In the 1920s and '30s, the East Village Hotel was 'the Tradesman's
Arms', a bloodhouse with sawdust on the floor to soak up the spit and
vomit, hard stools at the bar and a dozen cheap wooden tables and
chairs scattered around. The air was think with coarse language,
raucous laughter and the cigarette smoke pumped out by the Arms's
clientele - the factory workers and bakers from the nearby Sergeants
pie factory, prostitutes, pimps, pickpockets, muggers, con men, SP
(starting-price) bookies and drug dealers. Cards and two-up were
regularly played in the back bar. Fights erupted regularly. Tilly Devine
called in to transact business, since the Arms was in the heart of her
red-light stomping ground, and just across the street from the brothel
and sometimes home at 191 Palmer Street. Nellie Cameron and Frank
Green were also regulars.
Tilly Devine - Queen of the Bordellos
After working as a prostitute for ten years Tilly capitalized on the
astounding anomaly in the Offences (Amendment) Act of 1908 that
made it illegal for a male pimp or brothel-keeper to profit from the
immoral earnings of prostitutes but not for a woman to do so. She
became a madam, using the money she had salted away to bankroll the
biggest, best-organised, most lucrative brothel network Sydney has
ever seen.
In her employ were prostitutes of every age and background. Big Jim
sold cocaine to his wife's prostitutes. It made economic sense for
brothel-keepers like the Devines to foster drug addiction in the sex
workers: it ensured loyalty and meant prostitutes increasingly preferred
payment in cocaine rather than in cash.
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Tilly Devine was on her way to becoming
the woman about whom it was written in
a police article at the end of her 204
conviction criminal career:
She has been in conflict with society all
her life. She has fought it with words, with
action, and with her bare hands. She has
held it by the throat and shaken it. She
has spat in its face. Her sense of values,
her code of morals and of ethics, are her
own and she well tolerate no interference.
For the average man, her life had held
that singular fascination the criminologist
describes - the fascination of the
thunderstorm.
In her employ were prostitutes of every
age and background: seasoned
streetwalkers who'd been operating since
before the war, hard-up housewives and
mothers from the suburbs trying to
support their families, lonely and poor
young women who had come to the city
from the country, or inner-city street kids
drawn by danger and excitement and
the chance to make more money than
they could working in a factory or shop.
Tilly was regarded as a benevolent
despot by her workers. If they did their
job she pampered and protected them.
But if she caught her 'girls' cheating her,
she'd sack them - and often beat them as
a parting gift. |
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