Razorblade Queens: Australia's gangster queens built empires with razorblade murders

Organized crime was born in the United States in the 1920s. Every crime enthusiast knows names like Al Capone and Dutch Schulz. Far less well known are Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh. Both are the undisputed queens of criminal Sydney in time. They were masterminds of crime. Ruthless, cruel and never letting up in their hatred for each other. Their criminal energy found the ideal biotope in Australia in the 1920s. As in the US, the ban on serving alcohol after 6 p.m. created a large black market that blurred the lines between law-abiding citizens and mobsters – because alcohol was consumed in every shift. In addition, the queens of crime found plenty of helpers: The First World War had also meant that in Australia there was no shortage of men who were used to every form of violence.

Tilly lived as a prostitute in London, where she married the Australian soldier Jim Devine in 1917. Big Jim was Tilly’s ideal husband—tall, unpredictable, and violent. With him she went to Australia in 1919. The job wasn’t as easy as in London. In just five years, Tilly was arrested 79 times for prostitution. In early 1925 she was charged with a serious crime and the instrument for which she was to become famous appeared for the first time: the straight razor. With that she attacked and injured a man. With the words “There’s the bastard” she pounced on Sydney Thomas Thornton Corke and slashed his hand. Blood spattered his face.

The attack earned her two years in prison. And indeed, the time in the state reform school changed her life: Tilly gave up prostitution of her own body and opened a brothel. At the time she was being phased out, Kate Leigh stepped out of the shadows. She was also a prostitute, and Kate was pregnant for the first time when she was 13. While Tilly Devine opened one brothel after another, Kate devoted herself to building an empire of grog bars.

Both women benefited from a series of new laws. Street prostitution was banned, so women had to offer their services in brothels. There they were protected from financial exploitation by men – there was no question of women like Tilly and Kate. The restrictions on the serving of alcohol and the sale of cocaine offered another field of activity. They formed gangs around them.

In 1927 severe penalties were instituted for carrying pistols or handguns in public. So, along with clubs, straight razors became the weapon of choice. Devine was known as the “Queen of Woolloomooloo”, Leigh was called the “Queen of Surry Hill”. The two didn’t like each other from the first moment. According to legend, however, it was only a dispute over a stolen puppy that led to their lifelong bloody feud. Tilly and Kate hated each other even more than the police. Wherever gang members met, there was fighting. Every night they raided the other gang’s stores.

And the queens were not above violence either. According to the police report, Tilly Devine bit into the hand of Leigh’s girlfriend Vera Lewis in 1929. In 1933 police officer Maggie Baker made her first tour. It was her first day on duty. As she rounded the corner, Tilly Devine blocked the footpath. Tilly said, ‘You’re the new cop, aren’t you? You’re not walking down this damn street…’ And then the policewoman grabbed her. At that moment, Kate Leigh got off the tram – dressed in an elegant huge hat. She came right up to Tilly and never punched her down. But Tilly fought back. “Oh, Tilly was a dirty fighter and very strong. I saw her and Kate beat each other up in Oxford Street,” Baker later recalled.

Financed by the criminal business, the two lived a life with cars, furs and diamonds. Tilly Devine owned a three bedroom villa in the suburb of Maroubra and hosted many gangster parties. The large estate was protected by their bodyguards and huge dogs. In 1935 their illegal business was secretly legitimized. Despite pledging to end inter-violence and end cocaine trafficking, Sydney Police looked aside at the Queens’ other business. That must not have been easy. The Second World War with the vast numbers of foreign soldiers and sailors allowed the business with schnapps and women to continue to flourish.

Tilly Devine’s marriage, which started her career in Sydney, ended in divorce in 1944. Tilly could no longer bear the increasingly violent nature of her husband, Big Jim. In the 1950s, the tax investigation put the two. Leigh even had to declare bankruptcy. The great days were over. But Tilly Devine didn’t sell her last brothel until 1968. Kate Leigh died in 1964, still a legend. The young and old Sydney underworld took part in their cast. 700 people are said to have accompanied the coffin. Tilly survived her rival but also her own fame. When she died six years later, she was buried in a small circle. “The worst woman in Sydney” died of complications from bronchitis.