Download or read book Lillian Armfield written by Leigh Straw and published by Hachette Australia. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging account of an extraordinary, trailblazing woman - Australia's first female detective - LILLIAN ARMFIELD is also the vivid and gripping story of the origins of Sydney's organised crime underbelly. 'Special Constable' Lillian Armfield was policing Sydney's mean streets during some of the most dramatic years of crime in the city. By the late 1920s, eastern Sydney was the heartland of organised crime and the notorious turf battles known as the Razor Wars, where bloodied bodies were strewn across streets after late-night clashes between rival gangs. At first disapproved of by her male colleagues, and often working solo and undercover, Lillian investigated it all - from runaway girls, opium dens and back-street sly grog shops to drug trafficking, rape and murder. She dealt with the infamous crime figures of the day - Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh, 'Botany May' Smith and their associates - who eventually accorded Lillian a grudging respect. Lillian Armfield's life and achievements were extraordinary. She paved the way for the women of today's police force and her amazing story is also a compelling chapter in Australian true crime history.

Download or read book The War Widow written by Tara Moss and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER! The war may be officially over, but journalist Billie Walker's search for a missing young immigrant man will plunge her right back into the danger and drama she thought she'd left behind in Europe in this thrilling tale of courage and secrets set in glamorous postwar Sydney. Sydney, 1946. Though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be home, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance in Europe of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, now that the war is over, the newspapers are sidelining her reporting talents to prioritize jobs for returning soldiers. But Billie is a survivor and she's determined to take control of her own future. So she reopens her late father's business, a private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking. At first, Billie's bread and butter is tailing cheating husbands. Then, a young man, the son of European immigrants, goes missing, and Billie finds herself on a dangerous new trail that will lead up into the highest levels of Sydney society and down into its underworld. What is the young man’s connection to an exclusive dance club and a high-class auction house? When the people Billie questions about the young man start to turn up dead, Billie is thrown into the path of Detective Inspector Hank Cooper. Will he take her seriously or will he just get in her way? As the danger mounts and Billie realizes that much more than one young man’s life is at stake, it becomes clear that though the war was won, it is far from over.

Download or read book Rugged Angel written by Vince Kelly and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facsimile of the original 1961 edition, published in 1995 to celebrate 80 years of women in policing in New South Wales. An account of the career of policewoman Lillian Armfield, grudgingly employed in 1915 as a special constable in the police force of NSW. Outlines her contribution over 34 years of police work working with male colleagues on cases involving murder, rape, forgery, spy hunts in the world wars, thefts and drug addiction and also focusing on the sociological aspect of her work involving women and girls.

Download or read book Angel Of Death written by Leigh Straw and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The newspapers called her 'Australia's most beautiful bad woman' and she was deadly to know... This is the story of 'pretty' Dulcie Markham, a key figure of the underworld of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, who, according to one crime reporter, 'saw more violence and death than any other woman in Australia's history'. Nicknamed the 'Black Widow' and 'Angel of Death' by the crooks, reporters and police who knew her best, Dulcie's lovers were stabbed and gunned down in the most violent years of Australian crime, the 1920s to the 1950s. Not always by her ... PRAISE 'For readers new to the history of this appalling yet enthralling era of organised crime, the book will simply astonish' Catie Gilchrist, author of Murder, Misadventure and Miserable Ends, Tales from a Colonial Coroner's Court

Download or read book The Suitcase Baby written by Tanya Bretherton and published by Hachette Australia. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 NED KELLY AWARD, DANGER PRIZE AND WAVERLEY LIBRARY NIB True history that is both shocking and too real, this unforgettable tale moves at the pace of a great crime novel. In the early hours of Saturday morning, 17 November 1923, a suitcase was found washed up on the shore of a small beach in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. What it contained - and why - would prove to be explosive. The murdered baby in the suitcase was one of many dead infants who were turning up in the harbour, on trains and elsewhere. These innocent victims were a devastating symptom of the clash between public morality, private passion and unrelenting poverty in a fast-growing metropolis. Police tracked down Sarah Boyd, the mother of the suitcase baby, and the complex story and subsequent murder trial of Sarah and her friend Jean Olliver became a media sensation. Sociologist Tanya Bretherton masterfully tells the engrossing and moving story of the crime that put Sarah and her baby at the centre of a social tragedy that still resonates through the decades. **Includes an extract from Tanya's latest fascinating and chilling true crime story, The Killing Streets**

Download or read book The Worst Woman in Sydney written by Leigh Straw and published by UNSW Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matriarch of the criminal underworld ... or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney? The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she has never had a biography of her own. Despite having more than 100 criminal convictions to her name, Kate Leigh is also remembered as a local hero, giving money to needy families and supporting her local community through the hard times of Depression and war. Here, novelist and historian Leigh Straw teases out the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time to become a leading underworld figure.

Download or read book The Petticoat Parade written by Leigh Straw and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josie de Bray, aka Madam Monnier, aka Marie Louise Monnier, was a brothel madam who owned most of Roe Street, Perth from WWI up to the 1940s. A returned soldier tried to shoot her dead in her brothel in 1917 and her 'bungalow' was at the centre of underworld violence in the 1920s. She returned to France before WWII to visit family and was bombed repeatedly out of homes there and captured by the Germans. She was a prisoner of war and one story has her in a concentration camp. She survived, returned to Perth in 1947, and took up business again in Roe Street, having made a fortune from the rent collected from her brothels while she was a prisoner of war, up until her death in 1953.

Download or read book Death in the Ladies Goddess Club written by Julian Leatherdale and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder and blackmail, family drama and love, all set within the shady underbelly of 1930s Kings Cross and its glamorous fringe. In the murky world of Kings Cross in 1932, aspiring crime writer Joan Linderman and her friend and flatmate Bernice Becker live the wild bohemian life, a carnival of parties and fancy-dress artists' balls. One Saturday night, Joan is thrown headfirst into a real crime when she finds Ellie, her neighbour, murdered. To prove her worth as a crime writer and bring Ellie's killer to justice, Joan secretly investigates the case in the footsteps of Sergeant Lillian Armfield. But as Joan digs deeper, her list of suspects grows from the luxury apartment blocks of Sydney's rich to the brothels and nightclubs of the Cross's underclass. Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club is a riveting noir crime thriller with more surprises than even novelist Joan bargained for: blackmail, kidnapping, drug-peddling, a pagan sex cult, undercover cops, and a shocking confession. From the shadows of bohemian and underworld Kings Cross, who will emerge to tell the real story?

Download or read book After the War written by Leigh S. L. Straw and published by Apollo Books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Collie in 1929, a murder-suicide took place. The killer was identified as Andrew Straw. Dressed in war uniform and a slouch hat, a hauntingly familiar face stared out at me from the front page of Truth. Andrew Straw bore a striking resemblance to my husband. I had unearthed an unexpected family story." Of the 330,000 Australian men who enlisted and served in World War I, close to 60,000 never returned home. As much as it is important to commemorate the war dead, it is also imperative that we remember the survivors as they moved into peacetime. Of the 32,000 Western Australian men who enlisted, 23,700 returned from the war. These men tried to create a semblance of a civilian life following the traumas of war. War receded from immediate view as these men readjusted to civilian life, but its impacts endured. Many returned with disabilities, mental health problems and a lowered sense of self-worth that led some to take their own lives. This book charts the emergence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a diagnosable condition in an Australian context. In this deeply personal account, historian and writer Leigh Straw seeks a better understanding of what soldiers experienced once the fighting stopped. After the War uses the personal struggles of soldiers and their families to increase public understanding of the legacies of World War I in Western Australia and across the nation. The scars of war-mental and physical-can be lifelong for soldiers who serve their country. This is a story of surviving life after war. [Subject: Military History, History, PTSD, Psychology, WWI, Australian Studies]

Download or read book Gangland Australia written by James Morton and published by Victory Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gangland Australia details the exploits of an unforgettable cast of villains, crooks and mobsters who have made up the criminal and gangland scene in Australia for over two centuries. In this fully updated and bestselling book, Britain's top true crime author James Morton and barrister and legal broadcaster Susanna Lobez track the rise and fall of Australia's talented contract killers, brothel keepers, club owners, robbers, bikers, standover men, conmen and drug dealers, and also examine the role of police, politicians and lawyers who have helped and hindered the growth of criminal empires. Vivid and explosive, Gangland Australia is compulsive reading.

Download or read book The Blakeneys in America and Some Collaterals written by John Oscar Blakeney and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Devine Justice Matriarch of Crime written by Devine Justice: Matriarch of Crime and published by Australian Self Publishing Group. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1917, at the tender age of sixteen Matilda Mary Twiss married Sapper James Devine, an Aussie Digger who spent more time AWOL and in detention than carrying out his military duties. Two years later, she arrived on Australian shores as a war bride. Making their home in East Sydney, the Devines involved themselves within Sydney’s criminal underworld. After tolerating years of an abusive marriage,Tilly decided to challenge the inferior status of women in society and set out to prove that you didn’t need to be born with a set of testicles to rule Sydney’s underworld! When women were considered nothing more than breeding stock and houseslaves in a patriarchal society, Tilly worked her way up from the street to become the Queen of Woolloomooloo who, at her peak owned 30 brothels, was the leader of a razor gang and became the richest woman in New South Wales. Ruling the criminal underworld with guts and cunning, in a violent world generally considered a man’s domain, Tilly racked up 204 criminal convictions. She served numerous prison sentences in the New South Wales gaols for prostitution, affray, assault, and attempted murder. Devine Justice takes you on a journey back to the 1920s and onwards where you will be introduced to the violent but captivating criminals who dominated Sydney’s underworld and were integrally involved in Tilly Devine’s life.

Download or read book Sophia Lane written by Leigh Straw and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sophia Lane is a haunting tale of loss and regret and a love that brings together two women generations apart. An Author's Note places this story firmly in the history of the Sydney badlands

Download or read book A Supernatural War written by Owen Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Supernatural War reveals the surprising stories of extraordinary people in a world caught up with the promise of occult powers. It was a commonly expressed view during the First World War that the conflict had seen a major revival of 'superstitious' beliefs and practices. Churches expressed concerns about the wearing of talismans and amulets, the international press paid considerable interest to the pronouncements of astrologers and prophets, and the authorities in several countries periodically clamped down on fortune tellers and mediums due to concerns over their effect on public morale. Out on the battlefields, soldiers of all nations sought to protect themselves through magical and religious rituals, and, on the home front, people sought out psychics and occult practitioners for news of the fate of their distant loved ones or communication with their spirits. Even away from concerns about the war, suspected witches continued to be abused and people continued to resort to magic and magical practitioners for personal protection, love, and success. Uncovering and examining beliefs, practices, and contemporary opinions regarding the role of the supernatural in the war years, Owen Davies explores the broader issues regarding early twentieth-century society in the West, the psychology of the supernatural during wartime, and the extent to which the war cast a spotlight on the widespread continuation of popular belief in magic.

Download or read book Dangerous To Know written by James Morton and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling authors of Gangland Australia comes Dangerous to Know, an A to Z of Australasian crimes, criminals and their victims. James Morton and Susanna Lobez have trawled through written records to compile this snappy yet comprehensive account of the bad, mad and plain notorious. All the names are here, from Ronald Ryan (the last man hanged in Australia), to the Carlton Crew. An unmissable book, in one handy volume, for anyone who wants to know all there is to know about Australia's dark underbelly.

Download or read book W J MacKay and the NSW Police 1910 1948 written by Richard Evans and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the fascinating story of William John MacKay, a man who dominated policing in New South Wales for three decades, until his death in 1948. MacKay was fearless, brilliant and ruthless. He was responsible for beating-up striking unionists, but he also smashed the semi-fascist New Guard when it was a threat to democracy. He reformed and modernized the New South Wales Police Force, and he framed innocent men for capital crimes. He cracked down on organized crime and corruption, and he was himself corrupt. Dogged by scandal, he was the subject of no fewer than seven royal commissions. The story of W.J. MacKay is also the story of policing in Australia, from the 1920s through to the corruption-riddled period after the Second World War. This gripping history explores the messy complexities of police power and sheds new light on a fascinating period in Australian police history

Download or read book Hit Men written by John Kerr and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These men are the hit men, striking a contract with someone who has a target - and the cash. In a world of ever-increasing outsourcing, contract killing has become 'the white middle class way of murder'. The Hit Men tells the stories of some of Australia's most ruthless contract killers - their plots, accomplices, victims, crimes and punishments - and of the people who saw fit to employ them. John Kerr dissects a parade of hits, from the days of Sydney's razor gangs in the 1930s to more modern times, taking a fresh look on the way at the man they called Rent-a-Kill - Christopher Dale Flannery. Kerr traces the tragic path of Dennis Allen's hired Red Rat, tells of the bungled 'Are you Les?' hit, and examines the crimes that led to a mother's death on a bed beside her six-year-old son. He gives unflinching accounts of a man who killed his granny, wives who shopped for their husband's killers, and cashed-up criminals who called in favours to arrange the deaths of their enemies. A chilling account of how quickly ordinary people can turn to extreme violence to get what they want.