Sydney’s scandalous past

In the 1920s Sydney was sprawling out as a modern metropolis and, in many aspects, was a world not so different to what we know today.
The drug trade centred in East Sydney and Kings Cross, and one could live a wholesome life in Darlinghurst without ever knowing of the prostitution and violence that went on just a few doors down.
Peter Doyle, author of Crooks Like Us, a book of police photo archives from the 1920s, says the criminals of Sydney’s past were not so different, either. A disillusioned bunch, their mission was to see how far they could cross the line without getting caught.
“Those photos take you right into the time, and not just the time or the period but right into that moment, the place.
“They were mixtures of bad and good, and humour and greed, and ruthlessness and sometimes redeeming qualities as well,” he said.
Peter Doyle will be talking about some of the seedier characters that lurked our streets on September 10 at the Justice and Police Museum as part of History Week 2009, running from September 5 to 13.
Doyle says today’s Sydneysiders would be truly shocked at the gruesome events and people that wandered their backstreets.
“As we grew up the Australian stories that we knew were of sports people or people in the bush. But, in fact, for most of the last century most of the population lived in the big cities, and we didn’t really have the low down on that, so it’s been left out of our own mythology.”
Youth gangs marked out territory in most inner city suburbs, stalking Pyrmont and Surry Hills and Victoria Park.
Conmen were a popular breed of criminal. Some would target hotels, checking in as respectable guests, then entering others’ rooms in the dead of night to steal what they could.
“It’s good to know there was that sort of sexy stuff going on, anti-authoritarian stuff going on right here in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane, the places where we now live,” said Doyle.
The City of Sydney will also be hosting a series of talks at Customs House, including The Shark Arm Murder – a chain of killings that ensued a tiger shark’s regurgitation of a human arm in Coogee Aquarium in 1935.
On September 8 Tranby Aboriginal College in Glebe will be hosting Redressing Scandals Past, a seminar on corruption against Aboriginal people, and on September 10 the Scandals, Crime and Corruption symposium will feature a range of talks at the State Library of NSW.