Lillian Armfield

Lillian Armfield PDF Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 0733638112
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
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.

Lillian Armfield

Lillian Armfield PDF Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 0733638112
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Rugged Angel

Rugged Angel PDF Author: Vince Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780646236803
Category : Criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
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.

The War Widow

The War Widow PDF Author: Tara Moss
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593182669
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
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.

Angel Of Death

Angel Of Death PDF Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 1460710770
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
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

The Worst Woman in Sydney

The Worst Woman in Sydney PDF Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: UNSW Press
ISBN: 9781742234793
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

Devine Justice: Matriarch of Crime

Devine Justice: Matriarch of Crime PDF Author: Devine Justice: Matriarch of Crime
Publisher: Australian Self Publishing Group
ISBN: 0645078069
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
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.

Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club

Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club PDF Author: Julian Leatherdale
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780369333759
Category : Australian fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
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?

The Petticoat Parade

The Petticoat Parade PDF Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: Fremantle Press
ISBN: 1760990566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
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.

Gangland Australia

Gangland Australia PDF Author: James Morton
Publisher: Victory Books
ISBN: 052285737X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
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.

After the War

After the War PDF Author: Leigh S. L. Straw
Publisher: Apollo Books
ISBN: 9781742589497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"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]