If Kate was in a hurry, she would take a short cut to Lansdowne Street through any of the myriad alleyways of the area, and if it was a typical Surry Hills lane circa 1940s, it would have been wee-the-bed and ragwort speckled. The heavy trudge of her sensible shoes would have sent packs of hissing, mewing cats skittering for cover. The strays, until disturbed, may have been routing a nest of the brown, razor-toothed, puppy-sized rats that, attracted to the raw sewage and refuse strewn about, infested Surry Hills. In her 1949 novel Poor Man's Orange, Ruth Park would describe in horrifying detail a rat attacking a baby in a Surry Hills terrace and the baby's mother beating the squealing rodent to death. Such incidents were not uncommon in the Hills.
Home at last, Kate would have opened the front door of her large terrace with its ornate iron lacework on the upstairs balcony and a street sign reading ‘Lansdowne Street’ affixed to the wall, and disappeared inside as yellow street lamps fizzed on up and down the road, and a westerly carrying the tang of sea salt from Darling Harbour cooled the dying day.
Kate Leigh loomed large in Bernie Purcell's Redfern boyhood and when he knocked about later in Surry Hills. He especially recalls the Christmas street parties she turned on for the poor children of the area. To slumland kids, a Kate Leigh street party was a highlight of their year, every bit as exciting as a school or church bus excursion to Manly or the Blue Mountains. Purcell, like many others, considered Kate a force for good and a friend in need.
Lance Hoban is another with splendid recall of the time and people. His first police posting was to Bondi, in 1940. He remained there, a green and ingenuous, gentlemanly uniformed cop, until he was transferred to Darlinghurst soon after. ‘My superior at Bondi was Sergeant Joe Chuck, a veteran of the razor-gang wars. He counselled me before I went to work at Darlinghurst. “Now, Lance,” said Joe, “We're sorry to see you go, but when you get to Darlinghurst will you be sure to introduce yourself to a lovely lady named Matilda Devine. She's a great old friend of mine, and I want you to give her my regards. You two will get on famously, I know it.” ‘
Impressed by Chuck's reverential tone, Hoban asked, ‘Oh, is Matilda Devine a nun at St Vincent's Hospital?’ Chuck just laughed. ‘I was terribly naive and honestly didn't have a clue who Matilda Devine was. I didn't find out until I had to take her fingerprints.’
As the constable responsible for booking and fingerprinting at Darlinghurst, Hoban was moved by the number of prostitutes who were family women from the suburbs. ‘They came from Penrith, Parramatta, Chester Hill, Burwood, anywhere. I said, “How come you travel all the way into East Sydney to be a prostitute?” They said, “Oh, we come to do a day's work at the brothel. At the end of the day we add up our takings, the owner takes her share, the protection people take theirs and we take what's left. Then we commute back to our homes.” It was a low way to make a living.’
Hoban, a sweet-voiced singer good enough to perform at the Tivoli Theatre on his nights off, also became acquainted with Kate, Cameron and Markham and company. ‘They were hardened women, but all very cheerful and courteous to me. Maybe because I didn't try to bully them. Kate said to me one day, “How did you come to be a policeman, young man?” I said I wanted to make my career in the force. “Awww, you're wastin’ your time. You're too mild-mannered. You would have made a better bishop.” ‘ Hoban, a religious man who did, indeed, after a lifetime of charity fundraising, become a papal knight and was received by four pontiffs, replied, ‘Thanks for the compliment.’
It was common practice, says Hoban, for policemen whose arrest quota was low in a particular month to go out and arrest Kate Leigh. They were on safe ground, he chuckles, because she was always up to no good. ‘They'd raid her joint, confiscate the liquor and charge her. She'd pay her fine or serve her time and then go straight back into business.’
One Darlinghurst constable's arrest quota may have been lagging when on New Year's Eve 1942 he decided to don his civvies and knock on Kate Leigh's door pretending to be a thirsty punter. The sting worked. When Kate and Jack Baker loaded the liquor he had ordered into his car, he arrested them. Outraged at being set up, Kate called the constable a liar at her trial when he accused her of selling sly grog. ‘I've never had a sly-grog business,’ she yelled, somehow maintaining a straight face. ‘But I may have run a private hotel where liquor was sometimes sold.’
Before Judge Wells sentenced Kate and Baker to six months’ gaol and a £100 fine, there was a series of bizarre exchanges in the courtroom, not the least of which was when Kate shelfed her own man. She said if anyone had been selling sly grog it was Baker, not her, and so he should pay the penalty. ‘Baker is the boss,’ she said. The Crown demanded to know whether Kate was Baker's lover. She exploded, ‘Don't you dare talk to me like that! Do you think I'd be sleeping with some big buck nigger?’ (Baker, as far as anyone knew, was Caucasian and had been sharing Kate's bed on and off for some years.)
As the judge and prosecutor exchanged nonplussed glances, Kate stormed on: ‘No one can say anything against my morals. His Worship knows me well, don't you, Mr Wells?’
The judge replied that, indeed, he had known her, in a professional sense, for ‘forty-one years this month, to be exact’.
But while Kate spurned Baker, he seemed not to resent her perfidy and told the world he was smitten with her. ‘There's never been a better woman lived,’ he declared to reporters. ‘I've lived with her as man and wife for fifteen years. You always talk about her bad points, but what about her good ones? She has a heart of gold.’
There was another uproar when a prosecutor accused Kate of hiding behind Baker. ‘Have you ever heard of Tilly Devine hiding behind Jim to shield her and making him take the blame?’
At that, Kate's face turned scarlet and she leapt to her feet. ‘Be careful of your words! How dare you mention my name in the same breath as that woman! I am respectable and won't be insulted. I may have sold beer but nothing else. I am a different class of person. I give to the war loan, I'd do anything for the boys fighting for us. I give £10 every week to Boys Town. I refuse to be compared to Tilly Devine. I refuse to listen to her name. The mention of it disgusts me!’
Hoban concedes Kate was an incorrigible crook, but insists she was an angel in the community who ‘never knocked a bloke back for a quid or a floor to sleep on if he was down on his luck’. The more ragged they were, he said, the wider she opened her heart. ‘Kate was also a patriot,’ says Hoban. ‘In 1941, they had a war rally in Martin Place and called for people to buy war bonds. Prime Minister Robert Menzies was there. Kate slapped down £10 000 for her bonds, and challenged Menzies. “Mr Menzies, if you match my £10 000, I'll double it.” ‘ Menzies, who, in his favour, would not have been earning a tenth of Kate's income at that time, politely declined. The crowd booed.
In Tilly and Kate's mellow years, they were content to wage a public-relations war on each other. They would telephone or call on reporters and tell them of their good deeds, then gloat when their activities were headlined in the tabloids. When Smith's Weekly, the Mirror, the Sun or Truth ran a story about her hosting a party for street urchins or the homeless, Kate would rush up and down her street, thrusting it in the face of friends and passers-by alike.
Mirror journalist Bill Jenkings became friends with Kate in the 1940s. In his memoirs, As Crime Goes By, he recalled to biographers Norm Lipson and Tony Barnao: ‘We loved writing about Kate, and she encouraged it. I suppose it was free advertising for her business. I reckon Kate would have been a soft bite for any reporter down on his luck.’ Jenkings often saw Kate at Central Court and the two became friendly. He said if she wasn't there to face a charge herself, she was there with money to bail out one of her myriad shady mates or to bring food to a prisoner, such as the time she arrived at Central with a large tray of succulent oysters and lobster.
Ray Blissett, however, insists Kate was no saint. ‘I'm sorry, but to me Kate was a bad woman, a foul-mouthed old bitch. One night, I went to see the bludger she was living with. His name
was Paddy, as I remember. She said to me, “‘E ain't 'ere. 'E's in ’orrrspital” — that's how she talked. I said, “What's wrong with him?” She laughed, “I stabbed him.” At Christmas she'd bung on a party for the local kids, and at Easter when Wirth's Circus came to Surry Hills, down near The Pottery pub, Kate would throw hot cross buns at the kids, and everyone thought she was an angel. But she was a fallen angel, as far as I was concerned. A real old villain, she honestly was.’
Before attending court, Kate would go to her bank and take a selection of rings from the thirty or more she kept in a safety deposit box, adorn her fingers with them, and don her huge hat and a fur. When people asked how she could stand wearing heavy stoles on sweltering summer days, she would show them her ravaged hands and explain, ‘I have to keep warm for me arfuritis.’ She knew that she was the centre of attention in the courtroom and played to the gallery. ‘I know you've all been waitin’ for me,’ she'd boom to judge, lawyers, accused and the public as she eased her bulk into her seat in the public gallery. ‘Well I'm here now, so let's get started. What's on today?’ Afterwards, she would shout the reporters and cops, too, if they tagged along, to a pub lunch. She drank only Blue Bow lemonade or water, but the bill for her guests usually topped £50. Afterwards, she'd take her rings back to the bank and go home.
‘Kate was a real performer in court,’ recalls Maggie Baker. ‘Even when she was an observer, she'd bring up whatever she was having for dinner and peel her vegies in the courtroom. The scraps flew everywhere, then she'd pick them up. I remember one judge got cross with her for disrupting proceedings. “you're not bringing your dinner into my courtroom,” he said. She yelled out, “Now, wait a minute, Bill. I'll come in here with my vegetables if I want to.” ‘
Like Maggie Baker, Lance Hoban has fond memories of Kate Leigh, but no time for Tilly Devine: ‘She had a terrible tongue and was a violent woman. One night when I was a constable I had to take a message down to her place in Palmer Street. We'd locked up one of her girls or clients, and they assured us that Tilly would pay their ten shillings bail. They scribbled a note to her, and I was asked to deliver it and return with the bail money.’ It was 1 a.m. when Hoban arrived at Devine's house. He knocked on the door, ‘and suddenly Tilly was leaning over the balcony above my head and abusing me with a tirade of foul language. I managed to interrupt long enough to tell her so-and-so was locked up and needed ten shillings to pay the bail. Next thing, a ten bob note flutters down on my head. She didn't let her friend down, but Tilly Devine was a vile woman.’
There is a terrifying photo of Tilly that lends weight to Hoban's character reference. It is a mugshot, taken on 6 February 1943, after she had been taken to Darlinghurst Police Station for being drunk and fighting. In the picture she wears no make-up or jewellery. Her hair is not styled as usual, but hangs greasy and limp around her face. She peers, befuddled but defiant, at the police photographer. Her eyes are two-thirds closed and her mouth, not flung open in a toothy grin for once, is set in a grimace. Her cheeks sag and there are deep bags under her eyes; her nose looks thick and has been badly broken, and there are scars on her face. In this photo she looks every bit the ‘worst woman in Sydney’.
No doubt she was worthy of that title but, just like Kate Leigh, her good works were many and considerable. Tilly Devine did her bit for the Allies, too, apart from tending to the carnal desires of servicemen. She gave large amounts of money to funds providing for Australian warriors overseas. She bought thousands of pounds’ worth of war bonds and organised parties, the proceeds of which helped Diggers and their families. She never tired of telling friends how her son Frederick was serving with the British Army in the Middle East.
Possibly born of guilt at leaving Frederick behind with her parents in Camberwell when she emigrated to Australia after World War I, she adored children. And when she was seen around Darlinghurst and Maroubra wheeling a baby boy in a pram, rumours flew that Tilly had adopted the lad. Tilly laughed off the rumours, explaining that she was looking after the ‘lovely little chappie’ for a friend. ‘I wish the stories were true,’ she said, ‘but how could I look after a baby when I can't even care for myself? But it is true that I love children and I'd love to be in a position to adopt one some day.’
Tilly doled out money and gifts to local youngsters, and supported the Jesuits and the Salvation Army. At Christmas 1947, she visited Collaroy Crippled Children's Hospital. At the front desk, she refused to tell her name, just said she had something for the sick kids. In the ward, she took a wad of tightly rolled ten-shilling notes from her purse and gave one to every child. Then she had her driver bring from her car a bag of toys and handed them around to the delighted kids. Tilly was overcome by their unrestrained delight, and wept. When the nurses asked who she was, she said, eyes streaming, ‘Just a woman who loves children.’
32
Parades Gone By
The Devines moved from their home at the corner of Torrington and Malabar roads, Maroubra, in the late 1930s, renting it out. It is hard to imagine their neighbours being overly distressed by their leaving. In the decade or so Tilly and Jim had lived in the spacious brick bungalow, Jim had shot dead Gunman Gaffney and Fred Moffitt in gun battles at the premises and others had been wounded. Nearby cars and houses had been sprayed with stray bullets in the shootouts. The gangster couple's frequent parties were the bane of neighbours’ lives. These ‘shivoos’ usually lasted until dawn, and drunken singing, loud swearing, fist fights and shambolic dancing and falling about on the front lawn were commonplace.
Tilly and Jim's marriage had been in trouble ever since Tilly returned from England in January 1931 and found the ‘housekeeper’ living with Jim. There is no record of Tilly cheating on her husband except in the line of duty in her days as a prostitute, but from early on Jim Devine had been a philanderer, drunkard and wife-basher. It was always a mystery to her friends why such a strong, proud woman as Tilly Devine tolerated for so long Jim's infidelities and violence. Friends would ask how she had received her latest black eye or facial wound and she would laugh, ‘Oh, don't worry, love, it's just Jim acting up again.’
In quitting Torrington Road, perhaps Tilly was hoping that a new address would bring about a new attitude in Jim. They rented a flat in Paddington. But nothing changed. ‘He never used to come home, he said that business kept him out at nights,’ she later recalled. ‘If I said anything about him getting home late, he would knock me down with his fist and then put the boot in.’
Around 1940, Jim Devine was gaoled for stealing £100. When he was in Long Bay, his wife's visits were few. For reasons known only to her, she still loved him, friends said, but she was glad of the respite from his brutality. Tilly left their Paddington flat and moved into a terrace house they owned at 191 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst, in her redlight empire. When Jim was released six months later, he did not return to Tilly, but took his own flat in Flinders Street, Darlinghurst, where he lived with his lovers.
Even though they were no longer domiciled together, Jim continued to harass Tilly. Every Saturday morning and often throughout the week, he would bang on her door and bellow for drinking and betting money. Usually, in self-preservation and perhaps the hope that he might return to her, she gave in to him. ‘He was always demanding money,’ she said. ‘When he was half-drunk, I would give it to him. If not, he would take it.’
A flurry of incidents in mid 1942 finally convinced Tilly that Jim was a lost cause. In July, the Navy, Army and Air Force Ball was held at David Jones department store to raise money for Australian servicemen and women. As an ex-AIF man, Jim was given a quantity of tickets to sell. As Tilly later testified in court, she, ever the patriot, told her husband that she wanted to buy twelve tickets. He told her that if she paid now, he would get the tickets and give them to her that afternoon. She handed over the cash, but Jim didn't return with the tickets. A few days later, Tilly, in a towering rage at being gypped, tracked Jim down to a pub near his flat and demanded that he either give her the ticke
ts or her money back. Devine did neither. ‘He flattened me with his fist,’ she would tell the judge at her divorce proceedings, ‘and then made to hit me with a chair. My driver rescued me from further injury and carried me to my car.’ As her limousine accelerated away, Jim flung himself onto the road in its path. ‘Go on, drive over me!’ he shouted with dubious logic. ‘And then I'll have you up for murder!’
About that time, too, Jim broke into Tilly's house and, as she put it, ‘ratted’ her purse of £26. When she later accused him of taking the money to spend at the races, ‘He KO'd me [knocked me out] clean and put the boot in everywhere. He kicked me from all angles, on the chest, thighs and stomach.’
On another occasion, Jim gatecrashed a party she was holding for her employees and friends at 191 Palmer Street, and begged her to lend him money to pay his debts. Tilly refused. He flew into a tantrum, knocked her down and dumped a table laden with beer and food on her prostrate form.
Perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to save her marriage or maybe just for old times’ sake, Tilly planned a spectacular twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party for herself and Jim on 12 August 1942, at Palmer Street. The catering, decorations and entertainment cost her hundreds of pounds. But Jim's drunken violence ruined the celebration. He arrived late and spoiling for a fight. Tilly didn't disappoint him. ‘I put this party on for our silver anniversary,’ she yelled, ‘and you come in at this late hour, and you're drunk. Where have you been?’
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