The Worst Woman in Sydney: The Life and Crimes of Kate Leigh

By Leigh Straw

Matriarch of the criminal underworld ... or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney? The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she has never had a biography of her own. Despite having more than 100 criminal convictions to her name, Kate Leigh is also remembered as a local hero, giving money to needy families and supporting her local community through the hard times of Depression and war. Here, novelist and historian Leigh Straw teases out the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time to become a leading underworld figure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Jun 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781742242330

Leigh Straw

Leigh Straw is Arts Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Notre Dame in Perth. She's passionate about Australian history and enjoys sharing compelling Australian stories with up to 500 students every year. Her interest in Australian crime history developed from when she lived in the Darlinghurst and Surry Hills areas of Sydney.  Over the last ten years she's written both fiction and popular non-fiction work. The Worst Woman in Sydney, about Kate Leigh, was published in 2016 by NewSouth. It was shortlisted for an ABIA. Lillian Armfield: Australia's first woman detective  was published by Hachette in 2018.

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THE WORST WOMAN IN SYDNEY

LEIGH STRAW is a historian and author. Her books include three crime novels (The Call, Limestone and Sophia Lane), a history of criminal women in Perth and Fremantle (Drunks, Pests and Harlots, 2013) and a forthcoming book on Australian First World War soldiers. She lectures in history at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

This book is dedicated to three women who have been an important part of my life and who inspire me in their own, individual ways – so many memories that make me the woman I am today.

Michelle Bell

Cousin and friend

Ann Coyle

Aunt and artistic inspiration

Sandra Beaton

Mum and best friend

THE WORST WOMAN IN SYDNEY

THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF KATE LEIGH

LEIGH STRAW

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© Leigh Straw 2016

First published 2016

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Straw, Leigh, author.

Title: The worst woman in Sydney: The life and crimes of Kate Leigh / Leigh Straw.

ISBN: 9781742234793 (paperback)

           9781742242330 (ebook)

           9781742247700 (ePDF)

Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Subjects: Leigh, Kate, 1881–1964.

           Female offenders – New South Wales – Sydney – Biography.

           Criminals – New South Wales – Sydney – Biography.

Dewey Number: 364.374099441

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

Front/back cover image Mug shot of Kate Leigh, 1930 (details). NSW Police

Forensic Photography Archive, Justice and Police Museum, Sydney Living Museums.

Printer Griffin Press

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: ‘UNCROWNED QUEEN OF SLUMLAND’

1 A WAYWARD GIRL

2 FROG HOLLOW THIEVES

3 SERVING THE COMMUNITY

4 SEX AND SNOW

5 RAZORS AND RIVALS

6 EILEEN LEIGH

7 SURRY HILLS MATRIARCH

8 ‘UNDERWORLD ROMANCE OF THE CENTURY’

9 REMEMBERING KATE LEIGH

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

‘UNCROWNED QUEEN OF SLUMLAND’

The pretty girl of the underworld is dead. Depressed and reclusive in her Taylor Square apartment, Nellie Cameron laid her head inside an oven and turned on the gas. She was 41. Nellie left behind a private-school education on the wealthy North Shore and burst onto the Sydney crime scene in the late 1920s. She was a beautiful, extravagant and tough woman who won many a gangster’s heart in what was a violent life. Eighteen months before her death, Nellie’s lover shot her in the stomach. When doctors operated to extract the bullet, they found other healed bullet wounds nearby. These were the physical scars of a life lived in the eastern Sydney ganglands.

Accorded all the ‘pomp and ceremony of a national celebrity’, Cameron’s rose-covered coffin entered a crowded chapel in Darlinghurst on a breezy day in November 1953. A thousand mourners turned out to pay their respects. Outside, Consorting Squad detectives mingled with the crowd of onlookers, closely watching crooks and ex-cons they had arrested, charged and locked away many times over. Underworld figures were out in force to mourn the loss of one of their own, and few appreciated the extra police attention. Cameron’s former employer and brothel madam, Tilly Devine, was overcome with grief for a woman she loved like a sister.

One woman in particular caught the eye of the police watching the mourners arrive. Kate Leigh, former crime boss and associate of Nellie Cameron, made a remarkable entrance. Acknowledging friends and glaring at the police, she looked respectfully mournful. That was before a press photographer decided it was a perfect moment for a snapshot. He accosted her near the entrance of the chapel and quickly regretted it. Kate thumped him in the face with her fur cape and called him a mug. The crowd roared in delight: ‘Good on you, Kate.’ Even at the age of 72, Kate Leigh could still pack a punch.

Mourning the loss of an underworld favourite, Kate Leigh was reminded of her own lifetime achievements. Survival was one of them. She had lived through some of the most violent years of crime in Sydney. Where others fell, she armed herself against gang violence, making sure she knew how to handle a rifle, or any other weapon at her disposal. But Leigh’s hold on underworld crime was down to more than violence and standover tactics. Kate Leigh was an intelligent criminal entrepreneur who took advantage of the new opportunities that opened up from the 1920s. She recognised the fortune that could be made from the black market in sly grog, cocaine and prostitution, and from this established a criminal career spanning more than half a century.

Detectives at Cameron’s funeral also had much to reflect upon. As they watched Leigh clobber the photographer across the head, they were reminded of a younger Kate who first came to their attention in the slumlands of eastern Sydney. By the 1920s, she ranked high on their list of crime leaders using gangs to control their rackets. The police had to match their wits against Kate’s. She was a savvy, brazen criminal who expected her associates to take the fall for her. In their efforts to combat the rise of organised crime and put Kate out of business, the NSW Police Force created a Vice Squad. Armed with the new consorting laws, included in the Vagrancy Act of 1929, vice officers were able to arrest any Sydney crook consorting with ‘bad characters’ and known criminals. Successful prosecutions meant up to six months in prison, as Kate Leigh discovered in June 1929. Arrested for being in a house frequented by thieves, she was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment at Long Bay Gaol. The intent behind the consorting laws was clear: if the police could prevent crooks from meeting each other, they might be able to limit their business transactions and strike a blow at organised crime.

At the height of her career, in the late 1920s and 1930s, hardly a week passed when Kate Leigh did not feature in the newspapers. Crime was big news at the time. Reporters scurried around the inner-city streets reporting on the latest outbreaks of violence among the gangs of Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. The scandal sheet Truth featured a number of front-page stories, in one declaring: ‘Gang Rule Must Go!’ In May 1929, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story on ‘Gang War’ in Darlinghurst and the razor violence disfiguring so many young people. The Herald also campaigned for the federal government to step in to deal with the drug trafficking and stamp out underworld rule in the inner city. Kate Leigh was targeted in these media campaigns against organised crime, and the attention turned her into a well-known crime figure.

Leigh’s notoriety in the interwar years went beyond newspaper articles. She featured in Ruth Park’s now classic 1948 book The Harp in the South. Park wandered around the streets of Surry Hills, interviewing locals and getting a feel for the area. Many of the characters in her book were based on real-life residents. One character, Delie Stock, is said to be a composite of Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh. Delie Stock is a typical bad character from the Hills. While Delie’s history of prostitution and violent toughness were mainly inspired by Devine, in her we also see the rugged, tough and charitable Kate Leigh. In one scene, Delie turns up at a school with a purse full of money to fund an excursion for the kids. When Father Cooley rejects Delie’s offer of charity, she tells him:

You call me a bad woman. Yeah, I’m the worst woman in this district, the coppers say, and I’m not ashamed to repeat it. But who comes across with fifty quid when there’s a funeral? When Johnny Sheily got hit with a truck, who gives his ma enough dough to go away for a good holiday to get over it? You? No, old Delie Stock, that’s who.

Church leaders had every reason to question Kate Leigh’s charitable motives. She was no small-time crook. She notched up more than a hundred convictions and a dozen stints in prison. Yet she was determined to win over the eastern Sydney locals and redeem her public image. It was no easy feat.

‘I’ll stick a knife right into your heart’

At a time when such shady and violent men as Norman Bruhn, Phil Jeffs, Frank Green and Guido Calletti vied for control of organised crime in Sydney, Kate Leigh defied the typecasting to which she was born. Of all the rules Leigh broke in her life, the most significant was being a crime boss in an underworld dominated by men. She and her rival, Tilly Devine, hold a unique place in Australian crime history. It remains the case even today that three in four criminals are men. In dominating the statistics, male crime has helped define female offending as unusual and deviant. Women are also not expected to engage in serious organised crime. Given that women are less likely to commit crimes, when they do their court appearances are widely sensationalised. Kate Leigh showed the police, magistrates, newspapers and general public that she was more than a novelty; she was around to stay and could hold her own in Sydney’s underworld.

Kate Leigh pushed the gender boundaries to breaking point. From the first years of colonisation in Australia, women were expected to be respectable, meek and mild. The ideal Victorian woman was a ‘frail but appealing, intellectually inferior but morally superior being, whose duty it was to be passive, decorative and sexually pure’. Australian women were defined by a domestic, family identity. The ‘good’ Australian woman was a maternal, moralistic and upstanding citizen.

Not all Australian women conformed to such ideals. In dancing, for example, young women experimented with provocative clothing and dance moves. They wanted to shock their audiences. Some women ‘rejected demure femininity’ in the major Australian cities. They joined gangs, worked in prostitution and created scandals through popular entertainment, telling the authorities they had ‘no desire to be respectable’.

Female criminals pushed the boundaries even further beyond ‘normal womanhood’. A criminal woman not only overstepped respectable ideals, she became something ‘other’ than her sex, especially if convicted for violent crime. No frail, shrinking violet, Kate Leigh had a capacity for violence and control of criminal activities that went directly against what was expected of her as a woman. For her repeated outbursts of bad language and violent threats, and her underworld dealings, Leigh was characterised by police and reporters alike as one of Sydney’s most notorious women.

Corruption, violence and standover tactics allowed Kate Leigh to rule vice in Darlinghurst and Surry Hills in the 1920s and 1930s. She was a fearsome crime figure who loomed larger in underworld life than her five foot one (155 centimetre) frame. She made her name during violent years when sly-grog sellers, thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes and gangs all competed for control of the inner-city streets of Sydney. Locals cowered behind curtains, too afraid to be seen by either the crooks or the police. It was a tough, unforgiving world that ended many lives. Leigh’s life was threatened on a number of occasions, and many of her male associates were slashed or shot in dark alleyways or sometimes in full view of the public. Violent vendettas know no boundaries.

Kate Leigh was tough. Facing another sly-grog charge – selling illicit alcohol from unlicensed premises – she fronted Sydney’s Central Criminal Court in August 1953. A number of men had been arrested in one of her ‘disorderly houses’, but the real sensation happened outside the courtroom. One of the men looked like he might falter in court and give away too much. Kate was having none of it. She hauled him outside while reporters scrambled to see what the commotion was about. Forcing him under a tap in a metal basin outside the building, she ran water over his head and dunked him several times. Kate’s tough approach to maintaining her business and dodging more time inside was renowned. One Truth photographer captured the scene but caught Leigh’s eye. She stormed over and threatened to sue if the photos went to print. Truth knew a good picture when it saw one and ignored her threat. The photograph was published and further added to Leigh’s tough reputation.

Female crime bosses – crime matriarchs as they are identified in the press – have mainly dominated organised crime in Australia through family organisations. Judy Moran and Fatma Chaouk are recent examples from the Melbourne underworld. Kate Leigh was different. While she marketed a community image of herself as a matriarch to the locals, in business she had control over her own criminal syndicate. She sometimes used standover men and worked with husbands and lovers, but the police knew Kate was the boss. She was fiercely independent and wasn’t scared of defending herself. It didn’t matter that society expected men to run the show. Leigh wasn’t in the business of conforming. She was her own woman.

Yet although she was a drug trafficker and instrumental to the rise of organised crime in Sydney, Kate Leigh is often overlooked in popular lists of Australian criminals in favour of men. As crime writer Tara Moss argues, the femme fatale archetype often obscures the real-life female outlaws who are far more interesting and challenge the idea that women are lured into crime. Where men are portrayed as entering into a life of crime, women are depicted in a more passive role and in need of rescuing. This doesn’t stack up when looking at female outlaws, particularly underworld bosses such as Kate Leigh. She had the character, ruthlessness, intelligence and business acumen to set up one of the most notorious crime empires in Australian history. Kate Leigh was no passive victim in need of rescuing.

‘Sydney celebrity’

Kate Leigh was more than just another criminal flouting law and order. What sets her criminal career apart from those of other crooks in Sydney at the time is that she became a celebrity. By the 1940s and 1950s, Leigh was being referred to in the newspapers as a ‘Surry Hills celebrity’ and even as a ‘Sydney celebrity’. Others shared some of the criminal limelight with Kate, including Tilly Devine, Nellie Cameron and male criminals involved in their underworld dealings. Yet Kate went beyond the celebrity of other crime figures through successful manipulation of her image as a likeable, roguish public personality and playing a convincing role as a reformed matriarch of Surry Hills.

For a notorious criminal such as Kate Leigh to become a celebrity, she had to engage the interest of the public. Ordinary people have long been fascinated with crime, dating back to the execution literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the publication of criminal stories to shock and entertain the public. In the last century or so, however, books, cinema and television have expanded the sensationalist and graphic reach of crime and crime stories. In an age, too, where celebrity has become an obsession, criminals have become a part of the entertainment industry.

Kate’s notoriety was the first factor in her celebrated identity. She was a feared local figure known for her tough reputation. Few people were willing to mess with her. Former locals tell stories of parents and grandparents breaking up street brawls when they realised their family members were unknowingly taking on one of Kate’s associates. One Surry Hills SP bookie dragged her daughter away from a spat inside the Shakespeare Hotel, shocked that she was fighting with Kate’s daughter, Eileen. Hauling her along a nearby lane, she said: ‘Don’t you know who you’re fighting with?’ Locals feared Eileen, but more often that not it was because she was Kate’s daughter. If you messed with Eileen or anyone else related to or working with Kate, it was a good bet she would be along to see you soon after, to ensure you didn’t make the same mistake again.

But it wasn’t this that made her different from other serious criminals at the time. It was her efforts to legitimise her community identity from the 1930s that extended popular support for her celebrity. She was able to do this by focusing on her role in sly-grog selling while downplaying her more ruthless and violent involvement in organised crime.

Kate Leigh went to great lengths to protect her public profile, mainly through monitoring newspaper coverage. She shared stories with the press of her efforts to look after young kids and offer bail money to poor locals caught up in crime. She would have been pleased with the deputy police commissioner’s assessment of her as helping out the ‘needy and young offenders’. Leigh was popular with the very poor of Surry Hills. They accepted her as a ‘colourful celebrity’ and local matriarch. Hal Baker, grandson of Leigh’s lover Jack Baker, recalls ‘old Kate’ as a tough woman with ‘a heart of gold’. She was also able to transfer her matriarchal identity to Fremantle, where in 1950 she wed her old flame, the reformed crook Ernest ‘Shiner’ Ryan, and endeared herself to the locals.

More so than her rival, Tilly Devine, Leigh remained popular with the people of Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. They were willing to overlook her darker, violent side and accept her as a sly-grog hero who helped out the community by providing it with access to alcohol after hours. Some locals believed they had been unfairly restricted by the liquor-licensing laws and early closure of pubs. Tilly Devine was also a local celebrity but she could never quite compete with Kate’s more favourable image. Tilly was on the back foot as an English immigrant, and when she bought a house in Maroubra, away from the inner city, she lost much of her ‘local’ status.

Leigh ruled the eastern Sydney crime scene for decades with a tough, no-nonsense approach to criminal enterprise. She was at the centre of razor wars, underworld feuds and the rise of organised crime. In Leigh we see a woman running the show, challenging the assumption that serious crime was a man’s domain. She enjoyed the limelight and the sensational media interest in her life that turned her into a celebrity. Kate Leigh was one of Australia’s first major criminal celebrities, decades before Mark ‘Chopper’ Read and the Melbourne ‘underbelly’ identities. She was also an intelligent crime boss who recognised that her business relied on the goodwill of the local community. The people of eastern Sydney could disown her, but to be successful she needed to engage them and create a favourable local identity. Vice queen Kate Leigh became a Surry Hills matriarch.

Kate Leigh’s life is a quintessentially Australian story. She was a battler from the country who made a fortune in the city – albeit through crime – but retained a certain level of ordinariness. Despite her diamonds, flash cars and wealth, Leigh was accepted in the working-class communities of eastern Sydney. In these streets in the first half of the 20th century, locals were more hostile to the police and outsiders than they were

Reviews for The Worst Woman in Sydney

[Ronnie Rife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author presents a detailed biography of the "Queen of Sydney". The thesis of two Kate Leigh's is true of many outlaws. There was a woman and a myth.

[fred_mouse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

well researched, a little rambling, generally interesting.