In the October 1965 issue of the satirical magazine Oz, Richard Neville published a semi-serious top twenty of Sydney-based criminals of the time.
No. 1 There isn’t one
No. 2 Lennie
No. 3 Perce
No. 4 Abe
No. 5 Joe T
No. 6 Eric F
No. 7 Norm*
No. 8 Ronnie*
No. 9 Dick*
No. 10 The Yank
No. 11 Smokey
No. 12 Cuffancollar Johnson
No. 13 Sammy
No. 14 Lugs
No. 15 Empty
No. 16 Melbourne John
No. 17 Bondi
No. 18 Hollywood
No. 19 The Scholar
No. 20 Kate & Tilly (retired)
* partners
Nearly fifty years later some of the names are difficult to identify. Delicately, and probably sensibly, Oz did not mention George Freeman, who was undoubtedly the prince of the city at the time. Number 2 was Lennie McPherson, certainly a man to be reckoned with. He decapitated a white rabbit and threw its body on the floor of his mother’s flat in front of her because he had not been invited to her seventieth birthday party. Such behaviour requires the highest form of recognition. ‘You are a flag and should be obeyed,’ fawned the Lebanese-born fixer Frank Hakim, who idolised him. Shortly after the Oz article appeared, McPherson organised an attempted execution of his rival, Jackie ‘Iron Man’ Steele, who had offended him by saying first, that McPherson was a fizz (a dobber), which was undoubtedly true, and second, that he, Steele, was the Number 1 in Sydney, which wasn’t. Steele bought numerous copies of the magazine and happily distributed them.
Number 3 was the gambler Perce Galea, who in his early days worked for the old-time Razor Wars man Siddy Kelly in his baccarat schools. Galea is generally noted for his gambling as opposed to his criminal activities—outside illegal gaming and bribing the police, that is. He caused a mini-riot by showering the crowd with banknotes after his horse Eskimo Prince won the Golden Slipper Stakes in 1964. There is no doubt, however, that he was an associate of the top men in the city.
Number 4 was the club owner and then ‘King of the Cross’, Abe ‘Mr Sin’ Saffron, whose slimy hand stretched over prostitution, drug dealing, sly-grogging, gambling and possibly murder and arson, as well as extortion, for half a century. Number 5 was Joe Taylor, the two-up king who gave the drug dealer Dr Nick Paltos—another seminal figure in Australian organised crime—his start in life. At Number 6 was Eric Farrell, or O’Farrell, who ran nightclubs such as the Forbes and the Ziegfeld, where Chow Hayes killed the boxer Bobby Lee.
At Number 9 is Dick, Richard Gabriel Reilly, standover man and club bouncer from the 1930s, and partner of the crooked detective Ray Kelly in abortion rackets after the war. He was shot dead in his Maserati in June 1967. He could reasonably have expected to be far higher in the credits. Number 8 was Reilly’s offsider, Ronald Joseph Sylvester Lee, a baccarat organiser and also a friend of Kelly.
Beyond that, identification becomes more difficult. Norm at Number 7 may well be the New South Wales Police Commissioner Norm Allan, who, at best, turned a blind eye to all sorts of illegal activities. It was he who seized Reilly’s diaries and black books after his death, and tried to suppress the confidential telephone numbers and addresses of criminals, police and politicians within them. At Number 10, The Yank may have been the visiting Chicago mafioso Joe Testa, who arrived with an introduction to Ronnie Lee and then linked up with McPherson and Freeman in a series of failed fraudulent companies. Testa was killed in 1981 when a car bomb blew up his Lincoln Continental at the Oakland Park Country Club, Florida. Alternatively, The Yank could have been Bernie Houghton, who ran a series of bars in Kings Cross and was closely linked to the Nugan Hand Bank.
Then comes a long series of blanks—which forty years later even Neville cannot fill—until Number 18: Hollywood is ‘Hollywood’ George Edser, a flamboyant horse owner and punter whose activities on the track had him warned off in 1961. A close friend of leading identity Richard Reilly, Edser had convictions for consorting and receiving liquor. In March 1958 he survived being shot in the groin in his garage in what was undoubtedly a contract hit, probably over unpaid gambling debts. Number 19, The Scholar, was a shadowy figure involved in the baccarat club wars from the 1940s. There are no prizes for identifying Number 20, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, the madams from the 1920s then rapidly coming to the end of their careers.
The Oz piece did not go down well. In fact, the police attributed the near fatal shooting of Jacqui ‘Iron Man’ Steele to McPherson’s annoyance with the publication. Neville, who then lived in Paddington, opened his door one evening and found McPherson, admittedly minus another rabbit, on his doorstep wanting to know where he had obtained his information. McPherson, then probably at the peak of his powers, took him for a drive. Neville must have thought it his last, but the great man merely dropped him off at a preview of the Polanski film Knife in the Water. On the way, McPherson showed Neville the bullet holes in the roof of his car and explained the facts of gangland life and journalism to him. A suitably penitent piece appeared in the next issue.
Worldwide, the authorities are keen to say there is no ‘Mr Big’ or Number 1 on their patches. But they will reluctantly accept there are a few ‘Big Enoughs’. Quite what you have to do to graduate from Big Enough is difficult to say. Import more than $50 million of cannabis, steal jewellery worth over $20 million, kill more than five people a year?
This book, then, is an account of the careers of both the Mr Bigs and the Mr Big Enoughs, as well as a few Ms Bigs, in what could be called the Golden Age of Sydney’s underworld—of those who preceded and predeceased them and those who took over the reins when they were dead or retired.
Our thanks are due first and foremost to Dock Bateson, without whose research skills, help and guidance the book could never have been completed. They are also due in strictly alphabetical order to JP Bean, Anne Brooke, Nicholas Cowdery QC, Michael Drury, Rebecca Edmunds, Tony Gee, Tim Girling-Butcher, Foong Ling Kong, Barbara Levy, the late Paul Lincoln, Richard Neville, Sybil Nolan, Russell Robinson, Adrian Tame and a number of people on both sides of the criminal fence who have asked not to be named. Our thanks also go to Sonya Zadel and Lisa McGregor (NSW SC), Anna Cooper (NSW DPP), the State Library of New South Wales, the National Library of Australia at Canberra, the State Library of Victoria, Public Record Office of Victoria, the National Archives at Kew, England, the British Library and the British Newspaper Library, Colindale, London. The following websites have been invaluable: austlii.edu.au, trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper, paperspast.natlib.govt.nz and news.google.com/archivesearch.