Razor (Underbelly) Page 12

  Less serious was her January 1930 altercation with a heavyweight beat sergeant named Henry Ham. The officer had had the misfortune to pass Tilly in the street and, as she usually did when she encountered a policeman, she had let fly. Ham claimed in court that Tilly's obscenity-packed harangue had ended with her bawling: ‘I have diamonds and property, and a Straight Eight [Hewlett-Packard car], and I didn't get them from working either. I got them from stealing!’ Ham had arrested her for offensive behaviour. Tilly, when her turn came, told Magistrate McDonald that Ham was making up the whole scenario. She had merely passed the time of day with the policeman in the street, and her parting shot, in fact, had been to remind Ham of what a good day they'd had when last they'd met, in Windsor, ‘where Henry had a couple of bottles of beer with us!’ Nevertheless, she was fined £1.

  Tilly Devine was an implacable enemy. Once she took revenge on a corrupt policeman attempting to extort protection money from her. She arranged a fake cash drop in a public toilet in a park in Woolloomooloo. When her henchman arrived, the officer was waiting inside the toilet cubicle, as arranged. However, it was no packet of money that the lackey dropped over the toilet door, but a balloon filled with petrol. The balloon burst when it hit the floor, drenching the policeman with the flammable liquid. Tilly's man, as she had instructed him to, then lit a match and tossed it into the cubicle. It is unknown how the policeman explained his burns to colleagues.

  Although Kate Leigh's and Tilly Devine's criminal activities rarely overlapped, the former concentrating on sly grog and cocaine and the latter on prostitution, the women despised each other. Kate and Tilly's enmity was not totally professional, but also borne of fierce personal rivalry. As the only two female arch-criminals in Sydney, each strove to outdo the other, to be richer, more powerful, more feared, dress more lavishly, and get more and bigger headlines in the papers.

  Policewoman Maggie Baker recalls one of her first assignments: ‘Right after I started at Darlo, Miss Lillian Armfield said to me, “I want you to find out all you can about Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine.” Out I went. I'd only ever come across Kate once before, although I'd heard about her for years. The first time our paths crossed was when I came upon an argument on the street in Darlinghurst, and of course it was Kate shouting and swearing at another woman. I said, “Hey you two, cut it out,” and Kate glared at me and said, “Listen, be a bright copper. You'll live a lot longer if you piss off back to the station.” Then, just days later, Miss Armfield detailed me to put Kate and Tilly under surveillance.

  ‘In a lane near Palmer Street I came face to face with Tilly. She was blocking the footpath, preventing me from proceeding. She said, “You're the new copper, aren't you?” I said, “I'm a policewoman, and I'm new on this beat.” She said, “Well, you're not comin’ down this bloody street.” I said, “I am.” She grabbed me and started shaking me. Next thing, a woman wearing a great big black hat got off a tram. It was Kate Leigh. She came up to where Tilly was shaking me like a rag doll and, without a word, she king-hit Tilly Devine and then sat on her in the street. Then Kate, cool as you like, looked up at me and said, “Go and do what you gotta do love, I'll be here when you come back.” By that time half of Darlinghurst was on the scene. All the standover blokes too. “The next time you declare her on,” Kate said to Tilly, “I'll give you a second helping.”

  ‘But Tilly could handle herself, no fear. She was a dirty fighter and very strong. I saw her and Kate have a blue in Oxford Street one day. Kate was a big woman, very fat. Tilly had Kate's hat off and was pummelling her on the ground. Kate got much the worst of it. I said, “If you don't stop fighting at once, I'll sling you both into the police van and run you in.” ‘

  Mirroring the bosses’ mutual hatred, Tilly and Kate's gangs disliked each other intensely. Just as violence, certainly verbal and usually physical, would ensue whenever the two women's paths crossed in Razorhurst, there would be a fracas when the foot soldiers happened upon each other. Often one henchman would make some wisecrack at a rival. That putdown would lead to a bashing which would be avenged by a slashing which would be repaid with a bullet.

  In the hammer-and-tong years from the late 1920s until the early ′30s, when the Leigh and Devine gangs called a truce of sorts, Kate would still send her razor crew out to disfigure Tilly's prostitutes, and Tilly would hit back by despatching her men to slash the faces of the women Kate paid to pose as prostitutes while selling cocaine. In particularly heated periods, Kate protected her street sellers by stationing rifle snipers on Surry Hills rooftops to repel Tilly's attackers. (These shooters seemingly were largely for show, for there is no record of anyone ever being shot by a rooftop marksman.) Tilly ordered squads of warriors to smash the contents and customers of Kate's sly-grog shops, and Kate's men trashed Tilly's brothels. As the battle raged, the women ratted on each other to the police, like two kids poking tongues and tittle-tattling in a hellacious schoolyard.

  13

  Green and Calletti

  Though Tilly Devine was eminently capable of taking care of herself and her business, she, like Kate Leigh, surrounded herself with a gang of hardened criminals, led by her husband, Big Jim, to safeguard her interests. The most terrifying thug on her books was Frank ‘the Little Gunman’ Green who, by the start of 1928, had been Nellie Cameron's lover and pimp for five months. Green's pale complexion, long face and shock of black, brilliantined hair, his hyperactive lope and rapid speech, marked him out as a distinctive Razorhurst figure. His refusal to consider the consequences of his actions was matched by a boundless delight in doing bad things.

  Francis Roland Green was born in 1902 and his first recorded offence was in 1920, for using indecent language. Green was a small man, but he had an explosive temper and was lethal with gun and razor. Part of Green's terrible aura was that no one ever knew quite how far he was prepared to go to win a fight. The fact was, he would do whatever it took, up to and including murder.

  In one photograph taken by a police photographer when he was in custody in the late 1920s, he wears a dark suit, white open-neck shirt and a snappy felt hat. His killer's eyes are narrowed, as if indicating to the photographer that unless he takes his bloody picture quick-smart, something unpleasant is going to happen. Green's face was scarred by razor slashes. The worst, which had required sixty stitches to repair and resulted in a lifelong L-shaped scar on his right cheek, was inflicted by a man who, Green unconvincingly told police, he knew only as ‘Daring Bill’. When Green died, the coroner was shocked to find his body riddled by bullet wounds.

  He was proud of the woman's breast tattooed on his right upper arm. Though he was a psychopath, drunkard and cocaine addict, women were attracted to Green and he was rarely without a lover, his most notable being Nellie Cameron.

  Green strongarmed money — he called it ‘paying your subscription’ — from sly-groggers, prostitutes and drug traffickers. He liked to cruise in a taxi, ordering the driver to let him out at illegal betting joints and relieving the gamblers therein of their takings at gunpoint.

  In Vince Kelly's Rugged Angel, Lillian Armfield said of Green:

  He was the terror of a lot of Sydney's prostitutes. He wouldn't hesitate to bash up a prostitute if she didn't hand him a cut of her immoral earnings. He would cruise around brothels, illegal gaming houses, sly grog shops and SP shops, and demand a toll at revolver point from people who were reluctant to report the hold-ups to police, partly because they themselves were breaking the law, but chiefly because they dreaded the vengeance that would follow the tip-off.

  Until their bloody falling-out in the early 1930s, Green was used by Tilly to protect her brothels. Employing the Little Gunman was sure protection indeed.

  Green's great rival was the equally formidable Guido Calletti. The pair, the two proud young bulls of the Sydney underworld, butted horns for the affections of Nellie Cameron for more than a decade. For years she cuckolded one suitor with the other, driving them to jealous furies, depending on whose underworld stocks were highe
r at that moment. Should Green be in gaol or lying low from the police, she was Calletti's girl. Should Calletti be recovering from wounds or a guest of His Majesty, she was Green's.

  Green despised the foul-mouthed, garishly dressed Calletti, and the feeling was mutual, not just because of their rivalry for Cameron. To each, the other stood in the way of his being the most feared man in Razorhurst. The main difference between the two was that Green preferred to be a hired hand, part of a team, in the pay of a Tilly and Jim Devine, whereas Calletti aspired to be his own boss. But while — with Green — he was Sydney's wildest villain, Calletti was not quite savvy enough to be a gang lord. He had their propensity for violence, but lacked the tactical flair and organisational skills of Jeffs, Leigh and Devine.

  Evil-tempered, swaggering and squat (he was 86 kilos and 160 centimetres), Calletti split his time between operating alone as a one-man crime wave — pimping, ‘protecting’ and extorting from tin-pot gamblers, sly-groggers and drug pushers, conning and mugging ordinary citizens — and leading his gang, the Darlinghurst Push. Small-time compared with the organised syndicates, which largely left the innocent public alone, Calletti's mob comprised street brawlers and standover gorillas not fussy about where they made their pile.

  Calletti was capable of unrestrained ferocity. He lived to fight and was cruelly capable with any weapon — he could wield a razor with blinding speed, throw a knife accurately up to twenty metres and reputedly shoot the ash from a cigarette — not least his fists. One of his pièces de résistance was to join a drinker in a pub, tell a few jokes and buy him a beer or two then talk his newfound friend into accompanying him out into the night in search of more alcohol, drugs and women. The friendship would last until Calletti found a dark and deserted area. He would then attack his mark and steal his money.

  Calletti, tagged in the NSW Criminal Register of 1934 as a ‘robber, gunman and gangster . . . of drunken habits and violent disposition’, travelled by taxi like Green, but rarely paid. At his destination he would do a runner, or if he was feeling especially malicious, he would produce his razor then smirkingly dare the cabbie to ask for his fare. His heartland was Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross and Darlinghurst, especially Palmer Street, where most of Tilly Devine's brothels were clustered. When they passed in the street or the Tradesman's Arms Hotel, Calletti and Tilly may have nodded icily, but generally they kept out of each other's way.

  Of Italian heritage, but born in Australia in 1902, Calletti grew up at Eastwood, north-west of Sydney. He was christened ‘Hugh’ but an uncle nicknamed him ‘Guido’ when he was a toddler and the name stuck. He never learned to read or write. From the age of eight, Calletti's antisocial behaviour saw him sentenced to terms in reformatories in Mittagong and Gosford, and at age thirteen he was classified ‘uncontrollable’ by a children's court.

  Calletti wed while still a teen and fathered a son, but the marriage broke up. At twenty-two, he was confined to Gosford Farm Home for carrying an unlicensed pistol. By age twenty-five in 1927, he was leading the Darlinghurst Push, whose fifteen to twenty razor-carrying members bowed to his superior skills as gunman, garrotter and razor-man.

  When police cracked down on Calletti, he moonlighted as a labourer, fished for prawns or picked peas in then-rural Eastwood until the heat was off. For years, he shared a Darlinghurst fruit barrow with fellow no-good Scotty McCormack (later to die, like many others, romancing Dulcie ‘the Angel of Death’ Markham). The arrangement worked well. When Calletti was in prison, McCormack donned the fruiterer's apron, and when McCormack was incarcerated Calletti manned the barrow.

  Early on, Calletti recognised the profits to be made from pimping, and ‘represented’ a number of prostitutes. ‘Pay me money and I'll protect you from other pimps, and if you refuse I'll bash you,’ he said. Calletti made it his business to know all about the women of the streets, and before approaching them he'd assess their potential for making him money.

  As his success with the coveted Nellie Cameron attests, Calletti, like Green, was a successful womaniser, in spite of his chronic bad temper, alcoholism and cheap, showy clothes. He was an accomplished dancer in an era when waltzing and foxtrotting to live combos or gramophone recordings of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing ‘Whispering’ and ‘Deep Purple’ was a popular pastime of Sydney's young dash-abouts. But Calletti was rarely content to dance the night away. Dance hall proprietors knew that if he was on the floor there'd be trouble sooner or later. He amused himself by singling out an attractive woman, then insulting her dancing partner, leaving the unfortunate man with the choice of backing down in humiliation or challenging Calletti to fight. The latter option ended with the fellow bleeding in the alley outside.

  Although operating on a smaller scale than Jeffs, Leigh and Devine, Calletti enforced his rule, as did they, with violence. He swiftly dealt with gangsters from other areas who sought a piece of his action. The Ultimo Push once ventured into Darlinghurst and robbed some of Calletti's prostitutes. The following day, Calletti and fifteen henchmen arrived at the Ultimo Push's favourite hotel and beat and slashed the rival mob in the bar.

  The late 1920s was a purple patch in Calletti's criminal career. In 1929, he was charged with razoring a man named Curran in a Darlinghurst alley, but denied the charge. In court, Calletti laughed in the face of the prosecutor, saying he'd had a punch-up (‘fair and square’) with Curran, but he had not slashed him. Curran's terrible facial injuries, smirked Calletti, were just scratches caused by ‘a ring I used to wear in them days’. Calletti was not punished for cutting up Curran, principally because Curran, after a visit from Calletti, decided not to testify. Curran later told how Calletti knocked on his door, a wide grin on his usually dour face. The thug had extended his hand and chuckled, ‘Now, I don't suppose you're going to make it too hard for me, are you, Curran? I want you to go to the police and say it wasn't me who attacked you. Tell them you mixed me up with somebody else. Someone with a name that sounds like “Calletti”.’ Curran said Calletti left him in no doubt about what would happen to him if he did otherwise.

  While he was on bail for the Curran assault, Calletti found himself in more strife when he brawled with two policemen. He king-hit one and ran off, but the officers tracked him down and hoisted him from his hiding place. As they were escorting him to Darlinghurst Police Station, Calletti bit one's finger to the bone. When he faced that charge, Calletti called the officer a liar. ‘The policeman's finger was cut,’ he said, ‘when his fist made contact with my teeth while he was assaulting me in custody.’ Calletti's skilled lawyers were able to stir up sufficient doubt in the jury's mind to get their client off lightly.

  Then Calletti fell out with another criminal, named Eric Connolly, who had made the mistake of falling in love with Nellie Cameron and living with her briefly. On 16 February 1929, a slanging match between the pair turned violent, and Connolly fired five bullets into Calletti. Amazingly, none caused serious damage. Cameron bandaged Calletti's flesh wounds, and the following morning, at 2 a.m., he went to a party in Womerah Avenue, Darlinghurst, called Connolly outside, and shot him down. Connolly was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment for a bullet wound in his stomach, and Calletti returned to his flat in Barcom Avenue, Darlinghurst.

  At eleven the next morning, police officers, acting on information received from two friends of Connolly (one a street singer with a withered arm named Hardy, the other Eadie Hudson), burst into Calletti's apartment. Inspector Lynch later claimed he saw Calletti fumbling with a revolver on the lounge, trying to hide it under a pillow. When Lynch accused Calletti of shooting Connolly, Calletti denied it, said he didn't even know Connolly had been shot. He said he had returned at 4 a.m. from a party at Kate Leigh's daughter Eileen's house and gone straight to bed. At this point, recalled Lynch, Nellie Cameron came into the room in a sleep-dishevelled state and announced to the officers that she could explain everything. She had found the gun, she said, a six-chambered revolver with five live bullets in it and one discharged shell, in t
he street wrapped in brown paper and had planned to hand it in to police later that day. Lynch, skilled in forensics, knew at once that the gun was the one that had been used to shoot Connolly.

  In spite of Cameron's alibi, police arrested Calletti and took him to Darlinghurst Police Station. There, after Hardy and Hudson, seemingly unaware of Calletti's underworld standing, testified against him, he was charged with shooting Connolly with intent to murder. When the detectives had laid the charges, they left Calletti alone for a moment. That was all it took. He approached Hardy and Hudson and threatened their lives. The frightened pair left the station. With no witnesses for the prosecution — the badly wounded Connolly, of course, didn't squeal — the case against Calletti collapsed.

  By the time he was shot dead in 1939, Calletti would have appeared in court in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria fifty-six times for a variety of crimes, most often assault and consorting. Police believe he may have killed as many as four men.

  14

  Shootout at Maroubra

  At 10 p.m. on 17 July 1929, Tilly and Jim Devine were driving in Oxford Street, Paddington, when they were hailed by a man named George Gibson who told them that Frank Green, whom the Devines were due to meet in half an hour, had been shot and wounded earlier in the evening by Kate Leigh hireling Gregory ‘the Gunman’ Gaffney (aka George Gaffney and Raymond Neill). Gibson had taken Green to Sydney Hospital to be patched up. Then he ran into Gaffney who told Gibson, ‘I shot the bastard and I am going out to go on with him and Devine tonight.’ Jim Devine was incredulous, but Gibson assured him it was no empty threat. ‘He's got an automatic and he means business.’

  The Devines then drove to Brasch's Corner in Woolloomooloo where they had arranged to meet Green and their bodyguard Sid McDonald (known to the police as ‘a very violent man’), who was living with them at Maroubra. Green and McDonald were waiting, and when the pair climbed into the Devines’ car, Green collapsed. He gasped that he had been shot in the shoulder and was weak from blood loss. He was sure that Gaffney, twenty-five, a brown-haired, blue-eyed desperado with a badly broken nose, would make a second attempt on his life that night. It was decided that Green should lie low at the Devines’.