The Worst Woman in Sydney Read online

  ‘Just keep walking,’ one of the officers tells her.

  ‘I posed for you.’

  The photographer is trying not to blush. He wonders why she’s having such an effect on him. Is it that long since he got some? Probably. He’s been working long hours. She sees it. Like she can home in on his desperation.

  ‘Who is she anyway?’ he asks the same officer from before.

  ‘Eileen Earle.’

  The name doesn’t mean much to him but it will in the years that follow. Eileen will become one of the most notorious women in Sydney. Her name is synonymous with underworld crime. Before she married a bloke called Earle, Eileen was a Leigh.

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  EILEEN LEIGH

  She was an ‘Infamous Woman’ and ‘one of the worst characters in N.S.W.’. She also happened to be Kate Leigh’s daughter. By the 1930s, Eileen was giving her mum a run for her money. It was perfect material for court reporters looking for more sensational stories to share with the public. The Leighs were a mother-and-daughter team which was considered shameful in Sydney’s underworld streets. Kate Leigh didn’t see it that way. When police prosecutors portrayed her as a failed mother in court, she hurled abuse at them. In one incident in court in 1930, Kate shouted at a detective: ‘I’ve been a better mother to my daughter than you’ve been to yours!’ There was no denying, however, that Eileen was a product of her upbringing, most of which was spent watching her mother set up her criminal empire. Eileen’s notoriety led to her being named the ‘third leg of Sydney’s worst female trio’, along with her mother and Tilly Devine.

  Like her mother before her, Eileen was tough and resilient. She learned it from a young age, growing up in the backstreets and rundown terrace houses of Paddington, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. We don’t know much about Eileen’s childhood, and certainly not what she thought of it, but it was often marked by her mother’s appearances in court and, on one occasion, a lengthy prison sentence. Her parents married in 1902, when she was two, but it was not a close, loving relationship. James Leigh was a petty thief and squandered most of the family’s money on gambling and opium. Kate was found in bed with their landlord when Eileen was five, but there is no mention of the child in the court records or news reports, only mention of the Leighs as a married couple. Eileen seems almost absent from their lives.

  This isn’t to say that Kate Leigh didn’t care about her daughter – she might not have mentioned Eileen in court appearances for fear that she would be placed in care. Caught up in the thieving underworlds of eastern Sydney and trying to make money through any opportunities that came her way, Kate was devastated in 1915 when she was sentenced to five years’ gaol for the false alibi she gave for her lover, Samuel Freeman. Eileen was sent to a convent and didn’t see her mother for another four years. Kate vowed she would never serve time again for ‘sticking’ to a man. She was also disappointed that her daughter was placed in care at almost the same age she was bundled off to the industrial school.

  Eileen Leigh was sent to the convent when she was almost fifteen and soon discovered there was no escaping her identity. The Eveleigh Heist was a national sensation, and her mother’s character and lifestyle were completely pulled apart in court. While we don’t know where Eileen was placed, she could very well have been sent to the Home of the Good Shepherd in Ashfield. Wherever she was, Eileen would have been given a Christian education based around contributing to society through domestic work. Young girls and women worked long hours in the large laundry and were prepared for reformed lives as wives and mothers. Deprivation came in a variety of forms, including silence, being forced to read only religious texts and being forbidden from recreation. As the daughter of a notorious gang member, Eileen was cared for even more strictly by nuns worried that she would end up as notorious as her mother. It would prove to be a considerable challenge. Eileen was the daughter of two crooks, and the criminal dealings that went on around her from a young age were normalised in her everyday life.

  Eileen spent more time in the convent than her mother had in the industrial school. She was nineteen when Kate was released from prison and welcomed her back to Surry Hills. But the years of being instructed in the ways of being a good woman and contributing well to society had dented Eileen’s confidence and made her cynical about the life that had been created for her by her parents. Kate had to win back her daughter’s trust.

  Eileen moved to Paddington and considered starting a new life. She fell in love with Albert Edward Earle and the pair married in Paddington in 1920. Rumour has it that Kate never really liked Albert, but she was delighted when her granddaughter was born not long after. Kate paraded the young child about the streets of Surry Hills, stopping local police officers to show her off. Eileen named her daughter Charlotte, probably after her maternal grandmother, who moved to Sydney some time after her husband’s death in 1917 and lived in Bondi until her death in 1930. Eileen was close to her grandmother, and appreciated having family in the city rather than so far away in Dubbo and Narromine.

  The coldness between Kate and Eileen didn’t last. They were close once again by the later months of 1920, just in time for Eileen to catch the attention of the same police officers who had been watching her mother’s criminal career for many years. Detectives expected Eileen to start working alongside her mother in the sly-grog and prostitution business, and she didn’t disappoint.

  On 12 January 1921, police raided a house in Berwick Lane in Darlinghurst. The house had been under surveillance for at least a month after police were tipped off that it was being used for a sly-grog business. They spent day and night shifts watching the house, noting the men and women coming and going, and waited for any suspicious deliveries. On the evening of the raid, officers arrested thirteen people inside the property. It was an all-out brawl. Men tussled with officers, and Eileen and the ‘barmaid’ joined in too. Bandages and broken noses featured in the mugshots. Hauled before the court soon after, the group faced numerous charges, including being in a house frequented by thieves. According to police, the house was a ‘rendezvous for some of the worst crooks in Sydney’. Eileen Leigh was among the group, and while she was discharged without conviction, she was identified in court, and in public, as ‘a reputed thief’. It was the start of a long criminal career.

  The group arrested in Berwick Lane, January 1921, with Eileen Leigh seated at front, second from left. NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive, Justice and Police Museum, Sydney Living Museums.

  Police and magistrates were convinced that Kate Leigh was to blame. In their eyes she had failed in her role as a mother. Australian women were expected to live in a sort of domestic bliss where they thrived in the home and with managing family life. Campaigning against the male-centred society of the late 19th century, defined by physical strength, patriotism and militarism, Australian feminists backed ‘maternalistic and reforming’ identities as central to women’s place within the nation. In 1903, Rose Scott, an activist who had been central to the suffragist movement in New South Wales, argued that women needed to be the moral upholders of a righteous nation. Mothers were instrumental in depictions of the moralistic female citizen, and it was the mother’s responsibility to raise a good child.

  Being a good mother dominated public discussions. Freeman’s Journal, a Catholic weekly published in Sydney, printed a story in May 1920 detailing ‘What a Good Mother Does’. The expectations are clear: she makes sacrifices ‘so that her children can eat and attend school’; she is ‘tireless’ in her devotion to her children and is proud of their achievements; and she is of best support to the family when she works ‘the twenty-four hour day of the poor wife and mother’.

  There was another side to the story, too. Truth newspaper regularly ran stories with such headlines as ‘Mothers and Morality’. Public interest was piqued when criminal cases involving young people were regularly reported in the newspapers. In one tale, reporters told the story of young brothers appearing in the Parramatta Quarter Sessions and described the
m as having been ‘encouraged in crime by their mother’.

  The Sydney press also published sensationalised stories of ‘Good Time Mothers’. Truth investigators shocked their readers with tales of mothers arrested with their children while ‘drinking with men whom they had solicited for immoral purposes’. Truth claimed that inner Sydney was witnessing an increase in the number of mothers who had ‘no sense of moral responsibility either to the children or to the community …’.

  It was a damning assessment of inner-Sydney motherhood, and one to which Kate Leigh objected. She managed her domestic life well. She didn’t drink or smoke and made sure any extra money was given to Eileen and their Beahan relatives. Kate liked to portray herself in court as a caring mother, and of course, it was there that Eileen needed her the most. Eileen was charged with having ‘behaved in an offensive manner’ in October 1922, after she was found loitering in Elizabeth Street in the city where, according to police, she had unsuccessfully solicited for sex. When police officers stepped in, Eileen pleaded with them to give her a chance, but her brazenness led to an arrest. Kate Leigh, then known as Kate Barry, was called to give evidence. The newspapers reported the scene: ‘Instantly the door opened, a rustle of skirts was heard, and in came a Vision in Blue, a well-known woman, just the same as ever, smiling, but with a different name.’ Kate stood up, defended her daughter in court and claimed that Eileen had only been on the street waiting for her to return from bailing out a woman from Long Bay. Eileen avoided imprisonment and was fined ten shillings.

  Eileen continued to make a criminal name for herself during the razor wars. She was fined for contempt of court in October 1929. When a woman in the dock was asked if Eileen was ‘paying for her defence’, Eileen stood up at the back of the courtroom and yelled: ‘Why pick on me? Every time anyone is brought here from that part of the city my name is dragged into it.’

  The one thing Eileen could never escape was her identity as Kate Leigh’s daughter. She was arrested for shoplifting in March 1936 and spoke out in court about her annoyance at being referred to as ‘Kate Leigh’s daughter’ by one of the shop inspectors. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to distance herself from her mother. She had many opportunities to do so but remained close to and involved in Kate’s businesses. Eileen was building a reputation and craved recognition for her own notoriety, not just by association with her mother.

  By the 1930s, Eileen had succeeded in becoming just as notorious as her mother. She was described as an ‘undesirable woman’ in court in 1933 in a sensational case that made most city newspapers. Rather than following the orders of the court from a previous conviction and leaving Sydney for three years, she had been seen ‘brazenly in the city with her mother, who had just been released from another term in gaol’. Six months beforehand, Eileen had been charged with consorting with criminals. Her female friends were called ‘well-known sisters of shame’, otherwise known as prostitutes. They, along with other underworld crooks, had all come out to support her in court – ‘gangsters, gunmen and sisters of sin’.

  Eileen ran foul of the Vice Squad again in June 1934, when she was charged with public drunkenness and using indecent language on Kippax Street, Surry Hills. Kate Leigh would have been disappointed. She had never been convicted for public drunkenness and prided herself on her public sobriety. The same could not be said of Eileen.

  Marriage agreed with Eileen about as much as it did with her mother. Eileen appeared in the Divorce Court in May 1927 claiming that her husband, Albert Earle, had deserted her. She was around the same age her mother had been when her own father, James Leigh, deserted them. It wasn’t too long before another man caught her eye. Joseph Byrnes was involved in the sly-grog business with Kate Leigh and took a fancy to Eileen. The pair finally married in 1940, and Eileen settled him further into the family business. He regularly defended Kate to police and faced a number of sly-grog charges through the 1940s. The Byrnes marriage also fell apart, and Eileen remained single until her third and final marriage in 1963 to small-time crook Alexander ‘Rex’ Ranson. Like her mother, Eileen married three times.

  Eileen Leigh was also a chip off the old block when it came to dealing with the press. In March 1932 she marched into the offices of The Arrow newspaper and demanded they print her side of a recent story alleging she had been involved in the downfall of a woman who had died in Melbourne from a gunshot wound sustained in Sydney. Having arrived in a large, powerful car with a chauffeur, Eileen proclaimed: ‘I’m Mrs. Eileen Earle, and daughter of Kate Leigh.’ Her mother was also known to march into newspaper offices and demand they correct their stories.

  Trying hard to protect her already questionable reputation, Eileen was adamant she had nothing to do with the young woman’s death in Melbourne. She told reporters she and Fay Gurner were best friends but she couldn’t rescue her from drunkenness. When questioned about her role in leading Fay into prostitution, Eileen said that how Fay earned her money was her own business. When Fay was first hospitalised for her gunshot wound, Eileen looked after her and told The Arrow reporters: ‘no one can say I am hard hearted’. Her mother could very well have uttered the same words, so similar was their public portrayal of charity.

  The Fay Gurner case highlights a major difference between Eileen and Kate, however. Where Kate seems to have avoided any direct arrest for prostitution, her daughter was less successful. In March 1933, Eileen was again arrested after soliciting sex from a man in Elizabeth Street in the city. This was an area police watched closely and where Eileen had previously been arrested for being idle and disorderly. Her mistake this time was to solicit sex from an undercover member of the Vice Squad. Trying to dodge any connection to prostitution, Eileen claimed she only met men there to rob them. It was hardly a better explanation to get her off the charges. The magistrate dismissed the police case, however, citing a lack of evidence proving Eileen had solicited for sex.

  By 1947, Eileen was identified in the newspapers as a ‘disreputable individual’. She had twelve aliases and was ‘one of the worst characters’ in the state. Her rap sheet was long: more than 60 convictions for drunkenness, riotous behaviour, assault, consorting, stealing and slygrog selling.

  Eileen’s reputation suffered further public scrutiny in August 1947, when she was shot in the arm at her home in O’Sullivan Street, Surry Hills. The newspapers were quick to report that it was the result of an underworld vendetta. Yet Eileen wasn’t the target. Kate Leigh had been involved in an altercation in a Surry Hills hotel the day before the attack. It was unclear, but Kate was said to have threatened a man with a tomahawk. Revenge was quickly sought, and while Kate and Eileen sipped tea in the kitchen the next evening, a man opened fire. Charles Thompson, an underworld rival, was charged later that month with intent to murder.

  Thompson faced court early the following year in dramatic circumstances. Eileen took the stand and told the court she and the accused had been friends for twenty years and she had only invited him to the house to sort out an argument he’d had with her mother. Kate Leigh and her lover, Jack Baker, had allegedly assaulted Thompson the day before and Eileen wanted to end the aggression. It created a sensation in the courtroom when the prosecution lawyer asked for her testimony to be discarded on the basis that she had never told the police any of it beforehand. Judge Holt refused and asked Charles Thompson to take the stand. Thompson claimed that a ‘pack of underworld characters’ were responsible for the shooting. He was acquitted.

  Eileen and Kate worked together as sly-groggers into the late 1940s. Both were closely associated with people the police referred to as ‘unsavoury characters’. More often than not, however, this meant each other. In one case in 1947, Eileen, Kate and Eileen’s husband, Joseph, were arrested for selling liquor in a Marlborough Street house in Surry Hills. Eileen, who was identified as the main seller, appealed the conviction and claimed one of the police officers had promised to turn a blind eye if she showed him where the stash was. Kate told her to give the beer to the police but E
ileen refused, claiming the house was empty of liquor. The judge dismissed the appeal, ruling that Eileen had based her defence on lies, and upheld the conviction.

  By 1948 Eileen needed protection against underworld retribution. She was fined in court in April of that year for keeping a ‘savage dog’ at her house in Surry Hills. The dog, a German shepherd, had bitten a police officer attending the house. Eileen’s defence lawyer claimed she ‘had the misfortune some time ago to be shot. She needs this dog for her protection.’

  Eileen also inherited her mother’s toughness and wasn’t shy about getting involved in brawls. Sometimes the pair were involved in fights together:

  During a brawl at 2 Lansdowne St., Surry Hills, last night, bottles and fists were freely used and well-known identity … Mrs. Kathleen Barry (Kate Leigh) was badly cut about the face and arms. A man received cuts to the face, head and hands and was treated at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Later he was charged with drunkenness. Mrs. Barry charged him with assault. According to police who rushed the house, which is occupied by Mrs. Barry, the brawl involved four people. Mrs. Eileen Byrnes, Mrs. Barry’s daughter, was one. Allegations made to police were that a bottle and a padlock with chain attached were used. A patrol car searched the vicinity for about an hour before they found a man lying in a laneway in a dazed condition. Police were told that the man had been at a party at another house in Landsdowne St. and had gone with Mrs. Byrnes to her mother’s home.

  Eileen Leigh never achieved the community rapport that turned her mother into a Surry Hills matriarch. While Kate Leigh played down her rule of eastern Sydney and tried to maintain a humble public image, Eileen was more of a tall poppy. She told The Arrow newspaper in 1932:

  You make out that the underworld have denounced me for callous neglect, but I can tell you that the only ones who would speak like that are the ones who lived on Fay [Gurner] themselves, and helped her spend her coin in booze … Your story is all wrong, and I can easily guess the source of it, jealousy, that’s all it is – jealous because I am comfortable with my own car and home, and because I can snap my fingers at them.