The White Hats...

Bad as the ‘Black Hats’ were in Sydney, and no matter how much the tenor of the times made Chicago of the same period look like a Sunday-school picnic, there were those who stood up against the mayhem and took a stand against evil. In this and the following lists we’ll look at the other side of the equation in Razorhurst.

As usual, or the purposes of this listing, individuals are listed in order according to their surnames; in the case of Chinese, Japanese and some other nationalities, the family name comes first and the individual will be placed according to these names, where known. Fictional characters are designated with an ‘F’.

William ‘Big Bill’ MacKay (1885-1948)

 

Police Commissioner Bill MacKay was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son of Murdoch MacKay, police inspector, and his wife Isabella. He joined the Glasgow police force in 1904 and was promoted to detective constable two years later. On 2 December 1909 he married Jennie Ross Drummond before migrating to Sydney; he joined the New South Wales Police Force in April 1910. His knowledge of shorthand led to his appointment in the administration section as chief clerk.

Early in World War I with Detective Nicholas Moore, MacKay attended meetings in the Domain of the Industrial Workers of the World to make shorthand reports which assisted in the prosecution of speakers. MacKay was made sergeant in 1922 and thereafter gained rapid promotion, partly as a result of the publicity he obtained in being credited with suppressing the Darlinghurst razor-gangs. By 1928 he was detective inspector in charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch and was sent for eight months to Britain to study police methods.

With the onset of the Depression, the police became increasingly involved in political surveillance as unemployment and the ensuing dissent became more widespread. MacKay was often in the forefront of such events as at lock-out of the Rothbury mine in December 1929, when police, guarding the mine, fought against the miners and a young miner was shot dead. By the time the “Old Guard”, the “New Guard” and the “All for Australia League” had become organized to fight against Jack Lang, McKay had inserted policemen into these groups, as well as the Communist Party of Australia. MacKay rejected the claims of the New Guard that its main cause of existence was to aid the police when the trade unionists and communists tried to seize power; he dealt firmly with a New Guard demonstration outside the Liverpool Street Court on 1 April 1932. The New Guard leader Eric Campbell condemned MacKay for not welcoming their proffered assistance and publicly impugned him for not having enlisted during the war.

With the dismissal of Lang and the election of the new premier, Bertram Stevens, MacKay was instructed on 7 June 1932 to increase surveillance on the Communist Party; his officers that year produced much of the material for the Lyons government and its attorney-general John Latham to launch proceedings against the Communists and declared them an unlawful association under the Crimes Act. MacKay was awarded the King's Police Medal in 1932 and appointed Police Commissioner in 1935.

In April 1936 he again left for an eight-month tour of Britain, Germany, Italy and the United States. MacKay was impressed by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was even more impressed by the efficiency of the German police and the discipline of Nazi society, praising their labour youth battalions because, he said, they 'subordinate the individual to the welfare of the nation'. On his return to Sydney, he established the first of the Police Boys' clubs in April 1937 and, in the following year, what was to become the Federation of Police-Citizens Boys' Clubs.

By 1938, under the strain of inquiries and royal commissions into matters involving illegal off-course betting and police officers, MacKay became unwell and was nearly retired due to ill health. The Police Association of New South Wales openly criticized his arbitrary methods of promoting officers in the force and he turned on them in January 1942, posting all seventeen members of its executive to country outposts. The premier, William McKell, took onboard the administration of the Police Department and had the seventeen returned to their original positions. On the 9^th of January 1943, another clash between MacKay and his force occurred over an incident in which two constables arrested a man in a public urinal, who turned out to be the editor of the Daily Telegraph for whom the proprietor, Frank Packer, interceded. The two constables were dismissed from the force because it was alleged they had an extensive record of making these types of arrests; one was later reinstated, but only as a result of active Police Association lobbying and a widespread sense of disgruntlement in the force.

In April 1942 under Curtin’s Federal Government, MacKay was appointed director of the re-organised Security Service, established to work with the army and maintain surveillance of enemy aliens and communists and to issue security clearances; this was as a result of his already having established a combined police and military intelligence unit within the police force in 1938. He sought to expand the Security Service, imagining it as an F.B.I.-style organization; however, he only ended up offending the Intelligence officers, and he returned to the Police Force in September. Nevertheless, he continued to expand the force's work in maintaining surveillance of local communists and other radicals.

During his time as Commissioner, MacKay set up the police cadet system, and established the vice, drug, motor and pawnbrokers squads in line with other international police forces. Known in the force as 'Big Bill' (he was 6 ft / 183 cm tall and weighed 15 stone / 95 kg), he had a reputation when young for smashing down doors. While this pugnacious ability to overcome obstacles was something of a trademark with him, particularly against those who opposed his administrative schemes, he developed with age a more subtle style of using information in his possession to place possible opponents in his debt. He spoke with a strong Scottish accent and was proud of his ancestry: he even converted the police military band into a Scottish pipe band dressed in the MacKay tartan. He also established a police air wing by purchasing an obsolete aeroplane rather than continue the expensive practise of hiring aircraft.

In 1946 MacKay suffered a recurrence of his old infirmity and, on the 22^nd of January 1948, he died suddenly at his Edgecliff home while entertaining senior police colleagues. He was buried in Randwick cemetery.

Napoleon ‘Bony’ Bonaparte (F)

 

“...A man of medium height and build, dressed in a light-grey tweed. His tie matched his shirt, and so did the soft felt hat now resting on the edge of the writing-table. The visitor’s face was turned downward to the busy fingers engaged in making a cigarette, and with no little astonishment the sergeant noted that the man’s hair was fine and straight and black, and that his skin was dark brown. And then he was gazing into a pair of bright-blue eyes regarding him with a smile.”

-Arthur W. Upfield, Wings above the Diamantina, 1936

Bony is a half-caste aboriginal detective, famous in the series of outback-based pot-boilers penned by Arthur W. Upfield in the 20s and 30s, and which sold very well both in Australia and America. Raised by a straight-laced nurse at an outback station, who fondly named him after the French emperor, his skills of observation and logical deduction were honed by both his association with his mother’s tribe and his work as a police tracker for the Brisbane police force. In the later tales he rises to the rank of Detective Inspector and receives nation-wide recognition for his skills as a detective.

Disdaining standard procedure and protocol – “I have always declined to permit red tape to control me” – Bony thinks around obstacles both procedural and legal to ensure that his quarry is brought to justice. He affects an overly-educated verbosity to disarm the usual prejudice with which newcomers generally receive him and he cuts through class divisions by insisting that he be called ‘Bony’ by all comers, regardless of rank. He smokes like a chimney while cogitating and often uses the time taken in questioning witnesses to roll his own cigarettes.

Nowadays, these novels are a little difficult to read as they are bogged down with the stereotyping and sensibilities of a bygone age, much as Dorothy L. Sayers’ or Agatha Christie’s novels sometimes tread a fine line when it comes to discussing Jewish characters. Still, Upfield’s “blacks” are often the most engaging and pro-active characters in the narratives, despite being treated with a tinge of disdain. Readers should tread warily when dipping into these sources – although their observations of the Australian Outback and life there are wonderfully sketched and worthy of investigation – and try to see them as the artefacts of a past age that they are.