Kate habitually took for herself the pick of the meat from the butcher's lorry, cooked it, and ate it in the officers’ quarters from plates she had brought from her home. What choice meat she couldn't eat herself, she fed to Shifty, the prison dog. She recommenced her romance with Pal Brown, her driver, who was doing time for cocaine dealing. Brown worked in the prison bakehouse. Her enemies carped that by being Brown's lover, she ensured herself a plentiful supply of not just sex, but sugar buns and currant loaves, which she loved. Kate had her own china teapot and wore her own shoes, stockings and underwear rather than prison-supply garb.
She was foul-mouthed and violent and often threatened to knock other inmates down, with her fists or a kitchen utensil. She threatened to throw one young fellow kitchen worker into the oven. One male prisoner who sang at a prison entertainment afternoon learned exactly what she thought of his crooning when she pelted him with vegetables and hooted, ‘Give ‘im the ‘ook!’
Another prisoner complained, ‘As soon as she arrived, the place was in an uproar. She goes where she likes in the gaol, and dobs in who she likes. I have never done time so hard in my life as I have since she came here. I have nothing to say against the officers of the female division at all. They are good and kind. But she seems to have them all on edge, too. She storms and rouses about the place all day. At any time you can hear her “clapper” going; if we spoke half so loud we would be locked up in our cells.’ Other prisoners complained that Leigh would confiscate and devour any sweets or cakes sent to them by their family. As one disgruntled inmate grumbled: ‘Leigh is arrogant and defies all regulations. She lives an idle and luxurious life when she is supposed to be paying for her crime.’
Apart from Pal Brown and Shifty the dog, Kate's only other real friend in Long Bay was an elderly alcoholic named Catherine Ikin. Ikin had been charged with the manslaughter of her husband Albert and was in custody awaiting trial. On 12 June 1931, Catherine and Albert, also alcoholic, had been at their home in Woy Woy, when, according to Catherine, Albert had seen her looking in the woodshed for kindling wood. He had imagined she was searching for a hidden bottle of liquor there and in a rage came at her with a razor. They had wrestled and in the melee, she told police, Albert had sustained a razor gash on his hand. The cut extended from between Albert's fourth and little fingers almost to his elbow. He bled to death. In prison, Kate was the frail and distraught Catherine Ikin's self-appointed benefactor and protector. ‘She is very good to me,’ Ikin said at the height of the friendship. ‘She is the loveliest woman at the Bay, and she gives me half her rations and makes me a cup of tea in the mornings.’
Ikin soon had reason to retract her praise, for Kate's kindness was not motivated by altruism. In late September ′31, after Ikin had been acquitted and released from prison, Kate, who herself was free after authorities, to the fury of police, paroled her after just one year of imprisonment and allowed her to pay her £250 fine in easy instalments, was waiting for Ikin at the prison gates in her chauffeur-driven limousine. The unlikely duo drove off together.
The friendship did not endure. Within a week, Ikin had reported Kate to the police for assaulting and robbing her. Kate, claimed Ikin, had wheedled from her the information that she was due a £12 pension payout because she was now the widow of an ex-serviceman. Kate had insisted on accompanying her to the Woy Woy post office, where the money was being held. Outside, Kate demanded the money. When Ikin refused, Kate produced a small knife or razor and stabbed her in the finger. Ikin fled to the nearest police station. Kate was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm on the elderly woman and, incredibly for one with a record as substantial as hers, merely fined a small sum.
Only months later, on 9 December, Kate was entertaining a group of customers at her Riley Street sly-grog den when an argument broke out. Rifle in hand, she ordered one protagonist, Joe McNamara (the same McNamara who was the proprietor of Mack's, outside which Norman Bruhn was gunned down in June ′27), to leave the premises. He, like Snowy Prendergast (the young wannabe out to gun down Wally Tomlinson in March 1930), called the old gangster's bluff. And, like Prendergast, he paid dearly. Without further debate or ado, Kate shot him in the groin. She was arrested, but McNamara refused to identify her as the culprit and charges were dropped.
A month later, she was in trouble again when nabbed for consorting with prostitutes. An exasperated judiciary sent her back to gaol, but only for a month or two.
18
Chez Devine
Tilly Devine returned from London in the first week of January 1931, after just nine months away. Jim's welcome home for her could not have been what she'd hoped for. Arriving at Torrington Road, she found her husband entertaining a strange woman. When she accused him of cheating on her, he denied it. The stranger was not his lover, he protested, but a housekeeper who had been looking after him in Tilly's absence. Tilly, in a cursing rage, threw the woman out. Jim again asserted his innocence, but Tilly was too angry to listen. In a fury himself now, Jim hit her. Then he reached for his rifle. At that, Tilly ran into the street, with Jim at her heels. From the same spot on the verandah where he'd fired at Gregory Gaffney, he now blasted away at his wife. This time his aim was less true, and she escaped unscathed.
At the sound of gunfire, the Devines’ long-suffering neighbours called the police, who arrived in force and arrested Jim. He explained to them how his wife had wrongly assumed his housekeeper was his lover and had become hysterical and ran screaming into the street. To calm her down, he had fired a volley over her head. ‘What else could I do?’ The bloody neighbours, as usual, he said, had overreacted and involved the law. The officers, nevertheless, charged Jim with attempted murder. Before taking him in, they searched the house, and in the pocket of a coat hanging in a bedroom wardrobe, they found a razor.
At committal proceedings, Tilly, still unforgiving, glared at Jim. He met her withering looks with winks and patronising smiles. But by his trial on 16 January 1931, they'd patched things up and she refused to testify against him. The attempted-murder charge was dropped. Police then tried to have Jim Devine charged with possession of a lethal weapon, the razor. His lawyer guffawed. How on earth, he demanded of the Crown, could his client be in possession of a razor when it was not on his person but in a coat in a cupboard? That charge, too, was dismissed.
Two months later, police were back at Torrington Road. Jim Devine, face swathed in bloody bandages, told them his tale. He had been at home alone on 14 March when the doorbell rang. On opening the door, he was attacked by the visitor, a person he insisted he'd never before laid eyes on. The mystery assailant had attacked him with a razor, cutting open Jim's face. The slash extended from his ear, which was all but severed, to his mouth.
Devine said that his attacker had then fled, and he, losing blood and in terrible pain, staggered to the phone and called a friend, whose identity he simply could not remember now because he had been in such shock. The friend had driven him to St Vincent's Hospital where his horrific wounds were stitched. Nor was Tilly any help to police. ‘I have never in my life topped off anybody to the coppers,’ she later told reporters with what they noted was an enigmatic smile, ‘and I'm not starting now.’
It has never been revealed who slashed Jim Devine that night. It could have been someone loyal to Kate Leigh, paying Jim Devine back for killing Gaffney and being part of the force that attacked Dalton and Tomlinson. Maybe it was a reprisal for Snowy Prendergast's ill-fated rampage at Kate's home. Perhaps it was just one or another of Jim's many enemies, someone he'd assaulted or cheated along the way.
And there is another possibility. At the time, the Devine marriage was floundering. Jim had been beating Tilly since they met, but recently he had escalated his violence and taken a number of lovers, possibly including the ‘housekeeper’. The vicious-tempered Tilly, who never had a problem inflicting bodily harm on others, may that night have had enough of her husband's thuggery and philandering, and punished him with one of the razors that littered their
home.
Because of the ugly red scar that now decorated Jim Devine's cheek, he was known for a while by the unwieldy sobriquet ‘Scarface Big Jim’ Devine. But whoever slashed him, the injury did not help the disposition of the ever-irascible Jim, who now kept his rifle loaded and at arm's reach in readiness for anyone else who wanted to chance their hand.
One who did was Frank Green. The friends had turned on each other after Jim was exonerated of involvement in Barney Dalton's death, leaving Green to face the rap alone, and Green had said in court he had seen the murder weapon at Jim's home. There was also, it's believed, some kind of money dispute between the pair.
On the afternoon of 16 June 1931, the bad relations between the gangsters came to a head. That day, Jim had been busy. He visited Tilly, who was locked in the Central Police Station cells after being convicted of gingering George Hudson, a customer at one her brothels, of £2. Jim had taken her a fur coat in case she was cold. He then went to the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel in Darlinghurst for an ale. While Jim was there, Green, with Nellie Cameron in tow, confronted him. Green demanded £25. With an oath, Jim brushed Green aside, and left the hotel to meet his friend, cabbie Fred Moffitt, who would drive him home to Torrington Road.
After Jim Devine left the Sir Walter Raleigh, an affronted Green and Cameron plotted to raid the Devines’ home that night and relieve Jim of either the £25 or goods of similar value. Perhaps Green was drunk, for if sober he would have remembered that Jim Devine kept a loaded rifle at Torrington Road and — as he himself had seen at powder-burn range the night Gaffney died — could use it proficiently.
Green and Cameron recruited an ally named Buller and caught a cab to Torrington Road. When they arrived, at about 7.30 p.m., it was raining heavily. Without a knock, Devine later testified, the trio barged through the Devines’ front door and into the lounge room where Jim was sitting with Moffitt and a man named Les Jordan. Green rammed a nickel-plated revolver into a startled Jim's stomach and ordered him to hand over £25 — ‘and if you squeal, I'll blow your guts out’. Once more, even while under the gun, Jim refused. Green's bluff had been called and, putting the gun away, he tore a £50 diamond pin from Devine's tie and, flanked by Cameron and Buller, backed out of the house.
As soon as they were outside, Jim ran to his bedroom, took his rifle and ran to the front porch. ‘Stop, Frank, and give me that tie pin,’ he demanded.
‘Stop, nothing,’ answered Green. Jim fired at Green, but missed. He fired again. The bullets lodged in a neighbour's front fence and a grassy verge.
‘Come out here and don't be a dog!’ cried Green from the roadside to Jim, barricaded in his favourite shooting position on the front porch.
Les Jordan watched the fracas from a window, while petrified neighbours peered from behind their curtains as their suburban street once more became a battleground. Fred Moffitt, the taxi driver, broke from the Devines’ home and raced to his parked cream-and-red cab. As he was climbing in, he was confronted by Green, Cameron and Buller, who leapt in and screamed at him to drive them away. As the taxi accelerated along Malabar Road, Green fired a barrage of shots at Jim from the open front passenger-seat window. Devine returned fire, shooting four times. Moffitt cried out and pitched forward. Then, as Jim later told police, Green, Cameron and Buller ‘got out of the cab and ran towards Torrington Road and fired a shot as they were going. I had no more cartridges so I went inside and locked the house up.’
At first light, Jim peeped from the porch window and there in the street he saw Moffitt's cab, stationary at a crazy angle. All its doors hung open. After checking that Green was not lying in wait for him, he approached the vehicle. He later told police of seeing Moffitt sprawled over the wheel like a broken puppet. He added, somewhat unnecessarily, ‘Poor old Fred was dead.’ The soft-nosed, high-velocity bullet from Jim's rifle had torn into the taxi driver's chest, shattered his breastbone and punctured his lung. The floor of the cab was awash with blood.
At the June inquest into Moffitt's death, Jim mourned, ‘I would just like to express my deepest regret at the death of Fred Moffitt, against whom I held no grudge and who was a good friend to me. When discharging the shots at Green in the direction of the taxi cab, I had no intention of striking or shooting Moffitt and I aimed at the rear of the car with a view to missing him.’
When it was her turn to be questioned by the coroner, Nellie Cameron — to open laughter from the many present who knew better — brazenly declared: ‘I don't know James Devine, and have never been to his house. I don't know Buller.’ Of her lover Frank Green, she allowed, ‘I have heard of him . . . I think.’ Despite further questioning by the incredulous coroner, Cameron refused to alter her story. The coroner, in the end, ruled that there was no evidence that Devine murdered Moffitt, but that he must stand trial for manslaughter.
At Darlinghurst Criminal Court three weeks later, before a huge crowd which spilled out of the court and onto the surrounding lawns, Jim's lawyer insisted his client had every right to shoot at Green, Cameron and Buller because, under the Crimes Act, any responsible citizen could apprehend a person who had committed a crime for which he had not been charged and tried. Green's gunpoint theft of his tie pin entitled Devine to take whatever steps he felt necessary to arrest his assailant. He was doing just that when the hapless Moffitt got in the way and took the bullet meant for Green. Mr Justice Stephen was not convinced, saying that Jim, in turning Malabar Road into a shooting gallery, had used unreasonable force to reclaim his tie pin. ‘It is not the law that any person without qualification is entitled to shoot to kill a felon who in his opinion is trying to escape.’
Then Devine found himself with a most unlikely ally. Detective Superintendent William Mackay, head of the CIB, told the court that Jim Devine had professed his deep sorrow at the death of his old friend Moffitt and reminded the court that Frank Green was a bad man who would, without a second thought, kill anyone trying to bring him down. As every policeman in Sydney knew well, extreme measures were necessary when dealing with the vicious Green, and Jim Devine had merely taken such measures.
Next came a procession of defence witnesses who swore that Jim and Moffitt were good friends, and that Jim often gave the alcoholic Moffitt money for drinks when he needed it. Over the wails of Moffitt's widow, the jury, after only a few minutes’ deliberation, acquitted Jim of manslaughter. Tilly, swathed in fur and her fingers laden with baubles, embraced her husband. And at a celebratory knees-up at Torrington Road that night, Tilly, bottle of beer in hand, cooed: ‘My Jim never killed anyone . . . On purpose!’
‘Guido Calletti was a ruthless, cold-blooded bastard,’ Ray Blissett says. ‘But like a lot of those razor-gang blokes, he wasn't particularly brave when he was unarmed, or when his victim fought back.’ In 1931, Calletti was a true public enemy, mugging any likely mark who strayed into his path.
One night Calletti overreached himself for once. He struck up a conversation with a seemingly mild-mannered and well-dressed grazier in a William Street pub; probably Sharland's Strand, a favourite watering hole of his. After a few beers, Calletti suggested they strike out together in search of fun and excitement. The good-natured grazier was all for it.
In a laneway off William Street, Calletti fell behind his companion then, with a rush, struck him on the back of the head. At this point, most of Calletti's victims went down and stayed down while Calletti robbed them. Not the grazier. He absorbed Calletti's king-hit without flinching, then returned one. Calletti was very strong, and one of Razorhurst's most accomplished streetfighters, but when his ‘pigeon’ stood up to him the hoodlum's spirit failed him. For five minutes, the grazier, who turned out to be a skilled boxer, hammered Calletti with lefts and rights, hooks and rips and uppercuts. Each time he knocked Calletti down, he'd haul him to his feet again and start afresh. When Calletti was on the verge of unconsciousness, the man from the bush pushed and pummelled him a full kilometre through the streets to Darlinghurst Police Station.
There, he waited until
Calletti was revived, bandaged, splinted and charged with assault and robbery. And when Calletti faced a committal hearing over the matter, the grazier, in spite of being warned by Calletti's friends that his health would suffer if he testified, insisted on pressing charges. ‘I'm going through with this to see that that ruffian gets what's coming to him.’ What was coming to Calletti was two years in Long Bay prison.
19
The Girl in the Middle
Throughout Jim Devine's trial, much of the focus was on Frank Green's lover and accomplice, Nellie Cameron. Not quite twenty, her good looks, insouciance and mockery of authority struck a chord with many of those following proceedings. Adding to the charisma of the prostitute, thief and cocaine dealer was the much-bandied story of her fight, watched by a crowd which may have been 500-strong, in the backyard of a Darlinghurst pub with a fearsome prostitute named Black Aggie. The contretemps was sparked by a dispute over prostitution turf. Aggie ‘owned’ a lucrative corner and Cameron wanted it. The tale goes that both women stripped to the waist and fought it out. Aggie was bigger, but twenty years older, weaker and slower. Cameron was quick and vicious and quickly downed her opponent with blows to the stomach; then, when Aggie lay helpless on the cobblestones, Cameron raked her with her fingernails. Black Aggie left town.
Since Norman Bruhn's death four years before, Cameron had careened from Frank Green to Guido Calletti and back again. She would go on switching between the two almost until Calletti's death in 1939. The striking party girl was, on the surface, an odd companion to the mobsters. One observer noted how the manic Green's ‘scowls and oaths contrasted strangely with the merry laughter of his female pal and partner, sometimes known as “Sweet Nell of Tooth's Brewery”.’ Calletti, too, was a grim man unless committing a crime, when he brightened considerably. One newspaper reported how when both Green and Calletti fell for Cameron, ‘the underworld erupted into a violent seesawing contest between them’.
Razor (Underbelly) Page 17
