Picture London in the 1980s. A frenzy of acid wash jeans and Katharine Hamnett tee’s, Boy George and New Romantics, big shoulder pads and even bigger eye makeup. And hidden among this, dressed up in furs with a head of bleached blonde hair to accompany, was Britain’s most notorious jewellery thief.
Known as “the Godmother” of London’s criminal underworld, ITV’s latest drama tells the story of Joan Hannington’s rise from rags to riches. The youngest of six children born in 1957 to a working class Irish family in London, Joan described being influenced by her own godmother to pursue a different kind of life away from the tough upbringing she had in London’s East End. After being gifted a glass stone bracelet by her glamorous godmother “I dreamed of having money and diamonds,” she said in a piece written for the Scottish Daily Herald,
But things didn’t go quite according to plan to begin. At 17 she was married to her first husband, Ray Pavey, a convicted armed robber 10 years her senior and gave birth to her daughter, Debbie, not long after in 1974. When Ray was convicted a few years later and the couple lost their home, Joan made the difficult decision to place Debbie in foster care in the hopes of protecting her offspring, and sought to build a new life away from her abusive husband.
Instead, she lost custody of her daughter to a wealthy foster family after being caught driving a stolen car in a desperate attempt to visit her. Still determined to turn things around, the glamorous thief faked her references and bagged a job at an exclusive jewellery store in London’s West End, where her criminal career got started.
Sent to the safe at the back of the shop, in a split-second decision Joan acquired a sudden taste for jewels and swallowed a handful of loose diamonds worth £800,000, later sterilising them in a bowl of gin. A talented impersonator with a knack for cheque fraud, Joan built a dazzling empire in the years that followed while managing to remain under the radar.
“Job satisfaction isn’t a crime,” says Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, who plays Joan, in the trailer for the six-part series which has been in the works since May 2023. The emotional drama set to premiere later this month will touch on Joan’s experience juggling being a mother and wife with her blossoming career in London’s criminal underworld.
Joan’s Criminal Career
In her tell-all autobiography I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief, Joan recalls how at first, the diamonds were an opportunity to get some money, buy a flat and eventually get her daughter Debbie back, but when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, she thought “F**k it, I’m going to have a brilliant life then.”
Not long into her time swiping diamonds, Joan met Ronald Thomas Hannington, known as Benny to friends, an antiques dealer and high-class thief who would go on to become her partner in crime and husband, despite being 17 years her senior. Played by actor Frank Dillan in the ITV show, and going by the name Boisie, he brought her along to auctions and taught her how to differentiate between fakes and genuine antiques. It wasn’t long before Joan’s council flat was full of Chippendale chaise longues and oil paintings.
Leading a double life, the thieving duo continued to reside in their council flat so as not to raise any suspicions, while splashing the cash on weekend trips to New York complete with first-class seats and £20,000 cash stuffed into their pockets. And the spending didn’t stop there. Joan claimed to go to the hairdresser for daily maintenance and managed to collect 2,000 pairs of shoes during her notorious career that spanned almost two decades.
Stays at the Ritz, chauffeur’s and a fake American accent, it was a meticulous operation that kept Joan in business. An eye for detail, Joan would frequent high-end jewellery shops and ask to look at diamond rings, getting a cheap replica made based on memory before going back to the shop and faking a sneeze as she switched the real with the duplicate diamond. Things were certainly made easier by the fact it was the 1980s and the technology to spot missing or fake items didn’t exist.
Paying with stolen credit cards, Joan and her husband would stash the stolen gems in private deed boxes at a bank, managing to never get caught besides a close encounter with a sales girl who caught Joan with four rings in her mouth.
Later life
Despite never actually being arrested for any of the stolen jewellery, Joan did find herself spending 30 months in Holloway women’s prison after being caught using a stolen cheque book, but not before her and and Bosie managed to get hitched at Acton Registar Office two weeks before she was sent to serve time. Only 24 at the time, it certainly differs from the lifestyle most 20-something-year-olds today might be accustomed to today.
While her stay in Holloway didn’t deter her, with Joan quickly sweeping up a job at a new jewellery shop where she managed to consume 20 diamond rings and switch over £4000,000 worth of diamond bracelets for fakes, the birth of her son Benny in 1987 signalled a change for Joan.
“When I was 30, Benny Jnr was born, and the thrill of my illegal life began to wane. I did not want my son to travel down the same criminal path,” said Joan in the Scottish Daily Record. When her husband Boisie was killed on a job as he tried to set fire to a house to claim insurance money, leaving her a 33-year-old widow with her son Benny, Joan decided it was time to start anew.
She sold her husband’s antiques shop and moved to Islington in north London, where she began a business renovating old council houses. “I feel no guilt for my crimes. I saw myself as a businesswoman and mother. I did it to ensure a good life for me and my family,” said Joan.
In the years since then, plans for a film after the release of her tell-all autobiography in 2002 were in the works, with Gwyneth Paltrow reportedly becoming interested in the role after reading an article about the diamond snatcher on a flight from London to LA.
Nothing appears to have materialised since then, so Sophie Turner’s take on the glamorous diamond snatcher will be the first time Joan’s story appears on-screen.
Having traded the city to live beside the sea with her dogs in more recent years, Joan helped produce the show that’s directed by the BAFTA award-winning Richard Laxton, working closely with screenswirter Anna Symon on the script. She’s even been snapped smiling alongside Turner and Dillane.
