In 1916, after a riot by 5,000 pub-crawling Anzacs outraged the public,
Premier William Holden called a state of emergency and closed
Sydney's pubs. This was the beginning of the 'Six O'Clock Swill'.
Anybody thirsty after dark had to look elsewhere.
Kate Leigh took advantage of the huge market and for thirty-five years
provided illegal liquor, known as 'sly grog'. At the height of her career,
Kate ran more than twenty sly-groggeries. Some of her sly-grog shops
were upmarket and frequented by businessmen, others, said police,
'catered to the worst class of thieves and prostitutes'. On Friday and
Saturday nights, crowds of men milled in the street awaiting admittance
to 'Mum's' as her establishments were known. Her main dispensary was
a flat above her fruit-and-vegetable shop at 212 Devonshire Street,
where she remained until her death from a stroke on 31 January 1964,
aged eighty-two.
From the early 1920s until the '40s, Kate Leigh, as Sydney's leading
sly-grogger and with her income protected by her own combative nature
and a team of bashers and gunmen, was one of the wealthiest, and
most flamboyant, Sydneysiders. Larger than life, greedy, funny when
she felt like it and vicious when she needed to be, Kate was like a
twentieth-century Long John Silver, a pirate captain aboard the jolly brig
Surry Hills. Aside from running the groggeries, she was a standover
merchant, a dealer in drugs (for a while she was known as 'the Snow
Queen'), a fence for stolen property and, more for sport than anything
else, a deft shoplifter. By the mid '20s, the newspapers would be calling
her the 'Most Evil Woman in Sydney'.
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No more remarkable woman ever strode
upon the stage of Sydney's nightlife than
this middle-aged, matronly dame who
slinks a furtive figure in the background
of the drama of real life. A sinister,
shadowy character, she plays a
dominating part in the tragedy which is
spelt D-O-P-E. She meets young women
in cafes and hotel lounges, and she
ingratiates herself with them. Such a
nice, agreeable dame! Such a monster
in human disguise. For she deals in a
commodity that means more than the
wrecking of physical health. It means
the destruction of mental health, the
warping of the moral outlook, the
damning of the eternal soul. Clever and
unscrupulous enough to know that once
a victim is made, she becomes a sure
customer for life. To show them the door
to Drugland she paints a glowing picture
of the joys inside. She conjures up hours
of gay, exotic happiness. They open the
door, slowly, hesitatingly. She stands
behind them and reassures. They enter
and find - a living hell. Price is nothing
to the victims. They will pay all that is
asked. They want more and more and
more. If it gets too dear for them, they
stop at nothing to get the money. They
will impose on their friends, they will
steal and descend as low as a woman
can to feed the ravenous appetite that
dope creates. It is a tragic but terribly
true thing a great percentage of fallen
women who walk the pavements of
Sydney are drug-takers.
NSW Police Force Archives |
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