The Worst Woman in Sydney

by Leigh Straw

  Kate Leigh in 1931. Fairfax Syndication

  Kate also had some important connections in the prison. She knew one of the men serving time and working in the bakehouse. He made sure she had first pick of the baking each day. She would hide her loot in the back of the stores and collect it later to take to her cell. Truth highlighted the corruption it believed to be at the centre of Leigh’s time inside. Her daughter, Eileen, was able to visit regularly and bring friends. The newspapers and other prisoners wondered whether the governor or Kate Leigh was running the gaol: ‘Meanwhile her runners outside are gathering for her the wages of the vice upon which she lives. Her bank roll grows, depression or no depression, gaol or no gaol.’

  By 1933, the authorities were at a loss as to exactly how to punish Kate Leigh. Found guilty of receiving stolen goods, she pleaded with the judge to banish her from Sydney for five years. She would go back to her hometown of Dubbo. Kate knew she would do hard time for the crime otherwise. Her associate, Jack Baker, was sentenced to three years in prison for his part in procuring the goods. If Kate returned, the judge explained, she would be sent to Long Bay Gaol for a lengthy time inside. It didn’t work. Kate was spotted in the city two months later. Her daughter, Eileen, spotted along with her, had also been banished from the city for criminal offences. Eileen was sent back to prison and Kate was sentenced to two years behind bars.

  The Vagrancy Act, with its ‘criminal consorting’ clauses, and the Dangerous Drugs Act gave police the power to finally end the violence of the razor wars and strike a blow to underworld business. Once notorious crooks such as Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine were doing time for ‘consorting’, their hold on eastern Sydney crime was loosened. It is also true that many of the leading criminals had died in the violence of the razor wars or moved on to other places. By the late 1930s, the NSW Police Force also pulled off a remarkable victory against the traffic in cocaine. It is now commonplace to investigate transnational drug routes, but back in the 1930s NSW Police officers were entering new territory in their efforts to investigate overseas cocaine supplies. Their efforts paid off, and large imports of cocaine were prevented from entering Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales. Crime bosses such as Leigh and Devine were losing money quickly and had to go back to their mainstays. For Leigh it was sly grog, while Devine relied again on prostitution.

  Gang warfare may have settled down by the late 1930s, but Kate Leigh was still a target for violence. John Frederick ‘Chow’ Hayes shot Jack Baker in 1938 when Baker stood up to Hayes and tried to send him away from one of Kate’s premises. Hayes shot him and left him for dead in a gutter. The newspapers later reported:

  Baker, who was living at the home of Mrs. Kate Barry, also known as Kate Leigh, told the police that while he was on the footpath in front of the premises a taxi cab drew up, and one of the passengers fired a shot. The bullet hit him in the abdomen, and as he fell to the ground another shot was fired but missed him. The cab then drove off. Another cab was called and Baker was taken to the hospital in a serious condition.

  Jack Baker carried the bullet inside him for the rest of his life.

  Despite the violence, gang members and notorious crooks maintained a code of conduct in public. Interviewed years later, Chow Hayes said of the gang warfare years: ‘We never interfered with decent people.’ Hayes believed he only killed men who deserved it and were bad. He never tried to kill any women and this worked in Kate Leigh’s favour: ‘We respected women in our days.’

  The violence on the streets of east Sydney in the 1920s and early 1930s was unprecedented and left an indelible mark on the city. Twenty years later, the razor wars were still featuring in stories about crime in Sydney:

  Turn the calendar back to 1930 and get behind the gaudy and glittering facade of King’s Cross, Sydney. Behind its winking neon lights, its chop-suey restaurants, its coffee lounges, its flats and residentials, you could plunge into the most sinister underworld any Australian city has known. It was a seething cauldron that was ever on the simmer and often boiled over …

  The papers also recalled the two women at the heart of the gang warfare: ‘Mrs. Matilda Devine and Mrs. Kate Leigh were the powers behind two red light districts – one in the East Sydney valley, the other in Surry Hills. Through those rival vice rings filtered an extensive traffic in cocaine, with illicit beer as a sideline.’ Kate Leigh’s rivalry with Tilly Devine is an important part of the telling of her criminal career. Leigh and Devine were feared female crime bosses who spent many years competing for control of the eastern Sydney underworld.

  A war of words erupted after the screening of Channel Nine’s series Underbelly: Razor in 2011. Tilly Devine’s grandson told one newspaper: ‘Kate Leigh was a dirty woman, she always looked like she needed a wash.’ While this statement played well into publicity about the rivalry of Leigh and Devine depicted in the television series, Kate Leigh’s family was unimpressed. Leigh’s great-nephew, Mark Beahan, phoned family members and they were all furious. When the Sunday Telegraph came calling, Mark told them he found the comments disrespectful, warning, ‘Us Beahans are a hot-tempered lot and that’s hereditary.’ The newspaper photographed Mark on his motorbike holding a razor handed down to him by his grandfather. Mark doesn’t know where the razor originated – maybe it was used during the razor wars – but it was clearly used in the photo to link him to those conflicts.

  Back in the late 1920s, the crime war between Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine was deadly. There was real public animosity between the two women. Sydney is a big city, but it wasn’t quite big enough for two women wanting to run the city’s underworld. The rivalry between Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine was common knowledge, and the public was often privy to its enactment on the streets. Leigh and Devine regularly fought in public, pulling each other’s hair out and scratching their nails down each other’s face. Tilly’s grandson, Richard Twiss, recalls her as a tough woman with a mighty reputation: ‘Tilly was hard as nails – there was one occasion she put the heel of her stiletto into a man’s forehead while she was having an argument.’

  Sometimes female police officers were thankful for the rivalry. One local story has Tilly Devine cornering a female officer in a lane off Palmer Street. After some harsh words, Devine started to shake the woman violently. As locals watched on, Kate Leigh came running up behind Devine and hit her. She fell to the ground and Leigh sat on top of her. She told the officer to go off and do what she needed to do. You can imagine how furious Tilly was to be in such a humiliating position.

  It’s not surprising that both women were tough and ruled their empires with violence and standover tactics. That was what was expected of organised crime leaders. As two women running the show, however, they had to be even more convincing and defy the stereotype that only men could control syndicates successfully. In doing so, they joined the ranks of those many criminals who are so absorbed in controlling their underworld business that they lack empathy and rarely feel guilt or remorse. It was all part of their business of making money out of booze, women and drugs. Both women, however, later tried to endear themselves to the local community and win back some favour.

  The rivalry between Devine and Leigh was also something of a public-relations campaign. They enjoyed the limelight. They used the papers to full effect to compete with each other for the public’s affections and to gain some form acceptance beyond their well-documented notoriety. They also knew the value of photographs. Both women favoured flattering poses with their dogs. In fact, their rivalry even went as far as their choice of dogs. Tilly and Kate both owned Pomeranians they carted around like accessories. In one newspaper photograph, Devine kneels down with her three Pomeranians. It is one of the most attractive photos of Tilly, and she looks softer than usual with her wavy hair loose about her shoulders. In another Truth photograph, Kate Leigh poses in a large hat, smiling for the camera and cuddling her two Pomeranians.

  Truth sensationalised the criminal rivalry between Leigh and Devine through regular reporting of their f
euds, arrests and appearances in court. It also enjoyed wider access to the women, knowing they would grant interviews if it meant the other could be outwitted in their efforts to win over the public. This blurred the lines between what was actually happening and what each woman wanted the public to think was taking place. The name of the game was muddying the other woman’s reputation as much as possible.

  In one Truth article, photographs of the two women were positioned alongside the heading: ‘Says Tilly to Kate: Underworld Hymn of Hate’. Tilly Devine had written a letter to the newspaper from London, responding to recent comments against her by Kate Leigh, and stating: ‘I am writing this letter asking a favor [sic] to keep my name out of the papers in any connection with Kate Lee’s [sic].’ Devine went on to call Leigh a ‘virago’ and added that she believed she was a ‘class above’ a woman who objected to being called the worst woman in Sydney but settled for being known as notorious: ‘The underworld all took their hats off to me and class me a lady beside her.’

  It was a very public tit for tat. Kate Leigh told Truth in 1930 that she was not the ‘worst woman in Sydney’ because that ‘title was Tilly Devine’s’. Tilly was said to have once responded to Kate’s claims that she had never sold her body for sex by remarking, ‘Sure Kate never worked as a prostitute. Who’d have an old bag like her on anyhow? She wouldn’t get any takers if she offered it for free.’ A decade after the heyday of the razor war violence in eastern Sydney, Kate Leigh stood up in the Licensing Court in 1943 and expressed her disdain at being compared with her inner-city rival: ‘I’m here to give evidence and not to be insulted … I’ve never heard such a thing in my life. Fancy daring to mention me in the same breath as that woman. I refuse to listen to her name. Even the mention of it disgusts me.’

  Prostitution was a major point of difference between Kate and Tilly. They were both involved in sex work and were underworld regulators of the trade in women, but it was Tilly who really made a name for herself as a brothel madam. Kate was more interested in convincing the public she was a kindly businesswoman supplying sly grog to locals whose usual drinking habits had been disrupted by the introduction of the liquor restrictions. Leigh wasn’t interested in being recognised as a brothel madam, mainly because she knew that being a sly-grogger was more acceptable to locals. Tilly, on the other hand, made no apologies for her brothel businesses. Locals noted the difference, telling similar stories about the two women. A common theme in the many chats I’ve had with old residents over the years is that Tilly Devine wasn’t shy about flaunting her business. She dressed provocatively and walked like she was selling herself. Kate Leigh preferred to keep her business behind closed doors. She dressed more conservatively, covering up her body, and used this to distinguish herself from Tilly.

  There were no limits to the competitiveness between the two women. When Tilly Devine caught wind of Kate Leigh’s large Christmas party for the kids in Surry Hills in January 1948, she rushed to show she was more charitable. As the papers reported:

  As soon as she heard of Kate’s ‘do,’ Tilly (Devine) Parsons, not to be outdone by her old rival, left her isle off Palm Beach, and descended on the Collaroy Crippled Children’s Hospital with 10/ for each of the 75 inmates, together with a magnificent and costly doll (which fell, in the draw, to a bed-ridden child who wept joyous tears over her luck), a big ‘chatterbox,’ a large toy elephant and a white rabbit for other boys and girls. Tilly played the Lady Bountiful without revealing her identity, but there was no mistaking who ‘Mother Christmas’ was. It’s a way the volatile ex-Queen of Palmer St. has.

  What the two underworld leaders were effectively doing was running their own public-relations campaigns. Neither could have hoped to gain acceptance in respectable society, even if Tilly Devine aspired to it by moving out to Maroubra. Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh were notorious women, and their central involvement in the underworld wars made them household names. Neither could claim to be an upstanding member of the community. They had to settle for taking pot shots at each other and acting holier than thou. There was no prize for who had a better reputation in eastern Sydney; association already tarnished it. In sensationalising the rivalry rather than focusing on Leigh and Devine as crime bosses to be feared, the papers turned both women into celebrities. This is a lesson still to be learned by the mainstream media today.

  Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine were always going to be at odds with each other. They led powerful inner-city crime empires and directly competed for control of sly grog, drugs and sex. While neither would ever have conceded any similarities, they were both ruthless, intelligent crime entrepreneurs, unwilling to settle for anything less than running Sydney’s underworld.

  Something had to give. Locals tell stories of back-street meetings and murmurings that something was about to happen between the two women in the late 1940s. By that time, Tilly was middle-aged and seemed more interested in trips overseas – perhaps to avoid criminal association – than feuding with her rival. Kate Leigh was in her late sixties and was starting to lose her grip on young thugs. They weren’t taking her as seriously as the young ones had in the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps it was time for conciliation.

  Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine performed a dramatic show of support for each other for the newspapers in 1948. The photographs are clearly staged. In one, Kate leans down close to Tilly’s face, smiling and looking for a response. Tilly, meanwhile, continues to puff on her cigarette. In another, the two women attempt to embrace but the effect is awkward. Their heads are tilted, looking at each other, but the arm’s-length distance is obvious. The legacy of many years facing each other down in the street and attempting to do each other out of business is clear in the photographs. Police were always surprised they hadn’t killed each other. Truth may have claimed that the pair were close friends by the late 1940s, but the honesty of their photographic embraces is too far removed from such closeness. Nevertheless, for two women who were so adamantly opposed to each other, any closeness was a step forward.

  The warring underworld queens were rivals for years, but Kate Leigh was the most successful in gaining the acceptance of locals in eastern Sydney. Tilly recognised this in a letter she wrote to Truth from England in 1930. Visiting her sick mother and not wanting to return to Sydney, Devine said, ‘you people did not like me because I am English. If I had been an Aussie girl there would have been nothing said.’ Jack Baker’s grandson, Hal Baker, believed that being English put Devine ‘behind the eight ball’ where there was ‘almost a hatred of English in these parts’ and old diggers were still reeling from the actions of English officers in the First World War.

  Tilly Devine was Kate Leigh’s greatest rival, but her equal was much closer to home.

  CENTRAL POLICE STATION. 1921.

  Some sit on chairs, others stand, while police photograph the crooks they’ve hauled in from a raid at a house on Berwick Lane near the city centre. It’s 1921 and crime is a very real problem in Sydney. From sly grog to drug trafficking, the underworld is growing in power and influence. Raids only do so much, but they put pressure on notorious thieves, dealers and prostitutes.

  The police photographer stands back and looks at the group of criminals in front of him. They’re a motley crew of broken noses, shady gazes, and each one stares out with a distinct look of contempt. The police didn’t go in easy either. One man has pulled his hat down over a heavily bandaged head. The police must have pulled off more punches than were landed on them.

  The older woman in the group, seated in the centre of the frame, is the supposed barmaid. She’d been doling out the sly grog when the officers came tearing in. Even she has a look of disdain.

  Among these unlucky thirteen crooks is another, younger woman. Her light, pretty blouse and large hat stand out in stark contrast to the suits and darker clothing of those around her. She’s seated with one leg crossed over the other and her hands delicately placed in her lap. There’s no smile but a certain prettiness radiates.

  What could she possib
ly be doing with this bunch? Maybe the officers got it wrong.

  He’s fiddling with the camera. There’s some good natural light coming in through the window. It’s no ordinary window of course. The metal grate across it is another reminder that they’re in a large cell with crooks.

  One of the constables comes over.

  ‘That one there,’ the photographer says, pointing to the young woman. ‘You sure she’s with this lot?’

  The constable laughs and pats him on the back. ‘Just take the photo, mate. Believe me, she’s not the innocent you think she is.’

  ‘Would you hurry up and just take the bloody photograph.’

  The photographer and constable turn quickly and stare at the group. It’s the young woman.

  The constable moves over to her. ‘Want me to add insulting language to your charges?’

  She stares hard at him and it’s then the photographer sees what the officer was alluding to. Her look is cold, hard and unforgiving.

  The shutter releases and the lens blinks. The moment is captured.

  Men stand and move about, itching to be out of the cell. They’re taken away by officers. The young woman hesitates. She’s watching him. He reckons she enjoyed him looking at her earlier.

  ‘You get a good shot, mister?’