Review: Shark Arm...

ROOPE, Phillip, & Kevin MEAGHER, Shark Arm – A Shark, A Tattooed Arm and Two Unsolved Murders, Allen & Unwin, Crow’s Nest NSW, 2020.

Octavo; trade paperback; 291pp., with a map and 16pp. of monochrome plates. Minor wear. Near fine.

In Australia’s early criminal history there are several episodes of note, remarkable in their impact on the lives of those living in this country. The Eveleigh Railway Workshops Payroll Heist, for example, was noteworthy because it was the first criminal event in the nation which was facilitated by an automobile; The Brougham Street Riot brought the machinations of the razor-gangs four square into the public’s awareness; and The Mount Rennie Assault highlighted the perceived threat of ‘larrikinism’ for general perusal. These milestones in criminal activity are generally colourful and shocking, but they are in turn overshadowed by those great unsolved events that still linger on the periphery of Australian history, marking garish highlights in the background of the search for Justice. These include The Pyjama Girl Case; The Kidnapping and Murder of Graeme Thorne; and The Shark Arm Case. Since I am interested in the history of Australia – especially its criminal underbelly – in the early years of the Twentieth Century, I am au fait with these cases and the intricacies of their details; but they have been universally touted as being ‘unsolvable’, forever out of reach by those who seek closure in these matters. It was of interest to me therefore, to discover that someone had re-examined the issues of the Shark Arm Case and claimed to have solved it.

Like most things of this nature, the unravelling required a high degree of self-motivation on the part of the researchers (requiring them to ignore the claims by others that there was no use in pushing this case any further along) and the discovery of newly-released material, finally made available to public scrutiny. In this instance, the authors Roope and Meagher had referenced the Shark Arm Case in the course of their duties as school teachers and had seen the effect that even a gloss of its details had upon their students; they deemed it worthy of further scrutiny, to see if there was a solution hiding within its labyrinthine depths after all. This book – the result of their examinations – claims that there is.

For those unaware of this incident, it involves a 4-metre tiger shark, captured at sea off the Sydney beaches in 1930, which was sequestered in a public aquarium as an attraction for passing tourists. On ANZAC Day of that year, it became ill - after living in the aquarium for just over a week and obviously not acclimating - and regurgitated a severed human arm into its artificial environment (along with pieces of several other sharks, some birds and a rat). The event was witnessed by several onlookers and the police were called in to retrieve the limb and begin an investigation as to its origins.

It didn’t take long. Due to a tattoo on the inside forearm of the member, as well as the fingerprints that were able to be examined, the owner of the arm was determined to be one Jim Smith a former boxer and gymnasium operator who had vanished while on a work trip to Cronulla in Sydney’s southern beach suburbs. Forensics determined that the arm had been separated from its owner postmortem, so the question quickly became ‘what happened to the rest of Smith’s body?’.

In a highly-compelling style, Roope and Meagher follow all of the evidence, raking over the coals of this crime and attempting to point fingers at those who, in their opinion, were really to blame. The failed inquest and two subsequent court trials which emerged from these events were notable in changing legal practice within the country and for releasing the guilty from justice for lack of evidence. The one person who was always assumed guilty of Smith’s demise – his friend Patrick “Paddy” Brady, a known confidence trickster and forger - spent the rest of his days violently protesting his innocence both in print and in the courts; Roope and Meagher claim that there was an enormous conspiracy of silence surrounding the death – encompassing drug-smuggling, insurance fraud and a close-knit community of impoverished dock-workers and their families – which meant that Brady also knew who the culprits were and kept underscoring his innocence while tacitly letting those culpable know that he knew, in order to avoid also being removed from the equation for ‘squealing’.

For this is what led to Jim Smith’s death – he spoke about things he shouldn’t have to people who weren’t supposed to know, namely the police. In the hardscrabble early years of the Twentieth Century in Sydney, the worst thing that someone could do was to ‘snitch’ on their mates. Most people at that time, oppressed financially and with few options for making a legitimate living, had some sort of illegal activity – to a greater or lesser extent – happening on the side. Talking out of turn not only ruined people’s lives, it destroyed families, and so it was regarded as the lowest of low acts. Regardless of who was responsible for his death and how it happened – something that no-one will ever know for sure – the million-to-one chance that the shark used to dispose of the evidence got caught and then vomited-up the crucial element that got the whole ball rolling was something nobody could have foreseen, and its ramifications have echoed ever since.

For me, I was hoping that there would be a straightforward outcome to the mystery; that, hidden somewhere under all the grand guignol of a semi-digested human limb, drug smuggling, dodgy cops, conspiracies of silence and lawyers looking to make their names, there would be a clearly-identified murderer and a satisfying result. Unfortunately, real life doesn’t work that way and the grubby, society-is-to-blame outcome of Roope and Meagher’s sifting was hardly what I’d been hoping for. Still, there are gems to be found along the way and I’m always eager to open a window into this (it has to be said) sordid and despicable period of history. It’s a result; and a solid one at that. (I still feel sorry for the shark…)

Four Tentacled Horrors and… case closed?