She fell pregnant and, being a Catholic and u nable to have an abortion, had a girl. Tilly tried to adopt her but the authorities would not allow her to. The following year my mother had me. This time Tilly hired a solicitor and paid £500, and at just a few weeks old I became her adopted son. I grew up with Tilly and Eric Parsons in the big house at Torrington Road. Yes, there were wild parties and brawls and I recall gun shots, but they cared for me well. Eric I remember as an elderly man who wore a cardigan and was always producing threepenny Cadbury chocolates from its pockets for me. Tilly was very tough, but I think mostly she was fair. She was affectionate and hugged me and I knew better than to get on her bad side. Because I was Tilly's kid I was shunned in the neighbourhood and was never invited to parties. I was a bit of a ratbag. I think these days I'd have been diagnosed ADD, they tell me I'm quite intelligent . . . I did well when I left school and went to work, as a projectionist at the Barclay theatre in George Street in Sydney's Haymarket, and later in the record business.
Tilly loved Eric, but Jim Devine was the real love of her life. Each year she and I would travel to Melbourne for the Melbourne Cup and we'd stay with Jim in Fitzroy where, at age 71, he was still working — as a bouncer at the local pub. To me, Big Jim was a gentle giant. He had a li ttle wooden figure of a black boy which dispensed cigarettes, popping them right into his hand. He and Tilly were always glad to see each other, but before long they'd be yelling. They couldn't help themselves.
I was contacted by Maureen Cocks, Tilly's niece, the daughter of her brother William. On the phone and later when I visited her and her sister Margaret in London, this dedicated keeper of her family's flame shared memories of her aunt and gave me family photos and scores of wonderful letters — letters resounding with loneliness, regret and recrimination that Tilly had mailed to her revealing her preoccupations as her life wound down.
On 7 June 1965, Tilly wrote to Maureen:
Sorry I never answered your last letter before as I have not been too good. My feet and hands have been playing up with me and it is taking me all my time to write this. I received a letter from Peter [Twiss, her nephew in England] . . . telling me the [British] newspapers said I was dead. So I am going to take a writ out against them. Peter sent me the cutting out of the People. He seems to be the only one who seems to take notice. How I wish [Eric] was alive he would be the one to take things up for me but as you know I am one out in this country. Freddy don't seem to care.
She had sent Freddy's family a handmade dresser but had not been thanked for her trouble.
Well, girl, if you must know I am only seven stone in weight — I take an SS [sized] women's dress. All my good clothes I have given away. So now you know how worried I get . . . In Peter's letter he told me to forgive my sister and brother and Caty for writing that letter to John about me dead. It came as such a shock to both of us. John said he would not ever write to Caty again for sending him such a letter but, Maureen, if you knew how they treated us you would not want to know any of them again. As you know, you are the only [family member] I write to so I won't forget you later on. Lots of love from John and myself.
Tilly wrote to Maureen on 24 October the following year, again apologising for her tardy reply, and revealing that she had stayed in touch with her ex-husband, Jim.
I could not answer [your letter] as the night of my birthday they put on a birthday party for me at the club so you bet your life I got well drunk and I [burned] my two fingers so I have had a very bad time with them . . . Well, my dear, you never met Jim [Devine], but your Dad did. Well, he passed away two months ago, not a bad age, seventy-four, but he was a very sick man at the last. I was going over to Melbourne for the Cup this year as I always went to see him and we used to talk about old times, so I don't think I will be going over this year . . . I am home nearly all day so I look at TV to pass the time away . . .
Some time later, in an undated letter, Tilly told Maureen that she was in hospital with a broken hip. ‘. . . seven years ago they put a pin in my leg so now they have taken it out as it was causing a lot of pain. Well, my dear little girl. I don't think I will ever be coming home to England any more as to tell you the truth nobody cares [about] me there. My sister [Alice is] nothing to me now.’ She railed about the inhospitable ways of her family when she last she visited England and no one offered her a place to stay, ‘but if anyone from London came to my place I always had a room.’ She pined for Eric Parsons. ‘I have been lonely ever since I lost Eric. All I have now is my l ittle John. He is my only little mate.’
At Christmas, 1968, Tilly applied for a Housing Commission flat in which she and John could live. The rent in the flat where they were living was $18 a week, and Tilly's pension provided just $18. There was virtually nothing left in the bank.
On 14 April 1969, writing from Sydney's Concord repatriation Hospital, she told Maureen that she had been ill with cancer. ‘I have been in hospital twice . . . I have asked to go home for Easter as you know I have little John to look after and [school holidays] start tomorrow. I want to be home with him. As you know, we have a big Show here at Easter and all the kids love to go. I suppose you will read about it in the papers [and see it] on Tv.’ Always a devoted royals watcher, Tilly told Maureen that ‘We have the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester visiting here. They are having the time of their life each day at the Show.’ The news reports of a few years back that she had died still rankled and she asked that if Maureen saw her relatives to reassure them yet again ‘that I am alive and kicking’. Then she rancorously added:
I don't want anything [to do] with their likes. They are a lousy mob, even my sister Alice. [And after] all I did for them while the war was on. She said I was a wicked woman — to tell such lies . . . Alice got the lot, but she may need a friend again, let her two sons look after her . . . I never want to see them again. They are all too greedy. So Maureen, don't get messed up with them. My brother Billy was the best of them all and my Eric liked him very much when they used to go to the dog racing.
For a time in mid 1969, Tilly considered returning to England. She wrote to Maureen Cocks, ‘I wonder if you would go to Australia House for me and see if they have a small flat or cottage as I am a war widow and also incapacitated.’ She could be home for Christmas if a suitable abode became available, but of course there was no offer of accommodation.
While Tilly was being treated for her stomach cancer at Darlinghurst's Sacred Heart Hospice in August 1969, Sister Mary St Joseph gave Maureen a progress report on her aunt's health and state of mind.
I'm calling you ‘Maureen’, as it seemed so distant to write ‘Mrs’ when you are the niece of one for whom I have a real admiration; and one who has been so very kind to others during her lifetime. If only you saw the joy on your aunt's face when your letter arrived, and then the flowers — lovely pink gladiolas, pink carnations and pink sweet peas. It was a delightful array. They are still looking fresh. Perhaps it's Aunt's joy and pride at their presence and above all that they were sent from England. John sends his love and will write soon. He calls frequently to see Aunt. You asked re her condition. Well, she remains about the same and is rather weak. I look forward to my visit to her daily. I think I previously mentioned that she is only seven stone in weight . . . I'm sure you all enjoyed hearing of the brave Astronauts. Aunt had a TV on which she saw all to be seen.
Much love from Aunt, John and myself. May God bless you and yours always.
Yours sincerely in Christ, S.M. St Joseph RSC.
Sister Mary, who organised for friends to take Tilly on drives around Sydney to break the monotony of her hos-pitalisation, reflected how, ‘Aunt is very brave and bears things well. It is such a change to see this once-active person now in bed.’
Another woman, a nurse at the hospice, has an abiding memory of Tilly. In her last months, while being cared for at the hospice, Tilly took the nurse aside. ‘I want my medication, nurse,’ she pleaded.
‘But Matilda, you've had it. It says here on the ward sh
eet you were medicated at four O'clock.’
‘not that medication,’ chided Tilly. ‘now go back to the fridge, and you'll find my medication in a bottle. It's got “Sheaf Stout” on the label.’
By April 1970, the now teenaged John Parsons was at work and, Tilly told Maureen on 18 April, doing well. ‘He is earning a fortune, $40 per week, and is putting it into the bank. Soon he will be richer than any of us. Last week I bought him a portable record and radio player. He is thrilled to pieces with it. It cost $40.’ Tilly informed Maureen that once more she was at war with her biological son. This time it was over some bail money she gave Freddy that had been incurred by a relative who had transgressed, and Freddy had not returned it. ‘He even had the hide to blatantly lie to me — stating that the court case was in April when it had been in August.’
In november 1970, Tilly suffered a stroke and lost her speech. Incapacitated, in terrible pain and shockingly emaciated by her cancer and cirrhosis, Tilly was again admitted to Concord repatriation Hospital. As the widow of two servicemen, she was entitled to treatment there. She never left the old building with the big red cross on its side on the banks of the Parramatta river. On the night of Tuesday, 24 november, Tilly Devine groaned, closed her eyes, and died.
Recalls John Parsons, ‘I had trouble believing it when Tilly died. There had been a few false alarms. In 1968 I was in a boys’ home because Tilly was in and out of hospital, and I got a call from the hospice saying she was really crook and going to die. When I went to her bedside she was sitting up having a smoke. Then, two years later at five-thirty in the morning I was eating breakfast in the canteen of the boys’ home and I heard a phone ring. I knew, I just knew, that it was for me and it was to tell me Tilly had died. And it was, and she had.’
On 11 December, Sister Mary St Joseph sent her condolences to Maureen Cocks.
. . . Your Aunt Matilda's death was announced over the radio, and it was a big shock to me. Needless to say, I'd like to have been with Aunt at the end. My one consolation is that she had made her peace with God, and even whilst here [at the Sacred Heart hospice], she was twice anointed. Aunt's wishes were carried out re her funeral, which was from our Sacred Heart Church . . . she had a beautiful coffin. While the coffin was being carried out I played ‘Nearer My God to Thee’. Requiem Mass was celebrated on November 26. I had my pupils singing for the occasion, ‘The Lord's My Shepherd’ and other hymns. John was very grieved, as you'd imagine. He must tread the highways of life alone now Aunt has gone. Aunt is in my prayers daily at Holy Mass. I send you greetings for the holy season of Christmas, so near us now. I feel inclined to add those of your dear Aunt also. She won't be unmindful of you in eternity.
The public tributes, so fulsome for Kate Leigh, were sparse and grudging for Tilly. Police Commissioner norman Allan declared: ‘She was a villain. I used to prosecute her and she gave me hell, but who am I to judge her?’ The tabloids predictably despatched reporters to the Tradesman's Arms Hotel to interview drinkers, but if they were seeking warm-hearted reminiscences, according to them, they got none. ‘Tilly never had many friends and no-one here is collecting for a wreath,’ one woman reportedly sneered. ‘She was a hard bitch and I don't want to talk about her any more.’ One newspaper painted a scene of a customer proposing a toast to their pub's departed patron: ‘ “Here's to dear old Til!” he chimed. But nobody drank.’
Daily Telegraph columnist ron Saw penned an obituary headlined ‘They'll Shed Only Crocodile Tears for Tilly Devine’. Calling her ‘a vicious, grasping, high-priestess of savagery, venery, obscenity and whoredom’, Saw said Tilly made Kate Leigh (‘a scapegrace [but] a kindly and generous old trot with many friends’) look like ‘a Christmas fairy’. Tilly, Saw wrote, ‘lived high off the whore's back, she gave nothing away that could not be prised from her with a knife, and if she had friends they were cowed and unwholesome low-lifers.’ She was ‘one of the most frightening creatures spewed up by the Razor gangs. She was charged with everything from consorting to malicious wounding, from indecent language to attempted murder. But above all, she was a brothel keeper.’ He blasted her for flaunting her furs and glittering rings in a Sydney grey with Depression and then wartime austerity, and scoffed at her repeated explanation that she could only afford such luxurious trappings because she'd backed last year's Melbourne Cup winner. ‘To make that much money,’ Saw said, ‘she'd have had to back every Melbourne Cup winner back to Carbine. She was making her money from brothels and everyone knew it, but there was nothing anyone could do about it because she couldn't be charged . . . She was a wretched woman.’
Nearly forty years later, Saw's words still infuriate John Parsons. ‘His obituary was both cruel and wrong,’ says Parsons. ‘The patrons at the Tradesman's Arms spoke only good of Tilly to me in the days after she died, and bought me many beers in my mother's memory. She did good things, as well as bad.’
Tilly Devine was cremated at Botany Cemetery with Catholic rites. There was only a handful of mourners. Indeed, most Sydneysiders were surprised to read of her death. Hadn't she died years ago? ‘I think Tilly died too late,’ says George Parsons. ‘If she had passed away at the height of her infamy, her funeral would have been one of those gangland extravaganzas like in the movies. But when she died, her time had gone.’
Tilly left a will. ‘I give, devise and bequeath to my adopted son John Eric Parsons and my niece Maureen Cocks and my nephew Peter John Twiss the whole of my real estate.’ This comprised $6,190.41 in this once-wealthy woman's account at the Bank of nSW on the corner of Oxford and Crown streets ($13.69 of which was in her purse when she died at Concord Hospital), jewellery to the value of $360 and a $20 social services funeral benefit. But before the bequest was dispersed, there were liabilities to be subtracted. The nSW Government took $1,088.61 in death duty and the Federal Government put its hand out for $13.05. Thomas Dixon Pty Ltd, the company that staged her funeral, charged $396.60, and the carpenters at Timmins Builders took $16.67 for building the coffin. G.F. Osborne, solicitor, levied a charge of $142.20. Another sum was kept aside to cover the Estate Solicitor's costs.
Not a day goes by when John Parsons, who arranged the funeral, does not remember Tilly. ‘Of course I think of her. She was my mum.’
Maureen Cocks is fairly sure ‘Tilly was accepted into heaven . . . for the nice things she did . . . I have two abiding memories of her, as clear to me as if they happened yesterday. She was staying at our home on one of her visits to London and I ventured into her bedroom, and she was under the covers and when I called her name to wake her, two hands covered in rings reached out and pulled the blanket down to show her face and her mass of bright yellow hair. And there was the time when the whole family went to the Sultan pub in Camberwell, in Sultan Street which was near Hollington Street where Tilly grew up and her dad used to sell cat meat door to door. Tilly put on a song and dance that stopped the pub. The number she performed was “Pistol Packin’ Mama”!’
Like John Parsons, who christened his daughter Brooke Matilda, and Maureen Cocks, Tilly's nephew George Parsons remembers her fondly:
Tilly gave freely to good causes. She loved children. She was a pillar of the Catholic faith and was revered by the Salvation Army and the down-and-outers she helped. Aunt Til wasn't too bad, given the way she was treated as a girl. She had a hard, working-class life in her youth. She was a good-looking, poor woman with no real hope of achieving anything unless she sold her body. She always struck me as being bright. She had a naïve intelligence about her and was mad-keen on education. ‘If you are educated, there are hard, dirty, demeaning jobs you never have to do,’ she'd say. She could sense a business opportunity. She was an entrepreneur who knew how to hold on to her money. To be as successful as she was for so long she needed to be a good administrator. She was organising a lot of girls and I've no doubt if they didn't come up to scratch, she'd get rid of them. She had to control a string of pimps to patrol her territory. And for years she successfully fought off invaders who tried to take
over her business. Tilly had to be special. How else could she and Kate Leigh have run the Sydney crime scene for so long? It could not have been easy for them. They were up against some hard boys. But they thrived.
In East Sydney in the wild years of the twentieth century, there was cruelty and crime, squalor and meanness, but there was stoicism, bravery and charity to be found in those twisting, tumbledown streets, too. Let's say of Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, and those others who lived and loved and broke the law in Razorhurst, that they were people of their place, people of their time.
References
General works
Allen, G., Gullible's Travails, self-published, Sydney, 1998.
Anderson, H., Larrikin Crook: The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor, Jacaranda, Milton, 1971.
Blaikie, G., Wild Women of Sydney, Rigby, Adelaide, 1980.
Boast, M., The Story of Camberwell, Southwark Council, London, 1972.
Booth, C., Life and Labour of the People in London, Macmillan, London, 1889-1897.
Carroll, B., Growing Up in the ‘30s, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1982.
Crombie, I., and Ennis, H., Australian Photographs: A Souvenir Book of Australian Photography in the Australian National Gallery, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1988.
Department of Corrective Services, Long Bay Correctional Complex: Conservation Plan, Government of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997.
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