I’ve been doing a lot of historical reading (fun!) into a very fascinating era in Australian history … 1920s and 1930s Sydney.
Imagine this …
Australia is a fairly conservative country in the 20s and 30s. Customs are banning books and films from entering the nation. It’s described as a cultural quarantine. The rest of the world is moving forward, but Australia’s cultural landscape is staying still. The country has just survived the Spanish Influenza, which killed around 15,000 people, and this followed the first major war Australia had ever been part of on a global stage – World War I, which had begun to shape the way Australians thought of themselves as an identity … you know, the ‘larrikin’ and ‘mateship’ stuff 🙂
But new, liberal ideas are emerging too, especially for women. The first woman politician. The first women policemen. Young people, labourers and Australian First Peoples are campaigning for a voice and for change.
Meanwhile, because this is Australia and not America, the government can’t quite manage to ban alcohol outright, so they introduce the ‘six o’clock swill’ – a ban on the sale of alcohol beyond six pm … which, as you can probably imagine, haha, doesn’t go down well. Suddenly, sly-grog shops selling illegal alcohol long into the night pop up everywhere. Police also crack down on brothels and the cocaine trade, too.
New technology is suddenly booming (automobiles! airships!), and the country’s laws and understaffed police force – remember, everyone died in the war and pandemic – can’t keep up with the mad rising crime levels.
So we get Sydney’s first organised crime on a massive scale, with razor gangs turning the eastern slums into a blood bath.
And what a story it is!
Honestly, think Al Capone meets Peaky Blinders except run by two vicious rival women crime-lords, named Kate Leigh (sly groggeries is her game), and the terrifying Tilly Devine (who discovered the ridiculous loophole in the law that stated men couldn’t profit from running brothels, but actually women could, because it was written so stupidly!)
Anyway, that sets the scene, so make sure you go and check these out via the links … real mugshots taken by the Sydney Detective branch in 1920 and 1930 Australia. And you can read more about their story here.
A great and very readable book on the razor wars of Sydney is Larry Writer’s Razor: Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and the razor gangs. A great read!
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PJ Nwosu writes dark mystery novels set in epic fantasy worlds.
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