Three Crooked Kings

by Matthew Condon

  Lewis’s police diaries for the mid-1950s record two parallel narratives – constant vigilance over the tolerated brothels, and immediate intolerance of prostitutes and their ‘bludgers’ working outside the agreed houses.

  Known prostitutes working the tolerated brothels were constantly visited by police or asked to come to CIB headquarters. New girls were interrogated and their antecedents scrutinised. The home addresses of prostitutes were regularly monitored and updated. Girls found operating out of private flats or premises not sanctioned by police were drummed out of the business and their bludgers arrested for living off the means of prostitution, or were escorted to the New South Wales border. Disputes between clients and the tolerated brothels were regularly resolved by police without charges laid.

  Years before Bischof was promoted to CIB chief in 1955, and ultimately the commissionership, he showed an extraordinary interest in the machinations of the city brothels.

  Lewis noted in his police diary:

  Tuesday, May 11, 1954: To Albert Street and Nott Street brothels and advised Marcia Graham and Bale Amiott to call at CIB tomorrow and saw 3 new girls at Nott Street.

  Saturday, May 15, 1954: Interviewed Merle Joan Fenwick an inmate of Nott Street brothel. She admitted only being 19 years of age, and she was advised to return to her parents at Southport.

  Monday, May 24, 1954: In car 12 to 284 Hamilton Road, Chermside, re: prostitute Joyce Brownjohn, but she is not residing there. To 23 Armagh Street, Clayfield, re: prostitute Lorna Rose Evans, but her husband, Joseph Chamberlain Evans, admitted he was living with her but would not permit us to enter house.

  Tuesday, May 25, 1954: To Albert Street and Margaret Street brothels and checked all inmates.

  Friday, May 28, 1954: Interviewed Joyce Brownjohn at office re: her changing from Nott Street to Killarney brothel.

  Monday, July 5, 1954: In Car 12 to all brothels and private homes and advised all owners and keepers to see Insp. Bischof at 11am tomorrow.

  Wednesday, March 16, 1955: To National Hotel Lounge and there saw Margaret L.N. Clark and Pauline B. Honke. Questioned them at Office and both admitted not having any employment other than prostitutes in brothels for past 12 months. Inspector Lloyd instructed that they not be charged with vagrancy.

  Wednesday, July 13, 1955: Interviewed Shirley Yvonne Cruise who wanted to enter a brothel. To gardens and located Adolf Beck. To office where he was questioned. They were then both interviewed by Insp. Bischof. To Roma St. Station and collected all their luggage. To Interstate Station and they both left on 11:48am train, car 13, seats 35 & 36.

  The unwritten rule with the brothels was containment and control, and it had been so for decades.

  Killarney and Nott Street brothels had been attracting the services of soldiers and graziers and cattlemen in town on business since the First World War.

  On 2 September 1914, the Brisbane Courier reported the ‘sudden death’ of William Robertson of Mount Helmet Station at Springsure, 765 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, in a house in Nott Street. In 1941, two soldiers were imprisoned for three months after they smashed their way into ‘a house in Lanfear Street’, chased ‘the inmates into the street and chopped up the furniture’ with axes. And on 15 October 1952, the Divorce Court heard of the sad and sorry case of the Terliers. Mrs Janet Dickson Terlier was granted a decree nisi for divorce from her husband, Leslie, the former manager of the stock and property department of a pastoral company. The court was told that on 23 August 1952, at Nott Street, South Brisbane, Terlier ‘misconducted himself with a woman unknown to Mrs Terlier’.

  But how to explain Bischof’s obsession with these houses?

  And why did the brothels get almost constant attention from the CIB and its Consorting Squad and not so from the Licensing Branch? Consorting may well have come across local and interstate villains via the girls, and may have tapped into important information about the city’s criminal milieu, but why attend to them with such monotonous regularity? Weren’t they the province of Licensing?

  There was no hiding the resentment between the two departments. Consorting saw Licensing as a bunch of boozers and bludgers, and Licensing dismissed the CIB as a stable of show ponies.

  Killarney and Nott Street brothels were briefly targeted by Licensing – not Consorting – in June 1954. Acting on complaints that Killarney was being used as a ‘house of ill-fame’, Licensing staked out the properties on the evening of 23 June and observed that ‘11 men were seen to enter, and 10 leave’. They carried out further observations on the following two nights.

  Joyce Gibson, thirty-two, single, was charged with having kept Killarney for the purposes of prostitution and fined fifteen pounds. Over at nearby Nott Street, Vera Jackson was charged with managing a house for the purposes of prostitution. That both madams were charged at the same time would be an extraordinary coincidence if this wasn’t a desultory, prearranged raid.

  Self-confessed bagman, perjurer and former Licensing Branch officer Jack Herbert recalled in his memoir: ‘Every two or three months we used to raid the brothels and take the girls to court.

  ‘Ron Donovan insisted on us doing it correctly, sitting off the premises for a couple of days, writing down who went in and out. It was a pretty monotonous job and none of us took it very seriously.

  ‘I remember once sitting outside Nott Street for three days with [self-confessed corrupt officer] Graeme Parker. At least that’s what we were supposed to be doing.

  ‘In fact we sat in the pub up the road [most likely the Coronation Hotel in Montague Road] and just wrote in our notebooks. “Two in, one out, ten o’clock.” Eventually we went in and booked the girls.

  ‘The rumour around the Licensing Branch was that [our] raids were ordered by . . . Bischof.’

  Lewis remembers that the personal lives of the prostitutes were kept under unusually intimate scrutiny: outside the brothels, the girls weren’t permitted by police to ‘have a husband or a fellow living with them’ as they were ‘usually a criminal’.

  He also recalls that the CIB had a ‘special register’ for prostitutes working in the city. It contained their real names and personal particulars and was constantly updated. In short, it was a brothel staff list. The ‘register’ was kept private from the prying eyes of other squads, particularly Licensing.

  Despite Lewis’s almost frenetic visits to the city’s brothels, hotels, bars, and wine saloons, and being at the beck and call of Bischof, he was still a minor player within the CIB.

  Then a case came along that ignited his friendship with the powerful Detective Tony Murphy.

  Watching Amelia Street

  On Thursday 6 October 1955, Lewis was in the office by 8.20 a.m. and straight into Car 27 with Detective Murphy. They drove past the old police depot and down Caxton Street to Lang Park.

  The park, later to become famous as a sporting venue, was the former home of the Paddington cemetery and for years had hosted sporting events and been used by the children of the crowded, inner-west working-class suburbs of Petrie Terrace, Paddington and Red Hill. During the Second World War, army huts and other war buildings had been built in some parts of the park. After the war, the buildings were used as temporary housing camps and rented out by the Queensland Housing Commission.

  Debate on the use of Lang Park swirled around for years. Meanwhile, the camps, and their tenants, remained. The entire park was held under trust by the Brisbane City Council from the state government.

  The council beseeched the government to have the lease surrendered so it could develop a major sporting facility, but negotiations languished, and the park and its camps became squalid. Local citizens, too, felt free to dump their household rubbish there, including bathtubs and dunny soil.

  On that Thursday morning, Murphy and Lewis made their way to Hut 4B where they interviewed a Mrs Elliott and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Shirley
Ann Elliott.

  Shirley had a story to tell. Seven weeks earlier, she had gone to a house in Albion, in the city’s inner north, and secured an abortion. Murphy had somehow come across information of Shirley’s clandestine operation and had already interviewed her in secret down at CIB headquarters. She had been uncooperative.

  Now it was time to bring Lewis on board to see if he could coax any information from the young woman, and to inform her mother what had been going on.

  It was a smart move by Murphy. Lewis’s demeanour was largely placid and kindly. He was impeccably mannered and judicious in his choice of words. Unlike Murphy, who would fire off exactly what he thought at any given moment.

  And in a sectarian police force, the topic of abortion had to be delicately handled. Some agreed with the practice, some didn’t. It was the same in parliament. Murphy had to work out who he could trust with the case. He punted on Lewis, and sought senior counsel from Abe Duncan.

  On that Thursday afternoon, Shirley Elliott and her mother accompanied Lewis and Murphy to CIB headquarters and the girl made a formal statement about the abortion. The gentle persuasion of Lewis had worked.

  The next morning detectives launched a full investigation. Lewis went to the Main Roads Commission and checked on the registration of cars owned by several suspects. Surveillance began on two primary houses – one in Prospect Street, Fortitude Valley, and another in Amelia Street, Albion. It was at the latter that Shirley claimed she procured her abortion at the end of winter.

  Later on the same day, police began discreet observation of the two houses. Using binoculars, they kept up twenty-four-hour vigils on Prospect Street from a classroom of a nearby state school, and on Amelia Street, from a local sawmill.

  After several weeks of careful scrutiny the twelve-man team simultaneously raided the houses on the morning of Saturday 26 November.

  Entering Amelia Street with a warrant, a sledgehammer, and axes, Murphy and his team, including Lewis, encountered Violet Myrtle Coman, forty-five, a nurse also known as ‘Sister Byrne’, who screamed and began sobbing. ‘Calm yourself, Sister. It is no use getting upset,’ Murphy told her.

  ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me . . . I’ve heard about what you do to people,’ she replied.

  Murphy also heard George Frederick Richards, forty-four, a postal employee, shout: ‘Look out, police. Look out, police.’ Also arrested were Richards’s wife, Rebecca Theresa, fifty-five, and George Robert Jones, fifty, a house painter. Jones supposedly said to Lewis: ‘We have been caught cold. I won’t give you any trouble.’

  Police found four young women in the back bedrooms of the house, and they were each rushed to the Brisbane General hospital by ambulance. The government medical officer attended the women in hospital and would later reveal in court: ‘In my opinion, what happened to the women was brought about by certain interference . . . When I saw the women, there was no immediate danger of their losing their lives.’

  A gynaecologist performed ‘certain operations’ on the girls, and foetuses were presented as evidence in the trial of the four defendants.

  All were found guilty and sent to Boggo Road gaol for between two to three years.

  In sentencing, the judge said: ‘All of you indulged in this practice for the purpose of making money. It is incidental that you managed to assist other people . . . The amounts you charged – 125 pounds and 135 pounds – appear to be in the nature of abortion.’

  Lewis remembers that the investigation, prior to the raids, was kept largely secret from Bischof until the last moment, given the disparate views on abortion held within the force. However, Lewis’s diaries reveal that on the first day of the investigation Mrs Elliott and her daughter were interviewed by Inspector Bischof at CIB headquarters. He was also regularly updated on the progress of the case, was telephoned on the evening before the raid, and was consulted about witnesses for the prosecution prior to the matter going to court.

  There may have been a reason he wanted to be kept au fait with all the details of the great abortion raid, beyond being the man in charge of the CIB.

  In 1952 Detective Ron Edington bumped into an old school classmate in the CBD. She was upset, telling Edington, ‘Mum got me aborted when I was eighteen’, and that the abortionist was now blackmailing her.

  ‘What do you mean he’s blackmailing you?’ Edington asked.

  ‘He’s making me meet anyone who’s going to be aborted, to stay with them, comfort them until they pass the foetus,’ she admitted.

  ‘You’re an accessory,’ Edington said. ‘You’ll go down the chute. Can you help me catch him?’

  ‘You’ve got no chance of catching him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Frank Bischof, the commissioner, and Nobby Clark, the inspector in the Valley, they visit his premises at 28 Ivory Street, Fortitude Valley, regularly on the pretext of looking for missing girls.’

  Edington said: ‘The next time you get someone there, give me a ring.’

  The friend contacted him shortly after; she was at Ivory Street, assisting a girl who was unsuccessfully trying to abort.

  Edington secured a search warrant, but by the time they got to the house they were met by Sub-inspector R.T. (Bob) Nesbitt and Senior Sergeant Tom Donovan.

  ‘They accompanied us, trying to curtail my activity,’ Edington recalls. ‘We got in there and there was the girl and she was nearly dead . . . She had septicaemia. So I got the government medical officer to come down and he put her into hospital and saved her life.’

  Edington arrested the abortionist – James Henry Manuel, fifty-five, labourer – and was offered a bribe.

  ‘He told me Bischof used to get money in a boot polish tin. That was the money the abortionist gave to Frank Bischof when he used to come. He showed me the tin and I said you can shove that tin up your arse, mate. You’re going in.’

  Manuel was convicted and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour.

  During his trial, Manuel claimed that four hundred pounds found in ‘a boot polishing outfit tin’ at Ivory Street was winnings from the races.

  Ada and Gunner

  On Thursday 3 February 1955, Lewis was rostered on at 3 p.m. but, as usual, he was at CIB headquarters an hour and a half early. He spent the extra time attending to files and writing up his police diary. He was on duty with Hoppy Hopgood and Buck Buchanan.

  Patrolling Brisbane’s south side, Lewis arrested a man for being drunk in Russell Street, had his evening meal at CIB headquarters from 6.40 p.m. to 7 p.m., then cruised the Fortitude Valley wine saloons looking for trouble.

  In a place called Johnstone’s, the officers came across Robert James Mutton carrying a loaded .32 pistol in his pocket. The firearm was licensed but Buchanan ‘retained’ it.

  Then, later in the evening, they were called to a curious job. They drove to 40 Clarke Street, Hendra, a small postwar bungalow with a curved corner verandah in the shadow of Doomben racecourse, where they interviewed Alfio Vito Cavallaro.

  Cavallaro alleged that he had been assaulted and robbed. Under further questioning, he said the attack came after he had been entertained by a prostitute called Anne Bahnemann. He said he had been in bed with Bahnemann when two men entered the bedroom and stole their clothing.

  Lewis and team then proceeded to Kent Street, New Farm, where they interviewed an Ada Louise Bahnemann. She admitted she’d been in bed with Cavallaro and directed them to a house one street over, where they found her husband of just seven months, Gunther ‘Gunner’ Bahnemann.

  Bahnemann, thirty-three, had an extremely colourful history. He had been a hero in the panzer division of the German army during the Second World War and fought with Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. When in 1941 he heard a rumour that his father, a postmaster, had been executed by the Gestapo as a traitor, he deserted to British forces in Libya. H
e arrived in Australia on 14 December that year as a prisoner of war and was transferred to a camp at Murchison, near Shepparton in Victoria. Along with other German POWs, he was held in the Dhurringile mansion near Murchison until he was released ‘under supervision’ into the community in late 1946.

  In a report on Bahnemann compiled in 1947 by Commonwealth Investigation Service Director Longfield Lloyd, the former German war hero was described as having ‘a very unsavoury history’, indicating he was ‘totally unscrupulous and not to be trusted’.

  Bahnemann later settled in Fourth Avenue, Mount Isa, with his first wife, Vera, and became something of an eccentric local identity. Claiming he was a master mariner, he built a boat in the mining town and intended to use it for crocodile hunting in the waters of northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.

  In 1953 Vera fled to Cloncurry after a fight with Bahnemann. He telephoned her and said he was on his way to shoot her dead. Police managed to intercept him at the Cloncurry railway station, where they alleged he was carrying a rifle and explosives.

  In a pique of jealousy and rage, Bahnemann wrote to Customs in Cairns warning that his wife may attempt to flee to Papua New Guinea under a false name and passport.

  ‘I notified Immigration Dept. Brisbane, of false statements made in her British Passport,’ he wrote. ‘My wife is easily identified owing to extreme blond hair, near white, small slim and thirty of age, and well versed in life aboard ships. Kindly notify me should she try to obtain a clearance for territory outside of Australia.’

  His divorce to Vera was formalised in June 1954, and he married Ada Louise Ruby the following month in Brisbane.

  Three weeks after being interviewed by Lewis, Hopgood, and Buchanan over the Cavallaro incident at Hendra, the Vacuum Oil Company made a formal application for an employee, Gunther Bahnemann, to enter Papua New Guinea. ‘With regard to transport,’ their covering letter stated, ‘we wish to advise that he is being booked on the earliest available Qantas Aircraft departing Brisbane.’