Gunfire, knifings, bashings and slashings, turf wars, sly grog, prostitution and a world beating cocaine habit - welcome to Sydney in the late 1920s. And at the top of the criminal pile were two women - mortal enemies Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine.
The mortal enemies shared a common interest - to dominate the Sydney lucrative crime market - but both were very different. Tilly was a charming and attractive woman who, while working as a prostitute in South London during World War 1, met a digger and moved to Australia. The headquarters of her crime empire was a terrace at 191 Palmer Street, East Sydney - diagonally across from what was then one of the most dangerous pubs in the country and now the more genteel East Village.
The Argus newspaper said their businesses operated in a ‘labyrinth of dank courts, blind laneways and stone staircases’ from Paddington to the Cross, Darlingjhurst, Woolloomooloo and Surry Hills. On the worst of nights, like that in August 1929, in the Battle of Kellett Street, the blood from their battling henchmen literally ran down the streets.
Join Brandy and Duncan McNab as they regale the original ‘Queen's of the Cross’, their colleagues, competitors, the times in which they thrived, the police who were their nemesis, and their decline and demise.
Duncan McNab is a former police detective, private investigator, investigative journalist and media adviser to government and the private sector. He is the author of 12 books with the latest, on the Ruby Princess, due out this summer. His previous work includes the phenomenally bestselling DEAD MAN RUNNING (with Ross Coulthart), OUTLAW BIKERS IN AUSTRALIA, and WATERFRONT. Duncan was a producer on the Kennedy and Clarion award-winning MURDER UNCOVERED series (7 Network) in 2017. In 2017 his book GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER won the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime. In the same year, his bestselling book on disgraced former detective and convicted murderer ROGER ROGERSON was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime.
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