‘The final link in Brisbane’s vice-chain are the four officially recognised brothels,’ it went on. ‘They are in Margaret Street, City; Albert Street, City; Montague Road, West End [Killarney brothel, actually in Lanfear Street, off Montague]; and Ernest Street, South Brisbane. The oldest established of these dens [Albert Street] has a palm-decorated entrance around which the prostitutes lounge in cane grass chairs – leading from a city pavement.
‘Their human frailty might not be of their own making. Perhaps they cannot always be blamed.
‘Here may be a girl who has been abandoned by the father of her baby – maybe a divorcee whose home has been broken, or it may be the good-time girl – or a hardened get-rich-quick type, snapping her fingers at the world and its morals.
‘Here is a school of embittered women.
‘Their only protectors now are the police. And that protection is absolute.’
The journalist added that the selection, or ‘sanction’, of girls entering the ‘houses’ was a virtual ‘police dictatorship’, as the brothels were a font of information on criminal activity. ‘What they talk about in the hire-girl’s sordid surroundings might become “police business”.’ Girls who did not cooperate with police did not remain in the ‘profession’ for long. Taxi drivers were also a vital link in this police ‘spy-ring’, the article said.
‘To justify their attitude police claim there would be a lot more sex offences if hire-girl establishments were banned. They regard them as a necessary evil.’
The article – which had more than a hint of unnamed police cooperation about it – ended with a prophecy: ‘The truth about [vice-dens] does not make a pretty story. It is told here so that the people of Brisbane and Queensland can ask: Is it an inevitable part of a city of half-a-million?’
Two days after the Courier-Mail exposé, there was a flurry of prostitute arrests.
Detective Lewis recorded his movements in his police diary: ‘At office at 6.40am. On duty with Det Hopgood. Then to 74 Dornoch Terrace, and interviewed prostitute Vera Jackson and [taxi] driver Michael Maloyba. With Det Chalmers to Barnes Auto and located Annie Ellen May Harris (19) and later arrested her on charge [insufficient lawful means] . . . then arrested Gloria Millicent Redpath (18) [insufficient lawful means] . . . to court where Harris and Redpath appeared before Mr Burchill C.S.M. Both pleaded guilty. Each convicted and sentenced to one month imp.
‘To office and all of Consorting Squad interviewed by Inspector Bischof.
‘Off duty 3:50pm.’
As is the way of newspapers, the Courier-Mail triumphantly claimed partial responsibility for the arrests: ‘The first teenage girl vagrants arrested since the Courier-Mail vice disclosures on Wednesday were sent to gaol yesterday. They were arrested after complaints of girls’ conduct at night in North Quay.’
Harris was homeless and possessed nothing but a port full of dirty clothes. And Redpath slept in parks and on railway stations. She had sixpence in her possession when she was arrested.
By the following week the great exposé of Brisbane’s vice scene had gone dry, as had the police’s public crackdown on the city’s ‘school of embittered women’. When the publicity ceased, so did official police attention towards prostitutes.
It underlined a curious exchange at a Police Appeals Board hearing a few years earlier, where Detective Senior Constable Abe Duncan – who would investigate the Betty Shanks killing, and twenty years later conduct lengthy interviews on police corruption with Shirley Brifman, nee Emerson – was seeking promotion.
During the appeal debate, Inspector Jim Donovan said that as an officer he would investigate housebreaking charges ahead of bigamy charges.
The chairman of the board asked in response: ‘Are you saying you regard material crimes as more important than those against the moral order?’
It was precisely what the inspector was saying.
The South Brisbane Scrapper
Just before 10 a.m. on Monday 28 September 1953, hundreds of mourners began filing into the quietly eerie Byzantine-influenced St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church at the corner of Ann and Creek streets in the city.
Brisbane was burying another Queensland premier, this time William Forgan Smith, who had died of a sudden heart attack in Sydney while on business for the Sugar Board.
The Courier-Mail reported that ‘many high and humble people’ rubbed shoulders at the service; the minister presiding said that ‘truly a prince among men has fallen’.
Among the many dignitaries in the church that day was Inspector Frank Bischof of the CIB. It was a surprise to many that Bischof was still serving in the city.
Just a few months earlier, with the Shanks murder still unsolved, the government announced that Bischof, ‘one of the state’s top detectives’, had been appointed to take control of the Toowoomba police district. This was Bischof’s home turf. He had specifically applied for the position.
Then three weeks later the transfer mysteriously fell through. According to the government, Police Commissioner John Smith recommended that the Big Fella remain in Brisbane, and Bischof cited ‘domestic reasons’ for staying put.
Also in the church that day was lawyer and Brisbane Vice-mayor Colin Bennett. Bennett was short, wiry, handy with his fists and the father of seven children. Born in Townsville in 1919, he went to school in Ayr in north Queensland, then Nudgee College in Brisbane before gaining a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Queensland. Bennett was a law clerk and maths master at the elite Brisbane Grammar School before entering private practice in 1948. He was elected a Brisbane City Council alderman the following year. A Catholic, he had a deep social conscience and feared nobody when he sensed injustice, particularly towards the city’s underclass.
Professionally, Bennett was in a curious position. He worked in the early- to mid-1950s as vice-mayor and simultaneously conducted a successful career as a criminal lawyer. In court, he would often defend the impoverished and the down-at-heel, then act on behalf of senior police during promotion appeals. He mixed equally with Brisbane’s elite and its most despised. And by representing prostitutes, thieves and vagrants, he began to amass a street-level appreciation of crime and corruption throughout the city.
After the funeral service for Forgan Smith, the mourners joined a mile-long cortege, headed by mounted police, through the streets of the city. Both Bennett and Bischof were part of that cortege. In a few short years they would become bitter adversaries, and the epicentre of their conflict would be a pretty young debutante from the Atherton Tableland.
Her Majesty Comes to Visit
Three weeks before the Forgan Smith funeral, Inspector Bischof again had his photograph in the Courier-Mail, this time sitting around a table of the state’s police top tier discussing plans for the royal tour in March 1954.
Bischof is a study of concentration next to Inspector Donovan, Chief Inspector Harrold, Deputy Police Commissioner Glynn and Police Commissioner Smith. ‘A police official said last night that subjects included security, traffic control, and the movement of police to centres which would be visited by the Queen,’ the paper reported.
In late 1951 Bischof had been named as one of two Queensland police officers to help guard the royals during their Australian tour the following year, unexpectedly cancelled after the death of King George VI on 6 February 1952.
Now Bischof was back in the thick of royal fever. On the exact day the picture of Queensland’s elite police was published, the Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra informed Ray Whitrod that his appointment as director of the Commonwealth Investigation Service had been ‘confirmed by the Governor-General in Council’.
The new head of ASIO encouraged Whitrod to apply for the position and revitalise the ailing service – essentially the Commonwealth police force – which was formed in 1917 at the request of Prime Minister Billy Hughes. An egg had been thr
own at Hughes during a public rally over conscription in the Queensland town of Warwick, and he didn’t trust the Queensland government or its police force to thoroughly prosecute. So he formed the national squad.
The force’s counter-intelligence duties were handed over when ASIO formed. It also lost the bulk of its quality investigators to the new body. By the time Whitrod took over, it was run-down and had a poorly defined charter.
Whitrod strongly believed the royal tour of 1954 would go a long way to re-establishing the credentials of the Commonwealth Investigation Service. He would officially become chief Commonwealth security officer for the tour.
As chief, he was required in advance to visit every state to coordinate security arrangements. ‘The states resisted this encroachment on their traditional responsibilities,’ Whitrod would later record in his memoir, ‘and it took some delicate balancing over a number of royal tours for me to be accepted as the principal adviser. I took a fair battering from the state officers in the meantime, for police are touchy about trespassers in their patch.’
It was Whitrod’s first clash with the Queensland police.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip arrived in Sydney on 3 February 1954. They hit Brisbane on 9 March and commenced a nine-day tour of the capital and regional areas.
The visit precipitated the greatest singular concentration and organisation of police officers in the state’s history. In early February, Chief Inspector Harrold travelled to Sydney to study crowd and traffic arrangements on the ground. In Brisbane, police expected 500,000 citizens to line the royal route from the airport at Eagle Farm to Government House in Paddington, in the city’s inner north-west.
In late February, Police Commissioner Smith announced that 805 uniformed police and 156 plain-clothes detectives would be mobilised for the royal tour, and that men would be brought in from Ipswich and distant Charleville and Roma to satisfy the demands of security and crowd control.
Premier Vince Gair anointed himself the state royal tour minister.
Meanwhile, Ray Whitrod was getting close to the royal couple.
‘I accepted personal responsibility for the safety of the royals and went everywhere with them,’ he recalled in his memoir. ‘The prince discovered that I shared his interest in wading birds, and whenever an opportunity presented itself, he would get me to drive him to some isolated spot to photograph Australian migratory waders.’
Between official engagements, Whitrod escorted Prince Philip in his second-hand Holden to various bird-watching spots around Canberra, and even took him ‘mist netting’ at Lake George, north of the city. Mist netting involved setting up almost invisible nets before dawn, trapping birds as they foraged for dawn food, and tagging them. ‘He enjoyed that very much,’ Whitrod later recalled.
When the Queen finally arrived in Brisbane, Detective Lewis was rostered on for duty at 3 p.m. but came in to the office an hour and a half early. His role that day was police driver.
‘On duty with Det. Gorman. Then in Car 19 conveyed Dets. Balderson and Fox to the Exhibition Ground [where the royals were to be formally displayed to the Brisbane public] and drove men from there to Govt. House.’ Similarly, he wrote the following day: ‘Then in Car 30 to Govt. House and obtained meal for Dets. Currey and Cole.’
The grand royal ball was held at Brisbane City Hall on the evening of 10 March. The royals were driven from Government House around 9 p.m. and dazzled the local residents of Rosalie who had lined Fernberg Road for a glimpse of the Queen and her tiara. They arrived at 9.15 p.m. to be greeted by 1,150 guests and eight koalas, a wildlife treat for the special visitors.
It had been speculated months before that Brisbane Vice-mayor Colin Bennett would be the first to dance with Her Majesty. Mayor Roberts couldn’t muster a dance move to save himself. The Queen only stayed at the ball for one hour and seven minutes and was returned to Government House, but that didn’t stop the press declaring it ‘the most spectacular and successful ball in Brisbane’s history’.
During the remainder of the tour, Lewis arrested a serious jewel thief but spent much of his time ‘attending files’ or ‘on reserve’. He was present on the corner of Albert and Turbot streets as the royals’ procession passed through the city on 17 March.
It is not known if Whitrod, as royal security chief, ever encountered the likes of Bischof, Hallahan and Murphy during his stay in Brisbane. He had no contact with Lewis. He would accompany the royals on to Perth, and, at a farewell function on the royal yacht, Britannia, Prince Philip would present Whitrod with his book, Birds of the Antarctic. It was inscribed, ‘To Ray Whitrod with many thanks. P.P.’
A month and a half later, an insignificant, three-line personal classified advertisement appeared in the Saturday edition of the Cairns Post. It simply read: ‘colin emerson is urgently required to communicate with his sister, Shirley Emerson, of Atherton.’
Shirley had disappeared.
Family Men
Lewis’s first child, also Terence Murray, was born on 20 January 1953, virtually nine months to the day after his marriage to Hazel.
Soon after, they bought a block of land at 45 Albert Street, Holland Park, in the city’s south-east, for three hundred pounds, and had the Queensland Housing Commission construct a small, box-like timber and fibro-roofed dwelling, identical to others being built up and down the unpaved street. Lewis actually gives two versions of how the young couple raised the money for their first block of land: on one hand he says ‘we saved every bloody penny we could and I got every bit of overtime I possibly could . . . and over time we racked up 300 pound’; and on the other hand he says they were given the 300 pounds by guests at their wedding.
The ambitious Detective Lewis, after an emotionally difficult childhood – who could he trust, with a mother who abandoned him and a meek father who quietly accepted the sudden departure of his wife and remained indifferent to the impact of their divorce on his children? – came uncomfortably to his own family life.
He says he found it difficult to express love towards other human beings, even his wife and children. Deeds, he believed, were more important than words. He proved his worth by doing.
By the time the Lewis family moved into Albert Street, he had well and truly set his priorities. Work came first. Family came second.
They had little furniture – a bedroom suite, a refrigerator, and a cot for baby Terence. They had no phone and no car. Hazel washed clothes and nappies in a downstairs copper, and the toilet was at the bottom of the yard.
Lewis worked obsessively at the CIB, often getting caught on jobs for twenty-four hours straight. There was no way he could communicate to Hazel that he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He’d grab a bite at Barnes Auto Co., or pick up a quick bottle of milk from the Paul’s milk factory down on the bend of the river in South Brisbane, within sight of Killarney brothel.
Across town Tony Murphy was faced with the same predicament – long hours at the office and small children at home.
Missing from the household for days at a stretch, he would tell his wife, Maureen, that if he was going to get ahead in the force, he’d have to make these contacts.
He never performed tasks like bathing or feeding the children, and was often impatient with them. He was mixing with dangerous criminals, with murderers, and had little time for domestic minutiae. As they grew older they feared him. ‘He only had to breathe,’ says wife Maureen, ‘and they knew they had to behave.
‘He was very cranky a lot of the time. He never laid a hand on the children. He just had to raise his voice and they’d all behave. Tony didn’t discuss a lot of things, even with me. And the cases he was on. He never came home and discussed them.’
One night, unusually, he quietly hugged and kissed his children at bedtime and told Maureen he was off to do ‘a hard job’. She thought there was a chance he might not come home.
He was at CI
B headquarters when Maureen was about to give birth to one of their children, and he told her to catch a taxi and he’d meet her at the hospital. In the maternity ward, with the baby born, Murphy rehearsed his evidence for an impending trial.
Murphy would do anything to get ‘a kill’. He had extremely reliable ‘dogs’, or informants, and criminals, too, began to fear being taken up the stairs at CIB headquarters. A flogging at the hands of senior detectives was not just a possibility but almost a certainty.
Former detective Ron Edington recalls Murphy in action: ‘He’d get someone up there and say – “Who’s going to tell the first lie? You or me?” He’d ask a prisoner to sit down then pull the chair out from under him. Most of his violence was done verbally.’
By the mid-1950s Lewis and Murphy could see that Bischof was heading for the police commissionership, and they were his chosen boys. This, in turn, created resentment among some members of the CIB, and pro- and anti-Bischof camps began to form. Rumours of corruption started to circulate.
Charles Fenwick Corner had started his career as a constable in Mount Isa in the late 1930s and in 1952 was transferred to the Brisbane CIB.
One day Bischof instructed Corner and two other detectives to go with him to the Athenian Club in Charlotte Street in the CBD, where, once inside the club, Bischof indicated elderly men playing dominoes and cards. He then accused the owner of the club, Jack Smith, of keeping a disorderly house.
Corner knew Smith and noticed that he came to the counter at CIB headquarters later that day and asked for Bischof. Smith later confided in Corner that Bischof had demanded payment from him. Corner had also heard whispers of Bischof receiving payments – collected by members of the CIB – from prostitutes working the city’s four tolerated brothels.
Edington, who would go on to run the powerful Police Union, rightly observed that regular graft was absorbed from the brothels. ‘If a madam wanted to employ a new girl,’ he recalls, ‘she would check with the officer in charge of Consorting, who would check out her record and lay down the law. She would have to have a house name, be registered on police books, wasn’t allowed to drink at work, and had to be medically checked each week.’
Three Crooked Kings Page 4