would know where the shooting range was. At the time, her father had recently posted on Facebook warning visitors about it - Jack appears to have made this story up (or actually gone down there!) just to provoke him.
  
  
• A mortgage advisor offered to "overwrite (her) awful credit score" in exchange for touching her feet. It says a lot that Jack would think this a funny anecdote rather than a worrying sign of a predator!
  
  
• Being recognised by a shop cashier who asked if her name was Monroe like "the famous author."
  
  
• She contacted a hotel ahead of time to ask that they remove alcohol from the minibar because she was a recovering alcoholic. Then they filled it with water, Yakult, smoothies, juice, and kombucha for her. By all appearances she staged this photo herself (a hotel wouldn't put an open carafe of water inside the door of a fridge, nor would they be likely to provide Yakult or kombucha because fermented drinks can be a health and safety risk. Also it's a full size fridge not a minibar!)
  
  
• Claiming that she was flirting with a TV star, and asking strangers on a Facebook group for advice about when to sleep with him. She dropped hints that it was Russell Brand, who at this time had a new baby and was about to marry his partner. What did Jack think it said about her that she'd be open to dating him?!
  
  
• Insisting she posed in a bath full of coppers for the Guardian photo shoot in January 2023. One of the makeup artists on the shoot posted a BTS video, clearly showing it was just a few coppers on a blanket.
  
  
• Having to buy phones and laptops for a team of staff when she had, at most, one admin assistant
  
  
• Accidentally drinking from a bottle of soy sauce in the cinema. Tweets long since deleted but "teasers" can be seen here and here. She claimed she had gone out in the middle of the film to buy drinks from a local shop, and picked up the soy sauce while she was there, only to "accidentally" drink from it in the dark. It's unclear how this was possible unless she had already opened it - a photo showed that the bottle comes with a plastic seal on the cap and a ring pull inside the bottle.
  
  
• Similarly, accidentally eating dog biscuits in her local "dog cafe" when someone was handing the packet around. The dog cafe exists for people to bring their dogs to, and it sells dog treats but does not sell whole packets of (either human or dog) biscuits. Also most dog biscuits do not look, taste, or smell like something intended for human consumption.
  
  
• Jack's former boss at a supermarket told her she would never amount to anything, so, once her book reached #1 on the bestseller list, she went back to the store to gloat every Thursday when the books were re-stocked. At the time, Jack was living in Hammersmith with her then-partner Allegra. She claimed she worked every day of the week, ran "(her) diary like a military schedule", and travelled all over the country for work yet still managed to pick up her and Allegra's children from school every day. So it seems strange that she had time to travel to Southend from London each week just for this! It also seems like a big coincidence that the manager just happened to be putting her book out when she first arrived, and remembered that she'd worked there the best part of a decade ago. See here for just some of the questions this story raises!
  
  
• She shared this not at all staged photo which she said was when she had been trying to caramelise pineapple and the pan caught fire, so she had to hold it out of the window. Where do we start?
  
  - Someone who's worked for the Fire Service should know better than to try to move a burning pan, much less hold it out of a window. Even if you could do this without seriously burning yourself and/or dropping the pan, the oxygen would feed the flames and spread the fire!
  - As can be seen from the many photos Jack has shared of her kitchen, this window is next to the back door. If you were stupid enough to try to take the pan outside, wouldn't you open the door rather than the window?
  - The pan looks clean/unused and its contents are visibly cold and not burnt
  - She isn't left-handed, so it seems unlikely that she'd instinctively grab the pan with her left hand
  - The angle of the photo is above her head, suggesting she had a selfie stick set up and/or someone standing by to take the photo
  
  Aside from being a hilariously obvious lie, it's extremely irresponsible to encourage people to think it would be safe to move a pan that's on fire.
  
  
• Her aunt invented weighted blankets
  
  
• Tories regularly "slide into her DMs" on Twitter late at night (see her speech at the 2023 Greenbelt Festival) which she tries to use as an opportunity to educate them about child poverty!

Other lies about her past/background/family

See wiki page 6 for her flipflopping accounts of whether or not she grew up in poverty and why her family didn't help her when she was poor in 2011-12.

1. Her explanations as to why she left school:

• She chose to leave, implying it was because of bullying (July 2013)
• She "dropped out" of education due to her poor grades (February 2014).
• She just left school (April 2016)
• Her school essentially forced her out of education by withdrawing her from a number of subjects at GCSE, in order to protect the school's place in the league tables (July 2020)
• She was expelled from school "days before the end of the GCSE term" for stealing a scalpel. Her parents didn't find out (September 2023.) Once GCSE students have sat their exams they normally don't have to return to school - so if Jack had finished her exams and wasn't staying for sixth form, why would the school need to expel her? Expulsion in state schools involves a formal process and wouldn't happen without parents/guardians being informed.

2. As above, she claims that there were a number of subjects where the school wouldn't let her sit the GCSE in order to protect its place in league tables. In 2020, she said that the school's policy excluded students from sitting GCSEs in any subject where they were predicted below a B. But seven months later she tweeted that it was including a B, as her predicted Bs and Cs were too low.

3. Other stories about school:

• Her primary school was "permanently in Special Measures" (meaning it had been placed under an improvement plan to prevent its being closed down.) First of all, Special Measures means the school has been given help to improve, with a deadline; otherwise, it faces being closed down. A school can't be "permanently" in Special Measures. Second, OFSTED's website show that the school - now an Academy - has been consistently rated Good since the earliest publicly available report, from 2003. That report also mentions that the school was previously rated Good in 1998, when Jack was still there. (OFSTED inspections only began in 1993, the year she would have started school.) So this is an outright lie. She doesn't even have the excuse of "I never said I went there when it was in Special Measures" - it never has been!
  
  
• Jack "came 86th out of 4000ish" students who took the 11+ (the entrance exam fo grammar school) the same year she did. 4000ish where (in the county, region, etc?) You aren't given a "ranking" like this when you sit the 11+. But she's also said she got into grammar school "by the skin of her teeth" and that her parents wanted her to go to grammar school so she would "have opportunities that they themselves didn't have." This wasn't a problem for her father, who went to the corresponding boys' grammar school (see this, which he submitted to an alumni newsletter), and has a degree so evidently has a university education.
  
  
• Her Head of Year told her she was "only good for making burgers" (or in another version "flipping burgers.") When Jack published her first cookbook, she sent this person a copy with the page folded down on a burger recipe. She's told this story at least three times: on Twitter, in the Times, and in the acknowledgements section of Thrifty Kitchen.

4. She also doesn't seem sure when she left home:

• At age 16 (Xanthe Clay interview, March 2013)
• At age 18 (Guardian article, February 2014)
• At age 20 (Greenbelt Festival panel discussion, August 2017 - 52:50 in the audio)
• At age 16 again (BBC Radio's The Food Programme, April 2022). Now saying she had lived with two housemates. Even in a house share, it is not cheap to rent in Southend, especially for a 16-year-old on minimum wage.
• She had lived in rented accommodation for 17 years (Twitter, May 2022) when she was 34 - indicating she started renting by herself at 17.
• She had been renting for 18 years (blog post, July 2022) i.e. since she was 16
• At age 16, yet again (Hattenstone interview, January 2023)

5. In an essay about giving up her smartphone, Jack said she got her first phone when she was 16 and that she was not allowed one before that. In the same post she describes having to hide the phone under her pillow; why would she need to do this if her parents let her have it and/or she was living independently?

6. Jack says her son's privacy is paramount, and this is why she no longer shares photos of him or features him in press interviews. But she posts so much personal information that someone would be able to find him offline. She also continues to tweet about things he probably doesn't want the world to know, such as health issues he is having.

7. Jack's father used to be in the Army and she has repeatedly said, both in interviews and on social media, that he is a former paratrooper. He is not, and the discussion on her Wikipedia page shows that he personally asked for any mention of him being a paratrooper to be removed (the article is locked for editing to prevent "vandalism.")

8. Jack says she was baptised as a teenager after having been a "long-standing" Girls Brigade leader (a Christian organisation similar to Girl Guides), worship leader at her church, and Sunday school teacher. This would be unlikely; Girls Brigade requires leaders to be at least 18 years of age, and most churches require Sunday school teachers to be over 18 for safeguarding reasons. They typically also expect anyone leading worship to have been baptised already. She may have become a Girls Brigade leader or Sunday School teacher at 18 and then baptised at 19, but she wouldn't be "long-standing." It is also not clear if this is the same church she says expelled her for being gay when she was 15.

9. In her teens, as well as being heavily involved in church activities, Jack was working at her grandfather's guest house every weekend; working in numerous other jobs (see "Jack's Jobs" on wiki page 10); and was quiet and bookish. At the same time, she was also rebelling and listening to Hole; getting drunk at wild parties; and "worked briefly in the s*x industry." She says she listened to Hole on a Discman hidden in her pocket, which is unlikely given that a Discman was hardly pocket-sized. (It's throwing in little details like this that often gives it away that Jack is lying!)

10. On the "Unfiltered" podcast in February 2018, Jack made a number of suspicious claims about poverty, both as a child and adult:

• Her blog was initially anonymous because she was afraid of her son being taken into care if authorities knew she was poor. See wiki page 6 for examples of blog entries from the time period - she repeatedly gave her name as Jack Monroe, named her father (who is well known locally), and named the building she lived in.
  
  
• When she was growing up, her father was so poor he had to hitchhike to work, but he also drove his children to school in his white Ford Transit van. If he had a van and her mother had a Land Rover, why was he hitchhiking? Owning a white van, especially a Ford Transit, is a stereotype of a tradesman - did Jack throw that in there to make her working class background seem more "authentic?" The Ford Transit was first mentioned back in May 2016. She also mentioned (both times) that the van was Fire Service issue; the Fire Service doesn't normally give out company cars to regular staff.
  
  
• Her mother became disabled when Jack was four, and was on "pittance benefits" because Disability Living Allowance, the main benefit given to disabled people who cannot work, didn't exist yet. Jack was four in 1992, which is the same year DLA was introduced.
  
  
• Her parents taught her to read before she started school because they couldn't afford hobbies or activities for their children. Despite this, Jack has said that she had martial arts and ballet lessons as a child and that she continued ballet until she was 17. In an interview about his experience as a foster carer, her father said that he began fostering when Jack was 3-4 years of age, and spent a lot of money renovating the house and buying a bigger car to accommodate the foster children. That might explain why they didn't have much left over when she was starting school!
  
  
• Her primary school was in special measures and she "fit in marvellously" because the school was full of children from the local council estate. If Jack knew as a child that she belonged with the poor children from the estate, why has she also said - again see wiki page 6 - that she did not realise her family was poor until she went to grammar school? See above regarding the school being in special measures.
  
  
• At grammar school she was "the poor kid" while her classmates all had designer clothes, holidays abroad, and mothers who drove Mercedes. Grammar schools are academically selective state schools. Like most grammar schools, Jack's old school attracts wealthy families who don't want to pay for private education; but also has a mix of normal middle class and working class kids. She may be deliberately playing up to stereotypes of poor scholarship students at fee-paying schools, which she was not.
  
  
• She and her brother often walked the six and a half miles home from secondary school because they didn't want to ask their impoverished parents for the bus fare. Under current laws, which came into force in 1996 (before Jack started secondary school), schools must provide free travel for any student aged eight or over who lives more than three miles away.

11. She claims that when she had her son, she insisted on watching her own C-section after a 30-hour labour in total silence, with no pain relief! In a now-deleted post on Instagram she further claimed that she only had paracetamol during labour, despite being in so much agony that she physically tore a radiator off the wall. All this is an obvious lie; doctors wouldn't remove the screen (which is there to establish a sterile surgical zone) and even if they had, she wouldn't have been able to see anything!

12. In a 2012 blog post, Jack said that when working as a call handler for the Fire Service, she had saved a woman's life by directing her to climb out of a first floor window. The woman supposedly survived with just a broken arm. By 2015, Jack had turned this into a story about a lady in her 80s jumping out of a third floor window on the advice of a call handler and surviving with a broken leg. The Guardian repeated that claim.

Even a young, fit person has a low chance of surviving a fall from that height. If an octogenarian survived, you'd expect it to make the news. No such item can be found online, but there is a story of a real incident in Essex in 2007 where a young woman became disoriented during a house fire and was injured jumping out of a window. Maybe Jack took that call or knows the person who did - but then why would she think it appropriate to lie and turn this into a story about her own heroics? The Fire Service does not advise that people try to climb/jump out of windows during a fire. This can cause serious injury, especially in the elderly; a broken leg could easily be fatal for a person in their 70s or 80s. Furthermore, opening windows fuels the fire and could cause an explosion. Jack should know this and should not suggest to others that it would be safe.

Jack also says that she regularly took very distressing calls and was on the line with people as they died in house fires. Here's an example (trigger warning) of how, when someone in comments on a Guardian article questioned her, she came out with a graphic and disturbing account of a caller dying from smoke inhalation while talking to her. Statistics show that comparatively few calls to fire services now involve immediate threat to life, and that deaths in house fires are now less common than ever. As a call handler, most calls she dealt with would likely have been road traffic accidents; bonfires that got out of control; and fires in commercial buildings.

Misc

1. Jack claimed to desperately need a kitchen not designed by someone who hates cooking. Yet, she previously said she designed it herself.

2. Jack had a pop at Jamie Oliver for using capers as apparently they're too specialist, then the following week published a column in the Metro featuring a recipe that included capers. The following week she posted a recipe on her blog that used lime pickle.

3. Driving/owning a car:

• July 2012: Jack wrote that she had chosen not to drive. She said she had taken driving lessons and briefly owned a car before she was poor, but got "bored" so she sold the car and never took her test.
• October 2012: Jack mentioned in a blog post that she was looking for a new home and wanted/needed parking.
• December 2012: Jack told the Mirror she had to sell her car when she became poor.
• November 2013: Jack again said that she sold her car when she was poor, indicating this was before August 2012 (when she sold most of her possessions) - she held the sale at home since she had no car and couldn't go to a car boot sale.
• November 2019: Jack said in an interview that she has never been able to drive because her autism causes difficulties with spatial awareness.
• July 2022: Jack stated in Hunger Hurts 2 that she was desperately looking for a job and had recently applied for work as a train driver. This would be difficult to say the least if she cannot even drive a car!

4. Jack claimed that a friend had pawned her engagement rings (all from relationships that ended before the marriage.) In England and Wales you cannot legally pawn something on someone else's behalf, and ID checks are required - since it's effectively a loan. It would also be a waste to pawn rings you don't want back, when you would get more money for selling them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, some pawnbrokers offer "cash for jewellery" services, so maybe she was referring to that. But you would expect her to know how it works given that she says she's been pawning her belongings since 2012.