Shirley Pitts

Shirley Pitts

Shirley Sally Pitts, later Shirley Sally Hawkins, (24 November 1934 – 16 March 1992) was an English fraudster and thief known as the "queen of shoplifters". She was born into poverty and crime and began to steal as a child to feed her siblings. She was educated in shoplifting by the Forty Elephants, also known as the Forty Thieves, and later diversified into other non-violent crime such as fraud. She had seven children from three different fathers. She died of breast cancer and received an elaborate funeral attended by family and criminal acquaintances that received national media coverage in Britain.

Early life and family

Shirley Pitts was born at Lambeth Walk on 24 November 1934 into a family of criminals. Her father was Harry Pitts, an inept criminal who died in Parkhurst Prison in 1962 and her mother was Nell Taylor who became an alcoholic. She was stealing milk and bread by the age of seven in order to provide food for her five siblings after her mother sold their ration books and her father was in prison. She was evacuated to Yorkshire during the Second World War and spent her teenage years in reform schools. She was educated in shoplifting by the Forty Thieves, an all-female group of thieves founded in the Victorian era that persisted into the 1950s.

Her brother Henry "Adgie" Pitts was a bank robber who died aged 29 in a car crash. She disowned another brother, Charlie, after he took part in a kidnap plot in which he tortured a woman for which he received a 15-year jail sentence.

Pitts had several relationships which produced seven children by three different fathers. Five were from her relationship with Chris Hawkins, who ran a fruit and vegetable stall in Hoxton market. Hawkins beat her but was warned to stop by the Kray twins, and did so. He pre-deceased her, and she adopted his name in later life.

Career

By her early twenties, Pitts was one of the foremost shoplifters in Britain. She ran teams of "hoisters" that operated nationally but the West End of London was her main target and Harrods in particular along with Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, and other high class shops that could supply her with the expensive clothes that she needed to make a living and enjoyed wearing. She also operated on continental Europe, taking teams of thieves to Paris and Geneva.

Pitts used seven or eight aliases and her shoplifting techniques included disguising herself using different wigs, stuffing stolen goods under her voluminous skirts and the use of "magic bags", carrier bags lined with tin foil that prevented the detection of security tags when she left a shop with stolen goods. When she had finished with one shop she would sometimes leave the stolen goods in a car outside and enter another shop to see what she could steal.

She was jailed three times and spent a total of three years inside but was one of the few women to escape a British prison when she got out of a van taking her to court, ostensibly so that her daughter would not be born in prison. She prided herself on never informing or being involved in violence.

Death and legacy

Pitts died of breast cancer on 16 March 1992. After a blessing at the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption in Chigwell, she was buried at Lambeth Cemetery in a £5,000 blue Zandra Rhodes dress that the popular press speculated she may have stolen but that her friends insisted was bought. Her remains are interred in a plot near that of her brother Henry. Mourners were driven from her home in Chigwell, Essex, in a fleet of cars that included 15 black Daimlers. The great train robber Buster Edwards attended and messages of condolence were sent by the Kray twins and Ronnie Knight. Tributes were paid at the graveside to the fact that Pitts "never grassed" (informed). A floral tribute played on the words that she would use when she went to work, "Gone Shopping". She left an estate that was valued for legal purposes at less than £125,000 and was probably much less.

In the last years of her life she began to dictate her reminiscences to Lorraine Gamman. These formed the basis for Gamman's biography of Pitts, titled Gone shopping: The story of Shirley Pitts, Queen of thieves, which was published in 1996 by Signet/Penguin (2nd, Bloomsbury, 2012).

See also

• Alice Diamond
• Brian "Little Legs" Clifford