Damaged motor car at a panelbeater's garage. Photographer and location unknown, c1936 (FP07_0147_016)

This image was taken around 1936 but we are not sure where the garage was (or is) located. The man smoking a cigarette (to the right of frame) could be the detective investigating the accident in which this vehicle was damaged.

Corner of Liverpool and Castlereagh streets, Sydney. Photographer unknown, 1930s (FP07_0195_006)

Sydney’s streets changed as a result of the increased motor traffic. Subsequent law reforms were made to better manage flow and congestion, also leading to driver and road safety education programs. The archive reveals these changes by showing how the roads looked before any traffic lights, road markings or street signs were installed. The Police Commissioner decided the site for Sydney’s first set of traffic lights would be the intersection of Market and Kent streets, in the city. These traffic lights were operational from 11 am on Friday 13 October 1933 and by 1975 over one thousand sets had been installed in the Sydney area. The implementation of this technology meant that police were no longer responsible for directing traffic at busy intersections like this one.

This exhibition presents previously unseen traffic accident photographs taken by police between 1920 and 1964. Recent research on the archive reveals that after the mid-1940s the police approach to photographing accident sites becomes more comprehensive – expanding from one or two shots to a whole series of images. The resulting photographs helped investigators establish the cause of an incident and, if required, were presented in court.

One gallery wall also shows the ways police have been involved in traffic regulation and road safety. The photographs illustrate a range of police activity, from directing traffic at a bustling intersection to teaching children safe road skills. Also included in this selection is the demonstration of New South Wales first radar set, or speed camera, that operated in Sydney from November 1954.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 19 March 2011. Visit the Archive Gallery page for more details.

Jean McDonald, 26 June 1924, Central Police Station, Sydney. FP07_0104_004.

Jean McDonald was a fraudster and confidence trickster. She looks drab and resentful here but her sob stories were ambitious, florid and well-told. Through 1923-24 she methodically extracted money and favours from a gullible Randwick benefactress with tales of heroic war service, sick children and missing husbands. When she needed to up the narrative ante she started killing off the fictitious children (and asking the benefactress for funeral expenses). When eventaully hauled before the court, she claimed that her larcenous industry was conducted, at least in part, to support a layabout ex-policeman de facto husband, Sylvester Feld. Because she had acted “under the influence of a man” the judge suspended her twelve month sentence and put her instead on a good behaviour bond. Within a year though McDonald was arrested for swindling a suburban grocer, which triggered her call-up on the earlier conviction. She failed to show up for sentencing, at which point she drops out of the records. At least, that’s how I report it in Crooks like us, (pages 26-29). I based that claim on a fruitless search for her in the Police Gazette for the subsequent five years.

Photo Supplement to the Victoria Police Gazette, Thursday May 4, 1933, p5. Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Services.

Recently I came across Jean McDonald in the Victorian Police Gazette Photo Supplement of 1933 — she had apparently skipped out to Melbourne, where she continued her trickery. Listed there among her aliases is “Jean Doyle”. I’d turned up an archive mug shot of a “Jean Doyle” years ago, but never made the connection with Jean McDonald.

'Jean Doyle', 30 April 1930, Central Police Station, Sydney. FP07_0137_005.

It’s obviously the same woman (and I kick myself for not having spotted it). She’s put on a little heft, but the same flat, despairing look is there. This second portrait is dated 30 April 1930 and, like the 1924 one, was taken in the gloomy muster room at Central Police Station. We don’t know what led to her arrest then, as no new charges are recorded against her. My guess is that she had been busted running yet another scam, but police chose not to waste resources prosecuting, since she was up for automatic gaoling anyway over the 1924 business. A week later she was sent away to do her twelve months sentence. Her release is noted a year later, on 7 May 1931. No remission was granted.

Sydney clearly wasn’t working out for her. So on to Melbourne. A little over a year later, the Victorian Gazette records, she was convicted of fraud and sent to gaol for three months. What became of her after that, we don’t know.

You’ve got to wonder about crims like Jean: she was easily smart enough to charm the money out of a mug’s pocket, but not, apparently, able to elude police and the courts. How unspeakably tedious each arrest, trial and inevitable gaoling must have been. You can see it there in her portrait. My guess: Jean McDonald loved the very early stages of the scam — making up the story, improvising, embellishing, winning the mark’s sympathy, making a new friend. The golden period during which the inevitable consequences can be ignored. Like a drunk who’s fallen off the wagon, relishing those first few delicious, uncomplicated sips.

Throughout the tour the museum’s negative archive was employed to great advantage allowing participants a face-to-face encounter with the criminals and streetscapes of the past. The revealing portraits and street views photographed by police in the 1920s and 30s document the troubled area and its tough inhabitants. The tour draws on a variety of records, including news stories, documents and published histories, and presents a gripping yet informative view of Razorhurst’s underworld.

The razor became the weapon of choice for intimidation, and if necessary enforcement, after the enactment of The Pistol Licencing Act (1927) made it illegal to carry a firearm without a license. The razor was a persuasive ally and if used to full effect would leave the victim with a deep and recognizable scar, as this image of Edward Dalton testifies.

Prior to its recent incarnation as a jazz venue, serving tapas with a trendy roof top bar the Tradesman’s Arms Hotel was a popular meeting place for many members of Sydney’s underworld. The hotel was commonly known as the “Bloodhouse” due to the countless scenes of violence that played out within its walls. Tilly Devine along with Nellie Cameron and Guido Caletti frequented the establishment and no doubt brought with them a swathe of associates and enemies. Devine’s main brothel was located just across the way at 253 Liverpool Street. Cameron was often referred to as Sydney’s most desirable prostitute who spent much of her working life at Tilly’s address. Meanwhile, across the street, her beau (thug and leader of the Darlinghurst Push), Calleti may have waited for his moll with a Tooths Ale in hand and a concealed razor.

The Tradesman’s Arms Hotel has since been renamed the East Village Hotel and is a popular pub and restaurant in East Sydney. There is little evidence left in the slick interiors to indicate its notorious and bloody history. Yet for all this, the building still proudly boasts “Tradesman’s Arms Hotel” and “1918” on its facade.

The Walk the razor’s edge tour reveals many signs of the past and the subtle remnants of the raging days of Razorhurst are bought to the fore. The unsavory, seductive and criminal history of this area is distilled and its essence presented from the safe distance of 50 years. In a final note I would like to share an extract published in Truth newspaper during September 1928. The passage conjures up vivid description of Darlinghurst during the razor gangs rule:

“Razorhurst, Gunhurst, Bottlehurst, Dopehurst – it used to be Darlinghurst, one of the finest quarters of a rich and beautiful city; today it is a plague spot where the spawn of the gutter grow and fatten on official apathy. By day it shelters in its alleys, in its dens, the Underworld people. At night it looses them to prey on prosperity, decency and virtue, and to fight one another for the division of the spoils……Recall the human beasts that, lurking cheek by jowl with decent people, live with no aim, purpose or occupation but crime – bottle men, dope pedlars, razor slashers, sneak thieves, confidence men, women of ill repute, pickpockets, burglars, spielers, gunmen and every brand of racecourse parasite.” Truth, September 1928