Razor (Underbelly) Read online

  Larry Writer was born in Sydney in 1950, spending part of his growing-up years in Kings Cross and attending Darlinghurst Public School. Today he lives in Woollahra with his wife, two sons, Labrador and ginger cat. For twelve years, Writer worked for Australian Consolidated Press as an editor and writer, and from 1981 to 1984, as European editor and London bureau chief. In 1989, he co-founded Ironbark Press. From 1992 to 2003, he was a writer, editor and London bureau chief with Time Inc. In recent years he has been a freelance writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine, the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald's Sydney magazine, the Bulletin, Madison and the Australian Women's Weekly. As well as Razor, his books include the critically acclaimed Never Before, Never Again, the story of the record-breaking St George Rugby League team of the 1950s and ’60s; Newk, the biography of John Newcombe; Pleasure and Pain, the biography of Chrissy Amphlett; The Australian Book of True Crime; and First Blood, the story of the sea battle between HMAS Sydney and SMS Emden in 1914.

  First published 2001 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published 2011 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Larry Writer 2001

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Underbelly: razor: Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and the razor gangs / Larry Writer.

  ISBN 978 1 2345 6231 5.

  Devine, Tilly. Leigh, Kate.

  Criminals — New South Wales — Sydney — History — 20th century.

  Crime — New South Wales — Sydney — History — 20th century.

  Female offenders — New South Wales — Sydney — Biography.

  Sydney

  (N.S.W.) — History — 1901–1945.

  364.3099441

  Typeset in 11pt Garth Graphic by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

  Every endeavour has been made to source the photographs and to

  contact copyright holders to obtain the necessary permission for use of

  photographic and other material in this book. Any person who may

  have been inadvertently overlooked should contact the publisher.

  These electronic editions published in 2011 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Larry Writer 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Razor (Underbelly)

  Larry Writer

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74262-807-3

  EPub format 978-1-74262-808-0

  Online format 978-1-74262-806-6

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  To Carol, Tom and Casey, with love

  The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive

  him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see

  those who love him shrouded in tears.

  Genghis Khan, 1226

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part 1 - First Offences

  1. Slumland

  2. Young Kate

  3. A Camberwell Lass

  4. The Birth of Organised Crime

  5. Blades

  Part 2 - The Razor-Gang Wars

  6. Storm Warning

  7. The Bad and the Beautiful

  8. Norman Bruhn's Death Wish

  9. And Then There Were Three

  10. Razor-mania and the Campaign for Law and Order

  11. The Sly-grog Queen and the Battle of Blood Alley

  12. Madam

  13. Green and Calletti

  14. Shootout at Maroubra

  15. 1929–1930: The War Gets Personal

  16. The Law Fights Back

  17. Exile and Incarceration

  18. Chez Devine

  19. The Girl in the Middle

  20. Deadline Darlinghurst

  21. On the Town

  22. Pretty Dulcie

  23. Deadly Triangle

  24. Shady Ladies

  Part 3 - Colourful Identities

  25. An Uneasy Truce

  26. Blood and Roses

  27. Laying Down the Law

  28. Deadly Companions

  29. The War at Home

  30. Bumper and the Rugged Angel

  31. Hearts of Darkness

  32. Parades Gone By

  33. Old Friends

  34. Wrong Place, Wrong Time

  35. Tilly's Grand Shivoo

  Part 4 - The End of an Era

  36. Empire in Decline

  37. Crown Witness and the End of Nellie Cameron

  38. The Taxman Comes Calling

  39. Last Rites for Razorhurst

  40. The Bitter End

  References

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  One of the very best things about researching and writing Razor was interviewing a number of former police officers who knew the people and experienced first-hand many of the events chronicled in this book. The memories they shared brought the long-ago period to life for me. So my appreciation to Ray Blissett, Lua Niall, Lance Hoban, Bill Harris, Greg Brown, and the former policewoman who gave freely of her time on the proviso that I preserve her anonymity. Respecting her wishes, I have called her ‘Maggie Baker’.

  Sadly, in some ways, especially when one considers the wonderful information they might have divulged, none of the major villains from the razor-gang years survives, but I am grateful for the recollections of many who knew them.

  Nor could this book exist without the insights and knowledge, and many courtesies and encouragements, of Professor Frank Clarke of Macquarie University; East Sydney historian Brian Kelleher; Bernie Purcell; Leicester Warburton; Len Smith; the late Ennis Firth; Elva Blissett; Kate McClymont; Pete ‘Super Sleuth’ Norman; Jane and Chris Mathews; Justin and Helen Bairamian; Paul Isgro; Ian Heads; Helen Martin; Terence McCann; Ross and Lenore Adamson (for all the love and wisdom); Marie Sampson (for listening); my mother, June Samuels; my father, the late Ray Writer; the talented professionals at Who Weekly and John Partridge, corporate records manager and archivist of the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services.

  For his invaluable childhood memories and insight into the character of his aunt, Tilly Devine, and uncle, Eric Parsons, I thank Dr George Parsons, senior lecturer in Australian History at Macquarie University.

  My gratitude, as well, to the many current and former police officers who responded generously to my notices in police journals seeking information about the era, for their memories and anecdotes, a
nd for giving me the chance to verify names, dates and places. Thanks to the editors of those journals, Mrs Silva of The Police News, and Mrs Armstrong of the Retired Police Association Journal, who published my calls for information. Thanks to Professor Edward Jaggard, historian of Surf Life Saving Australia.

  A special salute to Michaela Perske, who wrote and produced the fine ABC Radio National Hindsight documentary on the female criminals of East Sydney.

  Stuart Pendlebury, Caleb Williams and their colleagues at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum encouraged my efforts from the outset. They gave me a desk, taught me how to work the photocopier, and swamped me with the museum's trove of files, exhibits and photographs. These documents shed light on police work of the period, the uniformed and plain-clothes officers, and their quarries. The material from the museum was indispensable in checking the facts about events that took place sixty, seventy and eighty years ago. (That said, when in a few instances I have been unable to locate irrefutable, definitive proof of an event or conversation, I have taken the liberty of arriving at a version that seems most likely, using as a touchstone the wealth of information at my disposal.)

  Of inestimable assistance to me in this project was the research of Michelle Linder, who toiled with diligence and skill for many months in the newspaper archives of the State Library of New South Wales; and Scotland Yard researcher and writer Keith Skinner, who opened doors for me in London, where I went in search of details on the young Tilly Devine. The brilliant and resourceful photo editor Amy Reedy tracked down the photographs that enrich this book. I also thank the staff of the State Library of New South Wales, Ross Connell and the staff of the City of Sydney Library and Photo Archive, Paddington Library and the New South Wales Premier's Department. I thank in London, the Public Record Office; the General Register Office; the Borough of Southwark Library and Photographic Archive at Camberwell; the British Library's Newspaper Library; London Metropolitan Archives; Time Inc; Roy Felton and the staff at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court and Police Station; and the Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

  For helping me to understand the lives, times and crimes of the central figures of Razorhurst, I thank the courtroom and police stenographers of the era who recorded the trials and hearings recounted in this book. I also owe a debt to the (mainly un-bylined) reporters of Truth, the Sydney Morning Herald, Smith's Weekly, People, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Telegraph and the Bulletin, who covered Sydney and the lives of its more colourful denizens over the ninety-year span of my story. Reading their articles and features, which still leap from the yellowing newsprint today, was — along with interviewing the aforementioned survivors of the era — the next best thing to being there.

  Books and other publications I consulted in my background research include: the landmark and estimable Drug Traffic: Narcotics and Organised Crime in Australia by Dr Alfred McCoy; Dr McCoy's chapter in The Sydney-Melbourne Book edited by Jim Davidson, ‘Two Cities and their Syndicates — A Comparative Urban History of Organised Crime'; the poems of Kenneth Slessor; Surry Hills: The City's Backyard by Christopher Keating; Wild Women of Sydney by George Blaikie; The Story of Camberwell by Mary Boast; Life and Labour of the People of London by Charles Booth; Faces of the Street: William Street, Sydney, 1916 by Max Kelly; Larrikin Crook: The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor by Hugh Anderson; The Oldest Profession by Hilary Evans; the splendid Chow Hayes — Gunman by David Hickie; The History of Female Prostitution in Australia by Raelene Francis; As Crime Goes By: The Life and Times of ‘Bondi’ Bill Jenkings with Norm Lipson (who would have loved to have reported the razor-gang wars) and Tony Barnao; Australian Photographs by Helen Ennis and Isobel Crombie; Gullible's Travails by Geoff Allen; A Hack's Progress by Phillip Knightley; the article ‘Pretty Dulcie Markham and the St Kilda Realists: Some Literary Byways and Digressions', reprinted from a speech by Brian Matthews in Overland magazine (issue 118, 1990); and Matthews's rich and evocative memoir, A Fine and Private Place. Also shedding light on my subject were: Britain's People weekly; Part V of Dennis Whitburn's Penthouse History of Crime in Australia, ‘The Law of the Razor'; Larrikins: 19th Century Outrage by James Murray; Ruth Park's poignant classics of Surry Hills life between the wars, The Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange; With Just But Relentless Discipline: A Social History of Corrective Services in New South Wales by John Ramsland; Long Bay Correctional Complex: Conservation Plan, published by the Department of Corrective Services; Australian Children Through 200 Years by Suzane Fabian and Morag Loh; Backpage: Australia's Greatest Sporting Moments by Ian Heads; Growing Up in the ‘30s by Brian Carroll; Inside Kings Cross by James Holledge; The Racket Buster by Vince Kelly; Rugged Angel: the Amazing Career of Policewoman Lillian Armfield, by Vince Kelly; Weevils in the Flour: an Oral Record of the 1930s Depression by Wendy Lowenstein; Gangland International: The Mafia and Other Mobs by James Morton; and Out of the Bakelite Box: the Heyday of Australian Radio by Jacqueline Kent.

  Tom Gilliatt, my publisher at Macmillan, has been a tower of strength and encouragement through the two years of researching and writing. Editor Sarina Rowell's wise cutting and restructuring and Jon Gibbs's meticulous and learned line editing improved this book immeasurably. Thanks, too, to James Fraser, Jeannine Fowler, Tracey Cheetham, Amanda Hemmings and everyone at Macmillan for their belief and support.

  To my wife Carol and my sons Tom and Casey, I love you, love you to bits. Thanks for putting up with all my angsting and endless droning on about long-dead gangsters. Thanks, always and forever, for the love and the fun.

  Introduction

  Today, East Sydney is a fine place to live. People can pay more than $1 million to dwell in its iron-laced, lovingly restored Victorian terrace homes and apartments in stately older buildings and soaring new tower blocks. Although seedy pockets remain, the gentrified and cosmopolitan suburbs of Darlinghurst, Kings Cross, Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo and Paddington are addresses prized for their proximity to nightlife, art galleries, shops, restaurants and coffee bars, pubs, parks, Sydney's central business district and the harbour.

  East Sydney has not always been so salubrious. Unimaginably perhaps, to those who know it only as it is now, for a time in the century just past it was one of the most dangerous areas in Australia. For it was here, among the desperately poor and dispossessed, that some of the worst criminals the nation has seen waged war with razor, gun and blunt object over the spoils of illegal drugs and alcohol, prostitution, gambling and extortion. As the body count rose, law-abiding citizens, angered and terrified by the activities of these gangsters, christened East Sydney ‘Razorhurst’.

  My interest in Razorhurst began way back with the many colourful stories my late father, who worked at harbourside Sydney's Cockatoo Docks and Garden Island in the 1930s and ’40s and knew the milieu well, told me. For a time, too, in the late 1950s, when I was an impressionable child attending Darlinghurst Public School, I lived at Hensley Hall, a block of flats in Bayswater Road, Kings Cross. In the bad old days of the ’20s, this was a mob haunt — and it still had an uneasy atmosphere thirty years later. Then, at a family dinner a few years ago, my parents-in-law recalled how when they bought the block of land on which their present home now stands in Sydney's Rose Bay, there had stood a bungalow previously used as a brothel and shelter by the infamous gang leader and madam Tilly Devine in the 1940s. Tilly, they explained, had divided up the old house into small rooms and it was in these compartments that her ‘girls’ entertained their clients. When it came time to knock down Tilly's house to build their new one, my in-laws had come upon a cache of women's shoes. Tilly's? The prostitutes'? No one knew, and it didn't really matter, because by then I was beguiled by the thought of what dark and racy deeds had been perpetrated perhaps on the very spot where I sat eating dinner.

  Later, I asked the woman next door, who had grown up and lived there for half a century, if she could remember her notorious neighbour, Tilly Devine. She said that she knew Tilly owned the house and visited it from time to time, but sh
e never saw Tilly because her parents would sternly discourage questions about the source of the raucous laughter, squeaking bedsprings and loud music emanating from over the back fence.

  My curiosity about Tilly Devine and her world was intensified when, a decade ago, I became a resident of Paddington, one of the suburbs that comprised Razorhurst. A benefit of having an active preservation society is that my suburb of terrace houses and winding streets and lanes looks much as it did eighty or so years ago, and it is easy to imagine the desperado days. I began reading everything I could find about the era and talking at length to the people who lived through it. Entranced by the stories I gleaned, I wanted to write about this wild, romantic, dreadful period in Sydney's history.

  So I learned about Tilly, and her great rival, the slygrog queen Kate Leigh, both, I feel, so memorably portrayed by Ruth Park in the composite character Delie Stock from The Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange, Park's evocative novels of 1930s Surry Hills life. I learned about the hair-trigger gangsters Guido Calletti, Frank Green, Norman Bruhn and Tilly's husband, Jim Devine. I was entranced by the tragic, seamy lives of the beautiful prostitutes Nellie Cameron and Dulcie Markham, and awed by the exploits of some of the police officers who opposed them — William Mackay, Lillian Armfield, Frank Farrell and Ray Blissett. I interviewed Ray Blissett, the only survivor of that formidable quartet, looking, at ninety-two, as if he was still capable of hurling any hoodlum into the back of a black maria. I talked to many other police officers of the time, notably Blissett's friend Greg Brown, Lua Niall and Lance Hoban, the latter of whom led me to a stash of razors owned by Guido Calletti, who armed himself with the fearsome weapons after laws outlawing the carrying of handguns were enacted in early 1927. I recorded the theories and observations of those who had studied and written about the period. Descendants of the gangsters happily shared their memories.