by Leigh Straw
Eileen was a formidable underworld figure but it is hard to imagine a different life for her. Her lawyer claimed in 1950 that she ‘never had a chance’. What else could be expected of a woman who was the daughter of one of Sydney’s most notorious criminals? He appealed for better understanding of her life: ‘Conditions and environment were always against her.’
When Eileen married ‘Rex’ Ranson in 1963, a year before her mother’s death, Ranson had a long criminal career dating back to the 1930s and was a known thief. This is where a silence descends over the later life of Eileen Leigh, aside from family records indicating that she died in 1987. Unlike her mother, there was no lavish funeral or newspaper interest in her passing. Even less is known about her daughter, Charlotte, the little girl paraded through Surry Hills as the pride of her grandmother, Kate. Beahan relations don’t know what happened to the little girl beyond the 1930s.
Eileen Leigh was a tough underworld criminal, like her mother. So similar were the two, even in looks, that Eileen has been mistakenly identified as Kate in a photograph online and used by some newspapers in recent years. There was one major difference between the two women, however. Eileen failed to create the sort of favourable image in her local community or among the public in general that could have softened her notoriety. Kate Leigh knew how to do this, and the irony of it is that while she was labelled a bad mother for the life she created for Eileen, Kate became a celebrated matriarchal figure in Surry Hills.
‘HAVE YOU READ THIS SERIAL they’re doing in the paper, Kate?’
‘Not today, Jack. Why?’
Jack Baker pushes the paper over to her.
‘Woman shoots shark?’
He grabs the paper back. ‘Shit, no, not that.’ He’s thumbing past the first page. ‘Here. This.’
Kate Leigh looks down at the paper. She takes a seat at the kitchen table and pulls the chair in. She reads the title of the serial on page seven: ‘The Harp in the South.’
‘What about it, Jack?’
‘They’re saying this Delie Stock character is you.’
She reads on, frowning more and feeling angry.
‘Bugger off. That’s Tilly Devine! That ain’t me. I’m not 48 and I’m no bloody prostitute.’
Jack pulls the paper over a little and points to another column. ‘Not that bit. They reckon she’s used a few people for the character, but everyone round here reckons this is you, helping the kids.’
Kate thinks about it for a moment. Ruth Park had been about the place a few times recently, talking to locals and wandering about taking in the surrounds. She hadn’t talked to Kate, but the locals might have talked about her.
Kate reads:
Delie Stock gave another chuckle, a pleased, proud guffaw. It was plain that some mystic psychological change was taking place in her mind. She was growing in stature as her charity unfolded itself. ‘So I’m going to give ’em a picnic, see? The whole shebang. Hire a bus. Two buses. Ice cream, plenty of tucker, each and everythink. And maybe we can get a magician bloke to give them the works. How many kids in the school, Sister Theoctopus?’
‘Why . . . there’s . . . there’s . . . two hundred odd,’ stammered Sister Theophilus.
‘Here, then,’ said Delie Stock. She opened her stuffed shabby purse, and it was crammed to the lip with notes.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ said Sister Theophilus, but it was a prayer and not an exclamation. She had never seen so much money. Delie Stock shook it all out on the bench amongst the children’s hats and lunch-packets.
‘Ha ha! Would you look at that.’
Jack is laughing too. ‘I know. That’s you, Kate. All those things you do for the kids. She’s put it in the character.’
Reading on, she sees the part with Father Cooley and him not wanting to accept the charity because he thinks it’s stolen money.
‘Here too, Jack. Look.’ Baker moves closer to her. ‘Remember that day?’
Then the words that bother her the most: the worst woman. Despite all her charity in the local community, she’s had a hard time proving herself to others. The locals accept her, though, and in the end that’s all that really matters in Surry Hills.
7
SURRY HILLS MATRIARCH
Surry Hills has changed dramatically in the five decades since Kate Leigh’s death. It is now a vibrant inner-city neighbourhood, where the old terrace houses have been renovated and sell for seven figures. The main streets feature funky, upmarket cafes and eateries peopled by hipsters and other trendsetters. There’s been a dramatic change even from the late 20th century to today. Older residents say it is too ‘gentrified’ and newer locals reckon the place needed a bit of improvement.
Few places are as historically fitting or appeal to Surry Hills locals of old as Sly at 212 Devonshire Street. With its raw-brick and exposed-timber interior, it has retained the look of early 20th-century Surry Hills. The owner, Dean Wilkinson, opened the cafe on 10 March 2014. More than 130 years after her birth in Dubbo, Kate Leigh’s birthday was celebrated with the opening of a cafe in her former home and sly-grog shop. Sly features bottles for lighting and small razor-like knives for cutlery. There on the wall, overlooking the tables and chairs, is a framed drawing of a smiling Kate Leigh. Her commemoration in the cafe is interesting. If you didn’t know anything about Kate Leigh you would think she was a kindly old matriarch of the local community. It’s a long way from how she was portrayed in her younger years.
The Kate Leigh of newspaper stories in the 1920s and early 1930s is a notorious underworld figure. She was a feared, violent organised crime boss who had made a fortune from drugs, prostitution and sly grog. Leigh was regularly identified in headlines as a ‘Violent Woman’. She was demeaned with harsh descriptions and identified in press stories as a ‘notorious woman’ with ‘evil associates’, ‘social parasites’ that were a ‘menace to the city’. Truth was scathing in its portrayals, calling her ‘Sydney’s Vicious Harridan of the Underworld’ and an ‘Underworld Hag’. Leigh was also singled out as a menace who preyed on young women who were, according to the papers, caught between remaining good and turning bad.
What the newspapers effectively did, however, was sustain public interest in Kate Leigh. Newspapers accompany crime stories with sensationalist headlines to ‘shock, frighten, titillate and entertain’. Regular media stories about particular criminals increase public interest – expressed as fascination, voyeurism and the thrill of criminality – while also increasing the celebrity status of the criminal and selling papers. Newspapers are also responsible for shaping community views about crime. What they did for Kate Leigh was turn her criminality into a Sydney sensation.
In April 1929, a year that would usher in the razor wars, Leigh featured in the newspapers for ‘her continual misdemeanours and association with a bunch of crooks’. She was a court identity and known criminal, but she had not yet reached notoriety as a serious threat to the city. Only two months later, however, she was gaoled for keeping a house ‘frequented by thieves’ and was described by Truth as an ‘organiser of crime and theft’. Once Leigh was identified in this way, as a leading player in Sydney crime, newspaper interest in her identity changed.
Regular reporting of Leigh’s criminal activities turned her into a household name. From the late 1920s, her name was used to draw in Sydney Morning Herald readers. Known as both Kate Leigh and Kate Barry – after her short-lived marriage to Edward Barry – she headlined crime stories: ‘Kate Leigh Arrested’, ‘Consorting Charge. Kate Barry Sentenced’ and ‘Kate Leigh. Robbery Charge Dismissed’. Kate Leigh’s photo also appeared in a report on charges against her driver, whose name did not feature in the headline. Instead, the story ran as: ‘Kate’s Driver Gets 15 Months’. The regular use of Leigh’s image alongside headline stories in the press further extended her celebrity. Not only was she identified by name and for her illegal activities or gang feuds, but readers were able to recognise her in public.
Kate Leigh’s life intrigued the pub
lic because of her involvement in crime. Usually defined as immoral and deviant, crime is meant to create public reactions of horror, fear or disgust. However, the public can also feel a ‘delight in being deviant’, something that would not be experienced in their everyday lives. Kate Leigh offered many opportunities for Sydneysiders to ‘delight’ in her deviancy.
There is more to this story than public shaming and sensational reporting. Kate Leigh played her part in crafting a flamboyant image and courtroom identity. She enjoyed the limelight. She had her favourite press photographers, especially with Truth, and she used them to full effect. In one staged photograph for Truth, she lay back ‘in her big limousine, one heavily jewelled hand dangling idly in its flashing array of diamonds, while the other stroked the fluffy Pomeranian to which she was so attached’. Leigh regularly gave interviews accompanied by flattering images. In April 1930 she posed for a photograph with her dogs outside the Truth office and answered questions about the inquest into John ‘Snowy’ Prendergast’s death.
Kate Leigh used the courtroom to perform for the journalists writing up their court reports. She wore bright clothes, large furs draped over her shoulders and outrageously large hats. Her entrances were dramatic. Kate would often shout at the magistrate or scowl over at police officers, savouring her best dagger looks for the detectives. When her daughter, Eileen, appeared in court in 1932, Kate noted the attention of reporters, who later wrote in the papers: ‘… Kate’s real job for the day was to play the part of a fond mother. She glowed with kindness. She smiled at the Press table … mothering “pore [sic] Eileen” like a clucky hen.’ She glared at the police and rolled her eyes theatrically when they gave evidence. Another time she shouted over to crime reporter, Bill Jenkings: ‘Hello, Bill. I hope you brought your rosary beads so we can have a few “decades” for these sinners.’
By the 1930s, Kate Leigh had a well-established public profile, albeit one forged in the crime stories being fed out of Darlinghurst, Surry Hills and court sessions. In the years during and after the Second World War, however, Leigh was intent on communicating a community identity that resonated with the locals of eastern Sydney. She was able to do this by publicising her community image, and monitoring and protecting her public profile in newspapers. Newspapers also helped Leigh in her efforts by writing more supportive articles and later focusing on her reformed identity as a community leader in Surry Hills.
We can learn a lot about society by looking at popular criminals. A criminal celebrity can reflect the values of a group of people at a certain point in history. The American gangsters of the 1930s, for example, reveal the ways an impoverished, Depression-ridden society glamorised gangsters as fighting the state, particularly corrupt banks. Ordinary people couldn’t fight the system so they celebrated the criminals ripping off the banks. Crime is celebrated most obviously in a disenchanted society, one affected by severe deprivation, where criminals become role models for those confined to poverty, excluded from wealth and lacking better life opportunities.
It was in the deprived and impoverished communities of inner Sydney that Kate Leigh was most popular. Acceptance within her local community was important to Leigh and a key part of her efforts to legitimise her public identity. Leigh’s public image really mattered if she could convince ordinary working-class people they shouldn’t feel threatened by her crimes. It was hard to do in the violent years of the razor wars, but was easier once they were over.
Kate Leigh became a local celebrity in eastern Sydney from the 1930s because she was able to market an image of herself as a kindly sly-grog seller and community hero. Despite the fact that she made a fortune from taking advantage of local demand for illicit alcohol and was instrumental in organising crime through prostitution and drug dealing, her carefully crafted public image appealed to ordinary, working-class people in eastern Sydney and across the country. It is possible for reality to be blurred somewhat in favour of a heroic image of criminals. We know this well with the popularisation of Ned Kelly in Australian history and society. When the public is drawn to a criminal character or find them likeable, the realities of their criminal history are blurred in favour of a more acceptable version of events.
What mattered in Kate Leigh’s criminal career is that she remained a sly-grogger for longer than her years involved in prostitution and drugs. By the late 1930s, the police had successfully dealt with the trade in cocaine, and Leigh knew there was little profit to be made from it. She still dabbled in it at times to make some money, but sly grog was her mainstay. The unpopular early closing times remained until 1955, and locals went on buying sly grog. Continued local support for unlicensed drinking legitimised Kate Leigh’s criminal activities and allowed her to take advantage of the context in which she found herself. A culture of resentment against early pub closing permitted her to develop a popular image of herself as a roughish, likeable sly-grogger.
Kate Leigh was a woman who fitted well into her surroundings. Like the working-class people of Darling-hurst and Surry Hills, she was tough and resilient to outside perceptions of her lifestyle, but vocal when portrayed contrary to her liking, as when she appeared in person in newspaper offices to let editors know what she thought of their stories about her. Locals often saw Kate storming off to Kippax Street and the office of Truth newspaper. Reporters knew she wouldn’t hold back. In 1930, facing imprisonment for cocaine possession, Leigh visited staff at Truth to object to being called the ‘worst woman’. According to the paper, she ‘didn’t mind being called the most notorious woman in Sydney’.
When polite conversations didn’t work, Kate showed reporters her tough side. Her favourable image was even maintained at times through scare tactics. When a Sydney newspaper ran an article in 1950 claiming Kate Leigh had wilfully shot dead John ‘Snowy’ Prendergast back in 1930, Leigh confronted staff in the newsroom. She later told the editor of The Mirror newspaper in Perth how it all played out, and staff confirmed it for him. She stormed into the newspaper offices and forced typists to cover their ears from ‘the purple flow of invective’. Male reporters rushed to escape the ‘fury of her attack’. One man lost a clump of hair and was given a swift backhander from Leigh as he fled. Kate Leigh had killed Prendergast in 1930. What the press continued to speculate about were her claims of self-defence. Why did it matter to her what the papers wrote? She had featured on the front pages of newspapers for many of her younger years and was a well-known underworld figure. By 1950, however, Kate Leigh had something greater to protect. Her continued popularity within the inner-city communities of Darlinghurst and Surry Hills rested on acceptable crimes and a favourable public image.
Kate Leigh redefined herself publicly as a Surry Hills matriarch. This is one of the most interesting parts of her life. It raises questions about whether or not she deliberately set out to create a favourable public image to downplay her criminal career or whether, in fact, she really was a kindly woman who wanted to help out in her community.
Kate Leigh’s Christmas parties were the highlight of the year for some of the kids in Surry Hills. Each year from the early 1920s, she would block off Lansdowne Street and set up a street party. Tables would be surrounded by eager children waiting for food and enjoying the celebrations. In 1946, more than 300 local kids attended Leigh’s party. Kate told the press, ‘Kiddies of Surry Hills have very little but I will not see them unhappy at Christmas.’ It didn’t matter too much that most of the gifts given to kids were from Leigh’s haul of stolen goods. It was like taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
In one 1950 People article on life in Surry Hills, Leigh is photographed waving to children below her terrace house, alongside Santa. The caption reads: ‘All hail Kate Leigh. All hail the Yuletide spirit embodied by a caparisoned friend of Kate’s who volunteered to assist her distribute her bounty to the underprivileged neighborhood [sic] kids from the balcony of her Surry Hills residence. The children also crowd her smallgoods shop.’
In another photograph, Kate Leigh reaches
out to a small child crying in the arms of Santa. Taken early in January 1948, the photo captures Leigh in an apron and looking every bit the elderly matriarch. Many children trying to get close to Santa shroud her. There is a look of genuine affection on Kate’s face as she tries to soothe the upset child. If you knew nothing else about Kate Leigh, you would look at this photograph and think it was a kindly old woman trying to help a sad child. Yet Leigh’s notoriety should not detract from the fact that she really did want to help children in her community.
One of the most interesting reports about Kate’s parties comes from the 1948 Christmas party. In its regular series ‘Notes from the City’, the Scone Advocate set the scene perfectly. It also explained the mystery behind the identity of Santa Claus and questions raised about Kate’s loot for the children:
Biggest event in Surry Hills during the Christmas season was when Kate Leigh (or Barry) threw a party for 500 children of that dubious (or delectable, as you choose) suburb. And Kate did things in style. There was beer for the few elder people … two hams, a turkey, six fowls, an ox tongue, two cheeses, six gargantuan Devon, garlic and pork fritz sausages, three cases of tomatoes, three of lettuce, and six tins of sardines, salmon, and asparagus. Next came 50 dozen bottles of cordials and aerated waters, 40lb of block cake, 20lb fancy cakes, 10 cases of apples, bananas, oranges and peaches.
It was quite the feast, but the best was yet to come for the kids when Santa showed up:
A ‘Sun’ reporter was inveighed [sic] along to act as Father Christmas. Fortified by a few beers, he donned the traditional garb and was going fine when he promised one expectant mite a sleeping doll, a walking doll, a talking doll with blue eyes, a pram, a pair of skates, a teddy bear, a baby sister, and – ‘Stop it, you old goat. She’s only getting a tin tea set!’ bawled the mother. Later, when the pressman–Santa Claus asked a brat of six or seven what he would like, the answer came, ‘Garn – you’d only kid a man up a tree, you old goat.’ But the climax came when he taxed one youngster with being at least 16 or 17, and was threatened: ‘Tip me off to old Kate, you mug, and I’ll wait for you outside.’ ‘Mum,’ queried one inquisitive youngster, ‘where does Old Kate get all the dough for this sort of thing?’ Here Mum grabbed the querist by the ear, pulled him round the corner, and gave him ‘one to go on with,’ as they say in that classic area. But it was a great show.