Real Life Underbelly: Razor Women

Female criminals are the stuff of classic movies – cool-eyed, elegant beauties who are more likely to wield a cigarette holder than a gun or a knife. But a fresh insight into Australia’s not-so-distant past reveals a much darker truth.

Matilda 'Tilly' Devine - Queen of the night

Tilly Devine arrived in Sydney in 1920 as Aussie soldier James Devine’s war bride. The ex-London prostitute returned to her trade and worked her way up to owning a string of brothels while ‘Big Jim’ made a living as a standover man, sly grogger and drug dealer.

Tilly defended her own turf with a sharp tongue and even sharper knives and razors. During her long criminal career, during which she was dubbed the ‘Queen of the Night’, she faced court and was convicted on 204 occasions, mainly for prostitution, assault and even attempted murder. This photo was taken after her arrest on that murder charge in 1925: the 25-year-old slashed a man with a razor because he hadn’t shown her enough respect.

Tilly’s violent battle with Kate Leigh for supremacy in Sydney is the stuff of legend, and the basis of Underbelly: Razor.

Kate Leigh - Queen of the Underworld

Kate Leigh first landed in jail in 1905, aged 24, after committing perjury to protect her no-good husband James Leigh, who had assaulted and robbed their landlord. History repeated itself when she gave a false alibi for lover Samuel Freeman and his accomplice Ernest Ryan – Australia’s first armed robbers to use a getaway car – earning her another perjury sentence in 1915.

Kate’s lucrative criminal career was based on the sly-grog trade. From the mid-
1920s, she specialised in after-hours booze halls, prostitution, illegal betting, gambling and cocaine, earning the title ‘Queen of the Underworld’ and the enmity of rival Tilly Devine. She had male gangsters at her beck and call and was also handy with a rifle – on two occasions, she shot men who broke into her home, but wasn’t charged.

This photograph was taken upon Kate’s 1930 arrest for cocaine possession and consorting charges. She was sentenced to two years in jail but avoided serving the second year by paying a £250 fine.

Dorothy Mort - Lovesick Murderess

Sydney housewife Dorothy Mort found herself embroiled in a scandal when she took the life of a cricket star, Claude Tozer.

He was her GP, treating her for ‘hysteria’ after the birth of her second child, but Dorothy became infatuated with the war hero and sports star and tried to start an affair. Letters aired at an inquest suggest he may have responded to her advances – he called her his ‘Dearest Little Lady’ and said ‘I am never happier than when you are near me’.

But it ended in tears in December 1920 when Dr Tozer paid a house call to break it off with Dorothy. She pulled out a pistol and shot him three times. She then shot herself and swallowed poison, but was found alive and tried for her crime of passion.
Dorothy was found not guilty ‘by reasons of insanity’ and was imprisoned at the governor's pleasure, serving just nine years before her release in October 1929.

Alice Clarke - Sly Grogger

Alice Clarke was an early role model for the likes of Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh in Sydney’s sly-grog trade, albeit not a very successful one. The trade in illegal booze began in 1916 when the NSW Government brought in a 6pm closing time at pubs in reaction to riots by binge-drinking soldiers just returned from WWI.

Enterprising citizens set up sly-grog dens, often in private homes, selling alcohol after the pubs had closed. Alice was one of the first to leap at this, only to be caught out just weeks after the legislation came into force with 120 bottles of booze in her house. As this mug shot shows, an unhappy Alice, 42, was convicted of selling liquor without a licence. She was sentenced to eight months’ hard labour.

Eugenia Falleni - The Man-Woman Murderer

When the charred remains of Annie Crawford were found in Sydney bushland in 1917, the search for her murderer eventually led police to suspect her husband of four years, Harry Crawford. He was tracked down in 1920, living with his new wife, and denied committing the murder. But when faced with the prospect of a physical search and time in the cells, he confessed he was actually a woman – Eugenia Falleni – who had started passing herself off as a male at 16.

It was alleged ‘Harry’ murdered Annie Crawford when she discovered his secret – or, as a relative claimed she’d put it, found out ‘something amazing about Harry’. At the trial, ‘Harry’ wore women’s clothing for the first time since 1898. In a surprising turn, his daughter Josephine emerged as a witness – she was born to an unmarried Eugenia in 1898 and raised by a childless couple. She testified in court: ‘My mother has always gone about dressed as a man.’

‘Harry’ pleaded not guilty to the murder, but his bizarre double life was seen as proof of an ‘immoral nature’. He was convicted of murder and sex fraud and sentenced to death, later reduced to life imprisonment. Released in 1931, ‘Harry’ died in a pedestrian accident on Sydney’s Oxford Street in 1938.

Femme Fatale: The Female Criminal, a touring exhibition from the archives of Sydney’s Justice & Police Museum, reveals rare photographs of notorious women, taken at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail between 1915 and 1930.

The prison swelled with bad girls: thieves, murderers, whores, underworld queens – all captured and immortalised forever in black and white. The exhibition travels around Australia until June 2012. For tour dates, visit the Historic Houses Trust
of NSW at www.hht.net.au.