Razor (Underbelly)

by Writer, Larry

  When Kate was the following month sentenced to six months’ prison for the January charges, she complained that when Tilly Devine had been found guilty of a similar charge she was allowed to leave the country instead of doing time in Long Bay. When she learned of Kate's words, Tilly stormed into the office of Truth, which had fun with the encounter in its 7 February edition in an article headlined ‘K-K-K-Katey . . . You're the only “Girl” That I Abhor!’:

  Tilly made an informal — very informal — call on the editor and was in the sanctum before messenger boys, typists or secretaries could say a word . . . She had been listening to Kate Leigh's appeal against her sentence of six months for consorting. ‘In the court,’ declared Matilda, ‘they said that a certain other underworld woman (meaning me) had been given a chance to go to England after being convicted for consorting. I was never convicted of consorting,’ emphatically stated Matilda, pulling off her hat and allowing her hair to blow wildly across her face. ‘I was never deported. I told the magistrate I would go to England and I went and when I wanted to come back, I came back. I'm not a bad woman. I'm not like Kate Leigh, anyway. I might drink and swear and have a run-in with the police now and then, but I don't take dope, and no one can say I have ruined young girls. Kate Leigh does all this. I'm a lady, I am. I can talk with the best people in Sydney. You might be the editor of Truth [and the editor blushed], but I have as much education as you.’ And before Matilda left, the editor blushed some more, for, despite the fact that he sees all kinds and conditions of people, he fully realised that his ‘language’ education had been sadly neglected . . . when these two ‘Queens of the Underworld’ meet, the Marquis of Queensbury [sic] need not hang around, for his rules will not be needed.

  As well as playing up the women's rivalry and antipathy, the press did not stint when reporting on Tilly and Kate's generosity and community spirit. The two provided reams of good copy for both the crime reporters and the human-interest journalists alike. The nefarious heart of Ned Kelly beat in both women's breasts, but their kindnesses were many. Tilly and Kate did plenty to alleviate the suffering of the down-and-out in their constituencies. ‘I could never knock a man back for a feed or a drink or a few bob,’ Kate once said.

  ‘Kate did a lot of bad, but a lot of good, too,’ says former policewoman Maggie Baker, Lillian Armfield's righthand woman in the Darlinghurst days. ‘She made sure that no kid in Surry Hills ever went without a Christmas present. And if she saw a bloke sitting in the park in the rain she'd take him home. I was called to one of her sly-grog shops one day and there must have been at least five fellows asleep on the floor. I had to step over them. I said, “Kate what will happen if I step on one of these men?” She said, “Nothing, love, they won't feel a thing.” ‘

  Chow Hayes was another to see Kate's benevolent side, as relayed to his biographer, David Hickie, in the latter's Chow Hayes — Gunman. He described how every Christmas Kate erected makeshift barricades at each end of the block in Lansdowne Street in Surry Hills where she had her main beer house. She'd pay some drunks to dress up as Santa Claus, and have tables stacked with chocolates, cakes, lollies and lemonade, and toys for the local kids. Hayes pointed out that much of it was shoplifted. By turning it on for the slum children she encouraged all the customers, their fathers, to visit her place during the year ‘. . . because they'd say, “Kate's all right, she puts on a party every year for the kids.” That went on for years. If you were sweet with Kate, she'd do anything for you and give you anything. But if you crossed her, she'd shoot you.’

  Serious broadsheet newspapers railed that the tabloids’ penchant for turning gangsters into folk heroes — much fun was had over Kate and Tilly's imprisonment forcing them to miss the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932, for instance — was encouraging others to break the law. And while the new Vagrancy Act's Consorting Clause had curbed the open gang warfare of 1927–1930, crime remained rampant.

  ‘Small-time hoodlums are aping the dyed-in-the-wool criminals of Kings Cross and East Sydney,’ claimed the Mirror. In the early months of 1932 alone, two policemen were beaten senseless in Market Street in the city, there was a rape and a shooting in an Elizabeth Street wine bar, and John Brady, a Chippendale thug, shot sixteen-year-old Winnie May Chown. Alexander Barrie, eighty-four, was stabbed to death by robbers who broke into his Windsor Street, Paddington, home. There were four recorded razor slashings in Darlinghurst and a score of muggings.

  Tilly and Jim Devine were at a party when Jim's brother, Sid, was shot in the shoulder by a man named Guy Kingsbury. Big Jim himself was arrested in March, not for wounding or killing, but for driving without a licence. He claimed to the policeman who pulled him over that he had merely left his licence at home, but when police investigated they discovered Devine had not owned a driving licence since 1926.

  21

  On the Town

  In 1932, Phil Jeffs returned to Kings Cross from his lair on the New South Wales Central Coast. Since being shot in his own home in 1929 after the Eaton Avenue riot, Jeffs had kept a low profile while his wounds healed. To his Woy Woy neighbours, he was a legitimate businessman. Unbeknown to them, the frequent visitors who came by train to stay at his palatial home were henchmen who ran his Kings Cross brothels, gambling clubs and groggeries. Jeffs would entertain these underlings, collect his takings from them, then load them up with instructions and send them back to Sydney to take care of business.

  Phil the Jew, the lowlife, cheap-flash rapist, woman-beater, gunman and razor gangster, was no more. The new Phillip Jeffs was a smoothie. He wore well-cut business suits, affected a suave, erudite manner and he dated classy women. Friends were awed by the size of his book collection, and his knowledge of philosophy and politics. The only thing that had not changed was Jeffs's burning desire to be a rich and powerful criminal.

  In the ′20s, Jeffs had worked as a bouncer and doorman at the Fifty-Fifty Club, a seedy dance hall and sly-grog and cocaine palace in the Chard Building (built in 1924) on the corner of William and Forbes streets. Now, in 1932, Jeffs was back at the Fifty-Fifty, having bought it cheaply from the previous proprietor, who was tired of constant police raids. When Jeffs took command, he solved that problem by heaping money on bent officers. He also forked out sums to hard men such as Frank Green as a guarantee that they would not cause trouble on the premises, and dissuade others from doing so. Jeffs considered such payouts essential overheads, much like electricity, heating, rent, liquor and drugs.

  As an extra safeguard, realising his lengthy police record would attract the straight police and the press and so jeopardise the Fifty-Fifty's licence, Jeffs concealed his ownership. Until about 1935, he masqueraded as a lackey, manning the door, serving drinks and ejecting troublemakers, while his employee, a middle-aged, taciturn sly-grog veteran named Harold ‘Snowy’ Billington, played the role of manager. Jeffs and Billington carried on the charade for years. Giving evidence in 1933, Billington swore under oath: ‘Jeffs is a general rouseabout at the place. He was very handy to me when I started. He is not employed practically as an employee. He is a pal and keeps me company. He is there for protection.’ It is unrecorded whether Jeffs was on duty when a youth named Vic O'Grady fell or was pushed to his death from the top of the Chard Building onto William Street below.

  A visitor to the Fifty-Fifty Club in its riotous mid-′30s heyday would enter the creaking cage elevator at ground level, and ride up past nondescript offices on floors one to three before alighting at the fourth floor. There stood a heavy door with a sign: ‘Kings Bridge Club’. On the door was a side flap. A knock on the door, and the flap would be raised and a doorman, possibly Phil Jeffs, possibly Snowy Billington, would peer balefully out. The doorman would open the door, and frisk guests for firearms and ensure that they had money. He would check whether they were a member of the club or knew someone who was.

  If approved, the visitor entered a cavernous room with carpet on the floor, slightly tatty lounge suites, decorative palms and flower-filled v
ases, and deep chairs festooned with colourful cushions. Each window was covered by a heavy curtain so goings-on could not be seen from the street below. There were about ten bridge tables, each surrounded by four wooden chairs, at which guests sat drinking heavily or snorting cocaine from small bowls. Behind the bar were ice-chests yawning with many kinds of alcohol.

  The noise from the 150 or more hooting, squealing revellers made conversation difficult. An electric fan cooled the guests and dispersed the thick, pungent fog of cigarette smoke. Patrons danced the foxtrot and the Charleston; a four-piece jazz band rattled off ‘If You Knew Susie’, ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll’ and ‘The Sheik of Araby’. When the jazzmen took a break, they would be replaced by a thin, pale youth who played sentimental favourites such as ‘My Melancholy Baby’ and ‘Poor Butterfly’ on a grand piano with a Persian silk scarf stretched exotically across its top.

  One journalist partook of the Fifty-Fifty's hospitality and reported:

  [There are] Orientals, thugs, half-castes and painted women of the street mingling with well-known scions of Society, prominent actors and actresses and the leading lights of our legal and medical profession. The place has even had viceregal connections. Unofficially, of course. Here is an Oriental, sphinx-like and furtive, dancing with an attractive young white girl. The dark-skinned foreigner opposite is an Egyptian, suspected of trafficking in that vilest of all trades, White Slavery.

  White slavery or not, just about every other racket was conducted at the Fifty-Fifty Club. For all its pretensions to gentility, the Fifty-Fifty was a disreputable dive. Cocaine was freely sold by dealers, who paid a cut of their profits to Jeffs. There was gambling for those who could still afford it after paying the sky-high bar prices. Prostitutes, often supplied at a premium price to Jeffs by Tilly Devine, worked the Fifty-Fifty Club in profusion. They targeted the obviously wealthy who were slumming it for a night. Jeffs, who stood sentinel in the shadows by the bar, would exact a tithe of five shillings per client on his prostitutes, who charged around £2 for sex. Jeffs also instructed his women to insist their pick-ups buy them lots of drinks at three shillings or more. These expensive gin-and-tonics and scotch-and-sodas contained not a drop of alcohol.

  On the floor above the club there were apartments where call-girls entertained. Jeffs hired ‘steerers’ (cabbies, hotel bellboys, barmen, waitresses) to approach prosperous-looking people and recommend that they visit the Fifty-Fifty. Some of these guests regretted their decision when Jeffs and his employees drugged them, or got them leglessly drunk and photographed them in a compromising position with a prostitute. The gulled high-roller faced the choice of paying Jeffs to destroy the photos and negatives, or seeing them sent to his family and employer.

  Pickpocketing and robbery were rife at the Fifty-Fifty, but even those patrons lucky enough to escape an actual mugging were bled blind as they were hit on repeatedly by employees for tips: in the elevator as they entered, to get in the front door, to order a drink or a meal, to dance, to use the bathroom. To leave the club cost the customer a £5 ‘exit fee’.

  Fights often broke out between soused customers and rival gangs. One night a dozen members of Woolloomooloo's Brougham Street Gang, out for blood after Jeffs sold them adulterated cocaine (the same scam that had caused the Eaton Avenue brawl), burst into the club looking for him. Jeffs, luckily for him, was elsewhere, but a bouncer suffered concussion when the mobsters smashed a bottle of gin on his head. They then tore the Fifty-Fifty apart, smashing hundreds of bottles of alcohol and glasses, destroying furniture, splattering paint and dog faeces over the walls and roughing up aghast patrons.

  One unwelcome visitor to the club was Sergeant Henry Ham — the beat cop unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of Tilly Devine's anti-authoritarian harangues, now, four years later, a licensing policeman. He and two constables raided the Fifty-Fifty Club in March 1933, and took the names of those drinking alcohol and the waiters who'd served them. Jeffs, dropping all pretence of being hired help, stalked across the dance floor to the tables where Ham was writing in his notebook and snapped at his patrons: ‘Tell them nothing. This is not a court of law.’ When Ham ordered the waiters to hand over the money they had taken from the drinkers, Jeffs interrupted, ‘This is money you received for sandwiches, not alcohol.’ Then he barked at his employees, ‘Now, don't say anything more!’

  Everyone in Sydney knew that the Fifty-Fifty Club sold alcohol illegally after 6 p.m. and that gangsters gathered there. But raids by licensing police and Consorting Squad officers were rare. Jeffs paid some senior police officers to direct the honest Consortos’ investigations elsewhere. After a rare bust in 1933, some detectives were called as witnesses for the defence. ‘I have visited the Fifty-Fifty Club on many occasions,’ said one, ‘and I have never seen any liquor sold there.’ Another swore, ‘The club is well-conducted and I would have no objection to taking my wife there.’ Nor had a third ever seen ‘anything untoward take place’.

  Another reason for the club's immunity was that Jeffs, like Kate Leigh, enjoyed the friendship of prominent politicians. He was, for instance, a good friend of state parliamentarian Anthony Alam, who not only had money invested in a sly-grog nightclub called Graham's, but a wife who was its proprietress. Once, in a parliamentary debate over the illegal alcohol trade in Sydney, Alam leapt to his feet to defend Jeffs's clubs: ‘The Governor's wife herself could go in unattended. They are run on the most respectable lines.’ One frustrated politician told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘We know the police have the power to put the nightclubs down, but they don't. There is a very definite reason for that, which we dare not raise.’

  Late in 1933, Jeffs expanded. Again as a silent partner, he joined with Dr Reginald Stuart-Jones (an abortionist and SP bookie) and they became co-owners of the 400 Club, an upmarket sly-grog nightspot at 173– 175 Phillip Street. The requisite police pay-offs were made upfront.

  Still, operating the 400 Club required audacity, for it was located just a quick walk from the office of the police commissioner. Despite an outcry from the church, the press and politicians, police raids here, too, were few, and Jeffs and Stuart-Jones were always given plenty of advance warning of those that did take place. The partners co-existed cordially until 1937, when Jeffs decided he wanted the lucrative 400 Club all to himself. When Stuart-Jones refused to sell his interest in the establishment, Jeffs drugged him, then, when he was too groggy to defend himself, hurled the doctor down the stairs of the club and into Phillip Street. Stuart-Jones may have been vexed, but he was too scared to do anything about it. He walked out of his partnership with Jeffs poorer and wiser, and took up an easier life selling drugs.

  The 400 was more salubrious than the Fifty-Fifty Club. Its clientele was almost exclusively what then passed for high society in Sydney. There was a main room for dining and dancing to a slick orchestra, and various bars where serious drinking took place. For guests who craved privacy, there were small, discreet dining rooms.

  Exclusivity, however, did not quarantine the 400 Club from violence. One evening, two rival gangs somehow gained admittance and destroyed the classy ambience by turning on a riotous bar room–style brawl. Well-dressed patrons fled for the exits as the gangs ripped into each other with fists and razors. At the height of the battle, a prominent advertising executive attempted to restore order by standing between the combatants and requesting in reasonable tones that they please respect their surroundings. A mobster listened politely, then sliced off the adman's ear. Phil Jeffs, appalled at the mutilation of one of his best patrons, made the best of a bad situation by picking the executive's ear up from the floor and rushing the appendage and its owner to hospital, where a surgeon reunited one with the other.

  Jeffs's other establishments included Oyster Bill's nightclub at Tom Uglys Point, Blakehurst. Mobile highflyers would make the thirty-kilometre trek there from the city to dance and drink illegally while watching the stars sparkle on the waters of the Georges River. Graham's, the upmarket sly-grog shop of
Jeffs's politician friend and protector Anthony Alam, was in Hunter Street. After its opening in 1936, Graham's thrived. Police headquarters was nearby, but somehow officers never seemed to notice anything untoward about Graham's, in spite of the wee-hours queues of taxis waiting to take reeling patrons home. Dick Reilly, then doing his criminal apprenticeship before becoming one of Sydney's most menacing crooks, was a cashier at Graham's. Many other villains found employment there, but so did a number of creative people attracted to the club's glamour and raciness. One of its waiters was Buster Fiddess, later a beloved television funnyman on Bobby Limb's variety shows in the ′60s.

  With friends in high places, such as Alam, Jeffs abandoned his sham of passing himself off as the hired help, and in the mid ′30s became what he had always wanted to be: Mr Big. Dressed in tails and black tie, or in sharp dark suits, with gleaming white shirts whose high, starched collars sported elaborately patterned silk ties, he would mingle with guests at his clubs, bestowing with a smile and a wink a complimentary bottle of Johnny Walker to the showbiz high-flyers at this table, a bowl of cocaine to Miss Cameron and Mr Calletti at that. The Devines — Tilly in her expensive gowns and glittering jewellery, with her hair spectacularly coiffed; Jim, glowering, dark-suited and jittery as if he expected to be ambushed at any moment — were frequent guests at the Fifty-Fifty and the 400 Club. Jeffs always made a fuss of Tilly — a courtly kiss on the cheek, a table near the band, free champagne — and not surprisingly, because for years she had been investing parcels of her bordello profits in the astute Jeffs's enterprises.