Friday 23 August 2013

Kate Leigh's Crowd...


Tilly Devine’s opposite number in the Underworld was the notorious Kate Leigh. From an unpromising start in the Bush she dragged herself up by the bootstraps to become one of the most infamous figures in Sydney’s history; the Australian novelist Ruth Park based a character on her in her book The Harp in the South. Kate had a Robin Hood streak to her nature and threw massive Christmas parties for the impoverished citizens that thronged her neck of the woods; but that streak didn’t run too deep, and she was always ready with rifle, razor and hatchet to dish the sort of rough justice she felt was required...

Kate Leigh (1881-1964)

 
“If you were sweet with Kate, she’d do anything for you and give you anything. But if you crossed her, she’d shoot you”
-‘Chow’ Hayes.

Born on a property outside of Dubbo beyond the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Kate endured her upbringing until the age of ten, when she left for the bright lights. Her trip got cut short: she ended up in a Parramatta reformatory school for homeless girls and stayed there for four years. On her release, she supported herself by working as a waitress in the inner city suburb of Glebe during which time she married her first husband Jack Leigh, by whom she had a daughter, Eileen.

Jack, a petty thief and ne’er-do-well, thought himself a hard man and decided that he would beat up their landlord in lieu of paying the rent: the landlord took the two of them to court. Kate lied that Jack had beaten the man after finding him in bed with her, with the result that both of them were sent to gaol for five years, he for aggravated assault and she for perjury. When they were released, they parted and never saw each other again.

Kate started a new career as a prostitute and thief. She ran a string of brothels and worked as a bail broker for her gangster associates. By 1914, she had shacked up with Samuel ‘Jewey’ Freeman in Sydney’s most infamous slum, Frog Hollow, on the escarpment beneath Riley Street in Surrey Hills. It was while living there that she, Freeman and his sidekick Ernest ‘Shiner’ Ryan planned the great Eveleigh Railway Workshops payroll robbery.

The Eveleigh Railway Workshops outside of Redfern were the headquarters of the City’s rail network and every week the payroll for its employees arrived at a back road entrance in a horse-drawn wagon, guarded and driven by two men. The wagon held two boxes, one carrying £3696/19/6 and the other £3302/13/6. On the 10th of June 1914, two men in a grey car, wearing handkerchief masks and motoring goggles, intercepted the wagon as the boxes were being unloaded and made off with them at gunpoint. The crime caused a sensation: that it took place in broad daylight; that the assailants were armed; and that it was the first time in Australian criminal history that a car had been used in the commission of a crime, ensured that it made the front page of every newspaper in the land. Things unravelled quickly however: the number plate of the vehicle had been seen by a witness and led to the car mechanic who had abetted the heist; the inside man on the wagon was identified; the Melbourne fence to whom the cash had been sent in order to launder it, fled to Tasmania and was never caught; and Kate, who perjured herself in the witness box providing alibis for Freeman and Ryan, was sent to gaol for seven years. Only £600 of the stolen money was ever recovered. Kate declared that if sticking with a man earned you seven years, she’d never stick by another ever again.

Released two years early for good behaviour, Kate settled in to consolidate her life of criminal activity. She established sly grog shops from Woolloomooloo to Haymarket, sold cocaine and other drugs, ran illegal gambling clubs, fenced stolen goods and sold information to the police. She made money hand over fist and warily defended her turf from Tilly Devine’s and Phil Jeffs’ rackets. Dark, petite and attractive in her youth, she transformed into a large, blowzy ogre as she aged: she attended the Court sessions as if she was going to the theatre, taking her massive collection of rings out of the bank for each occasion and heckling the proceedings from the public gallery. The tabloids hung on her every word and deed, recounting her involvement in every underworld activity, real or imagined. During her life she was arrested on 103 occasions for crimes ranging from shoplifting to murder and was imprisoned thirteen times. As the 1950s began and a new wave of younger criminals began to take over, Kate faded into the background - poorer due to the unwelcome attentions of the taxman - finally dying from a stroke in 1964.


John ‘Chow’ Hayes (1911-1991)

 
John Hayes earned the nickname ‘Chow’ because his flat face and mean squint made people think that he was part Chinese. He grew up in the inner west of Sydney, disdaining school and aligning himself with the Railway push. He spent his days selling newspapers and working scams to make money from tourists newly arrived from out of town and listening to the older gang members and their plots to break into and burglarise the local warehouses.

When he graduated from the push, Chow went to work with Kate Leigh as her enforcer in Razorhurst. He went wholeheartedly into the gang lifestyle and made a terrifying reputation for himself: never one to control his impulses, Chow could transform instantly from a calm, politely attentive listener one minute, into a raging tiger the next. In one of his most notorious encounters, he travelled with his target on a tram for some distance, reasoning with him along the way; then, when the tram stopped, he grabbed the metal hook which was used to connect it to the electric cable and beat the fellow into a bloody pulp.

Chow learned to work the legal system of the time and was in and out of gaol all of his life. He learned early on that it was possible to rack up a number of sentences, for which he would be out on bail, and then plead guilty to a greater offence and serve his other sentences concurrently with it. In this way he could fold two or three two-month gaol terms for, say, bad language or resisting arrest into one six-month sentence for aggravated assault and work them all off in half a year. In most cases, he could rely on Kate Leigh to bail him out or, if she couldn’t, she would send him care packages to whichever gaol he ended up in. Despite his criminal activities, Chow found the time to marry and to raise several children all of whom, for the most part, he kept separate from his shadow life. Except on one fateful occasion:

Chow had cause to find grievance with one William ‘Bobby’ Lee, a small-time hood and former boxer who worked as a bouncer in a two-up joint, and who had seen an opportunity to boost his reputation by shooting the infamous Chow Hayes. Unfortunately, when he raided the gunman’s house and fired several shots through the living room window, it wasn’t Chow but his nephew Danny Simmons who he killed. Later on in June of 1951, Chow and his long-time associate in crime, Joey Hollebone, took their wives out for an evening at Phil ‘The Jew’ Jeffs’ infamous Ziegfield Club. Encountering - by chance or otherwise – ‘Bobby’ Lee, Chow calmly walked over to him in the middle of the crowded Club and pumped five .45-calibre bullets into him: Lee died 12 hours later. A six-week manhunt unearthed Chow and Hollebone and they endured three murder trials before Chow was sent to prison for life.

Released on good behaviour in 1967, Chow drifted around the edges of his former criminal existence before attacking a man who picked up the change left for a waitress in a pub: he put the man’s eye out with a wine glass. He went back to gaol for another 5 years and finally went straight after his release.


Raymond ‘Gaffney the Gunman’ Neil (1904-1929)

 
“Come outside!”
-Neil’s last words

Gaffney the Gunman started his criminal career at a tender age: in 1919 aged 14, he was gaoled for breaking and entering; in 1923 he was placed in prison again for twelve months, for the theft of a relative’s watch. The severity of this sentence was explained by the judge asking him if he’d learned the cost of a criminal life; Gaffney shrugged and simply said that he’d been to gaol before. Yes, replied the judge, but you don’t seem to have learnt anything from it. Thus, the twelve-month stint.

After, leaving prison he went to work for Kate Leigh as an enforcer for her operations. His reputation as a thug with little regard for the safety of himself or others began to spread: in 1928 he was arrested after a particularly nasty affray in the company of Thomas Craig – wanted for questioning in the cold-blooded shooting of a bookmaker – and two notorious stand-over men, William Thompson and Francis “Bullet” Wilson (see picture above).

In the wake of this and other incidents, Gaffney decided to make a play for Nellie Cameron, igniting the fury of Frank Green. Things came to a head and Gaffney shot Green in the shoulder, forcing him to retire wounded and seek medical attention at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Before the police could come to question him, Tilly and Jim Devine collared him and drove him to their eastern suburbs bungalow in Maroubra: Green told them en route that Gaffney had threatened to finish the job that he’d begun.

Good as his word, Gaffney arrived outside the bungalow that night in a taxi, with a posse of thugs in tow. He fired a shot at the house and ordered Green to step outside to resolve matters. As he stepped over the low garden fence to gain the front door, Jim Devine shot him above the heart with a .303 rifle he’d secured just for the purpose. Gaffney fell dead instantly, and ‘Big Jim’ escaped a murder charge by pleading self-defence. Gaffney was just 25.
 


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