Francis Charles Kennedy and the Sophia Street Murder – Surry Hills, 1922

On a wet Saturday night in June 1922, a railway porter from Ashfield named Francis Charles Kennedy was found dead in a dark vehicle dock off Sophia Street, Surry Hills, only a few minutes' walk from Central Station. There was a deep gash on his jaw, his skull was fractured and his pockets had been turned inside out. Within days the police had arrested a local man, Frederick Reardon, and his sister Esther Eggers. The City Coroner found that Reardon had killed Kennedy and that Eggers had helped him, and sent them both for trial for murder.

That trial never happened. In August 1922 the Attorney-General refused to file a bill, and the murder charge was dropped. Reardon and Eggers did end up in gaol, but only for assaulting and trying to rob a man whose name nobody ever found out. Over a hundred years later, nobody has ever been convicted of killing Francis Kennedy. This is the story of that night, the people caught up in it, and why the case fell apart.

Sydney (Central) Railway Station, dated 1917. Kennedy's train from Ashfield pulled in here at 7.33 pm on his last night. State Records NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Francis Charles Kennedy?

Francis Charles Kennedy lived with his wife Hannah and their children in Orpington Street, Ashfield. He was a railway porter, and the Sydney Morning Herald said he was working at Strathfield at the time (the inquest report later called him "a railway porter at Ashfield"). The Herald first put his age at about 40, but at the inquest his widow said he was 45, and I've gone with her.

When the Evening News spoke to Hannah Kennedy two days after his death, she painted a picture of a quiet family man. He was "most reserved," she said, and wouldn't "chum up" with people in the street. The paper said he was particular about his dress, and that when he was off duty you wouldn't have taken him for a railway porter. He had a sister living at Darlinghurst and a married daughter at Randwick, but he hadn't called in on either of them that night.

"He was a most devoted father, and was always giving the children something or other," she told the reporter. She was just as firm that he was no drinker or gambler: "He was certainly not a drunkard, and beyond a small bet occasionally, he never gambled." She did admit that it only took two or three glasses of ale to leave him muddled.

The kiosk at Central Railway Station in the 1920s. Kennedy was a railway porter, one of the many men who kept stations like this running. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sophia Street in 1922

If you know Surry Hills today, it's hard to picture what this corner was like a hundred years ago. Sophia Street was in the western part of Surry Hills, a short walk from Central Station. The Evening News described it as running "between Riley and Terry streets," and called it "an ill-kept, unlighted thoroughfare, about 20 feet wide," with back yards opening onto it on both sides. It was, the paper said, a "rendezvous for the 'talent' of the locality," meaning the local criminal crowd.

Truth was even blunter. A guide on a modern Surry Hills crime walk quoted its description of the street as "undoubtedly one of the most to-be-avoided sections of Sydney's underworld... an ill-kept, ill-lighted thoroughfare... a favoured haunt of some of the worst characters in Sydney."

The crime historian Elliot Lindsay, who has written the most detailed modern account of the case, describes Sophia Street as largely a service lane for the factories around it. There was the Schweppes bottling works, a big boot factory, warehouses and loading docks, with old cottages and terraces squeezed in between, plus pubs, sly-grog shops and two-up schools within easy walking distance. The dock where Kennedy died belonged to the Schweppes factory, at the back of the buildings facing Foveaux Street.

Elizabeth Street beside Belmore Park in 1920, with railway works going on next to the tram tracks. The Tooheys Brewery stacks at left stood on the Surry Hills side, only a short walk from Sophia Street. City of Sydney Archives (A-00057922), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Exeter Place, Surry Hills, in 1900, during the clean-up after the bubonic plague outbreak. John Degotardi Jr, Department of Public Works / State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

His Last Evening, Saturday 17 June 1922

Nobody knows for certain why Francis Kennedy went into the city that night. What we have comes mostly from his wife.

She told the Evening News that he'd been asleep on the Saturday afternoon. At about 6 o'clock their son went to call him for his tea and found he'd already left the house. At first she thought he'd gone to Summer Hill for a glass of ale, as he sometimes did. Then her son told her his father had said he was going out, and that he'd probably give the boy £1 for his money box when he got home. That made her think he'd gone into Sydney to collect a bet, as he had done about three weeks earlier. She thought he might have had a drink or two after collecting the money and then wandered into Sophia Street thinking he was heading back to the railway station.

That was only her best guess, and it was never proved. The times she gave also vary a little from paper to paper. At the inquest the Herald reported her as saying she last saw him at 5.30, and the Evening News's version of her evidence has him leaving home at about 6.30. The Evening News also said he'd had a haircut at a local barber before heading off.

The detectives traced him as far as Central. According to the Evening News of 20 June, he left Ashfield by train and arrived at Central Station at 7.33 pm. After that, the trail went cold.

The Body in the Vehicle Dock

Late that night a passer-by noticed a man lying on the ground in Sophia Street and went for the police. The Herald said only that it was "a civilian," while Elliot Lindsay names him as John Derley (or Durley) and says he reported it at the Regent Street police station. The papers didn't agree on the time either. The Herald said Kennedy was found "a little before midnight," and the Evening News's inquest report said about 11 pm.

He was lying in a narrow vehicle dock at the back of the Schweppes factory. He was dead and cold, and his clothes were soaked with rain. There was a deep gash on his jaw, and the base of his skull was fractured. Every one of his pockets had been turned out, and his papers and belongings were scattered around him. Pieces of a broken beer bottle lay nearby. The Evening News headline summed it up as "Man killed at Surry Hills, robbed of a few shillings." His widow said he wouldn't have had much money on him anyway, and that his gunmetal watch and chain were the only things of value he carried. "I know he would fight for the watch and chain," she said, "because I gave him the chain myself."

One small detail from the Evening News of Monday 19 June has stayed with me. That morning, the paper said, a workman walking through Sophia Street saw a little woman in the dock scrubbing the cobblestones with a large piece of wet cloth. When he looked closer he realised it was blood. It was Hannah Kennedy. "I am the woman who was mopping up the blood from the cobblestones," she told the reporter later that day. She had slipped away from her relatives and friends, gone to Mass with her daughter, and then come into town to try to find out what had happened. She had some of his blood on her handkerchief, and she said, "It is all I have got as a memory of the most devoted of husbands and the kindest of fathers."

The same day the Evening News ran photographs of Sophia Street and of the dock, with an X marking where Kennedy's head had struck the ground.

The Police Hunt

A big team was put on the case. The Evening News named Detectives Robson, Anderson, Wickham, Arnold, Comans and Missingham, along with Sergeant M'Knight and Constable Dein of the Regent Street police and Detective-Sergeant Fowler, who was visiting from Melbourne. They spent the Monday night going from house to house in Surry Hills.

There was an early false lead. The detectives were told that a man had been robbed in Terry Street at about 8 o'clock that Saturday night, and that it might have been Kennedy. It turned out to be another railway employee, who had lost a fair bit of money to some of the local "roughs" but didn't want the police involved.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 20 June the police made their move. According to the Evening News, a woman came into the Detective Office and made a long statement, and a man who was waiting outside for her was brought in too. Then the detectives went out to Maroubra, where, as the Herald put it, a man was arrested "after an exciting chase." All three were taken to the Regent Street police station. "As a result of these arrests we are now hopeful of having the whole matter satisfactorily cleared up," Detective-Sergeant Robson told the Herald.

The Accused

The three were Frederick Reardon, aged 32, his sister Esther Eggers, and a labourer named William Williamson, aged 28. The papers couldn't settle on Esther's age, which was given as 23, 25 and 26 in different reports, and the Herald even printed her first name as "Ethel" the first time round. At the inquest the Evening News described her as "a young woman, of attractive appearance," and Reardon as "a clean-shaven, sharp-featured man."

At first they were only charged with vagrancy, which let the police hold them while they kept digging. They appeared before Mr Edwards, S.M., at the Central Police Court on 21 June. Reardon complained that he'd been arrested and taken away from his work without even being allowed to wash. When they came back on Saturday 24 June he demanded bail, insisting he was an innocent man. Inspector Spyer told the court that since the first hearing Reardon and Eggers had been "positively identified as running away from the scene of the murder at 9 o'clock or shortly after." Bail was refused for the brother and sister, while Williamson was let out on bail.

On Thursday 29 June Reardon and Eggers were formally charged with the murder of Francis Kennedy. They both pleaded not guilty.

Slum houses of Surry Hills and Redfern, photographed by Ted Hood in the 1930s. Ted Hood, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Inside the Coroner's Court

The inquest was held on Monday 17 July 1922 before the City Coroner, Mr Jamieson. That day the Evening News printed a photograph on its front page of Reardon and Eggers being taken into the Coroner's Court by detectives. The well-known barrister R. D. Meagher appeared for the accused, and R. M. Kidston appeared for the Crown.

The Widow

Hannah Kennedy's evidence is hard to read about. When Mr Kidston showed her a worn notebook, she broke down, grabbed it and clutched it to her. The Evening News reported her crying out, "Oh, God, what did you do it for? Oh, God, had you a heart?" Once she'd settled, she identified the notebook and other articles as her husband's. Meagher chose not to cross-examine her.

According to Elliot Lindsay, who went through the Sun and Truth reports, that notebook was the strongest evidence the police had against Reardon. Detectives said it was found among papers taken from him at the police station. They also said that when Reardon was told the widow had identified it, he started to cry and said he wanted to tell them something, then changed his mind.

The Broken Bottle

Constable Kilgannon told the court he had found pieces of a broken bottle near the body. Mr Kidston produced the neck of the bottle and admitted that it had been tested for fingerprints and that "so far there was nothing in them to connect either of the two accused."

The Dressmaker of Terry Street

The Crown's main witness was a dressmaker called Mary Smith. That's the name the Herald and the Evening News printed, though Elliot Lindsay calls her May Smith. She lived in Terry Street, near the corner of Foveaux Street. She said she had known Reardon for 18 years and his sister for two.

On the Saturday night, she said, she saw Reardon standing on one corner of Terry and Foveaux Streets and Eggers on the opposite corner. A man was with Eggers, and Eggers seemed to be either feeling in his pockets or holding him around the waist. The man tried to break away. Reardon came over, spoke to them, then struck at the man's face, and Smith heard the sound of a bottle breaking. Then she heard Eggers say, "Come on; I've got all I want," and the pair made off up Foveaux Street.

That was when Esther Eggers jumped in from the dock. The Herald reported that she "forcibly denied" the evidence, and when she was told to keep quiet she said, "I don't care; she's not going to tell lies on me." The Evening News made a real scene of it, with the Coroner looking shocked and the clerk sitting with his hands frozen over the typewriter keys.

Smith went on to say that the man who had been struck lay on the ground for a while (20 minutes in the Herald, ten in the Evening News), then got up and disappeared, and that later that night she saw him talking to a policeman. When Meagher asked why she hadn't reported it, she said that if she reported all the assaults and robberies she saw, she would be going to the police station all the time. She claimed she had seen the two accused commit about a dozen assaults before. At about 10 o'clock that night, she said, she saw Reardon and Eggers walking fast towards Terry Street, about 60 yards from the Schweppes dock where Kennedy's body was found.

The next day the Evening News ran her photograph on page one under the heading "Sees a Lot."

"Get the Lead"

Another railway man, Cyril John Leo Starkey (spelled Starkie in the later court lists), told a similar story about his own night. He met Esther Eggers in Terry Street, and she asked him, "Good night, are you looking for a girl?" While they were talking, a man walked up and said angrily, "You are the co-respondent; this is my wife." Starkey said he then felt her hand go into his pocket and take two £1 notes, and heard her call out to the man, "Get the lead." He ran for it. When he heard about Kennedy's death, he went to the police.

The Medical Evidence and the Alibis

Dr Stratford Sheldon, who did the post-mortem, said the wound on the right side of Kennedy's chin could have been caused by a blow from a beer bottle. He said it was possible the skull fracture happened when Kennedy fell, and that the fractured skull and laceration of the brain were the cause of death. (The Herald's first report had put the gash on his left jaw, but the doctor's evidence says the right side.)

Detective Francis Anderson produced a statement from Reardon saying he'd had a few drinks earlier in the day and gone to bed at the Coffee Palace in Castlereagh Street between 7 and 8 pm. Elliot Lindsay notes that the manager there said Reardon didn't come in until about 10.45 pm, and that he was drunk. Williamson's statement said he had been with Eggers until 11 o'clock that night. Sergeant M'Knight said Reardon had told him, "I want you to see Esther. I think she wants to clear me." He also said Eggers had admitted her first statement "was all lies," but then refused to make a new one until she had seen her solicitor.

The Coroner's Finding

The Coroner found that Kennedy died from injuries he got when Frederick Reardon struck him on the head, and that Esther Eggers aided and abetted him. He found that they had "feloniously and maliciously murdered" Kennedy, and committed both of them for trial at the Central Criminal Court, set down for 4 September.

The old Coroner's Court at 102–104 George Street, The Rocks. It was built in 1907–08 and was used for coronial work until 1971, so it was the City Coroner's court in 1922. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Murder Charge Is Dropped

The case never got to that court. On Thursday 17 August 1922, at the Darlinghurst Sessions before Judge Cohen, the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Weigall, announced that the Attorney-General had declined to file a bill against Reardon and Eggers for murder. The Evening News put it on its front page under the heading "No Bill." The same morning the brother and sister pleaded not guilty to a different charge, assaulting Cyril John Lee Starkie and robbing him of £2 on 17 June. They were let out on bail of £40.

No reasons were published. When you put the evidence side by side, though, the gaps are easy to see, and Elliot Lindsay sets them out well:

• Nobody saw Kennedy with Reardon or Eggers that night.
• The fingerprints on the bottle didn't point to either of them.
• Mary Smith never said the man she saw struck was Kennedy. By her own account, he got up, walked off and was later talking to a policeman. Kennedy, with a fractured skull, was found dead where he fell.
• The attack she described happened at the corner of Terry and Foveaux Streets. Kennedy's body was in the Schweppes dock in Sophia Street, and she didn't see anyone go in there.
• The notebook linked Reardon to Kennedy's belongings, but it didn't show how he got it, or that he was the one who struck the blow.

The coat of arms over Darlinghurst Court House. The murder charge was dropped at the Darlinghurst Sessions in August 1922, and both assault trials were heard at Quarter Sessions. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Trials Over an Unknown Man

The Crown didn't let the pair go, though. On 26 October 1922 Reardon and Eggers went on trial at Quarter Sessions, both pleading not guilty to assaulting "a person whose name is unknown, at Sydney, on June 17, with intent to rob him," with a second count of common assault. In other words, this was the man Mary Smith said she saw knocked down on the corner, not Kennedy. R. D. Meagher defended them again. The jury couldn't agree and was locked up for the night, and in the end it failed to reach a verdict.

They were tried again in November before Judge Cohen, with L. J. McKean prosecuting and W. D. McMahon appearing for Eggers. Elliot Lindsay says Reardon ran his own defence this time and called witnesses for an alibi. This jury found them both guilty. The Herald of Friday 24 November reported that Reardon was sentenced to 18 months' hard labour in Bathurst Gaol, and Eggers to nine months' light labour in the State Reformatory.

I couldn't find out what happened to the separate charge of robbing Cyril Starkie. William Williamson had his own troubles. In late July the Evening News reported that he was convicted at the Darlinghurst Sessions of being an accessory after the fact to an earlier robbery Eggers had committed in 1921, when a man named Jack Lowey lost £15 after a night of drinking in Terry Lane and dancing at a cottage in Maroubra. Lindsay also notes that Williamson later claimed the detectives had pressured him to change his story. The police denied it.

Still Unsolved

So who killed Francis Kennedy? The honest answer is that nobody knows. A jury decided that Reardon and Eggers attacked and tried to rob a man in those same streets that night, and Reardon may well have ended up with Kennedy's notebook. Maybe they did kill him. But the man Mary Smith saw get up and walk away can't have been Kennedy, and once the murder charge was dropped, the Crown itself treated her evidence as being about someone else. If her picture of the neighbourhood was anywhere near true, there were plenty of other people around who robbed drunk or lost men after dark.

According to Elliot Lindsay, by May 1924 Truth was listing Kennedy's death among the murder mysteries that had beaten the CIB. His article sums it up as a case that went "from apparent solution into enduring mystery," and I think that's fair. It's sad to think of Hannah Kennedy getting her husband's notebook back in a crowded courtroom and never finding out who took it from him.

The lane is still there. When a reporter from The Senior went on a Surry Hills crime walk in 2020, the guide took the group down the narrow lane where Kennedy was killed. Apart from some roller doors, the reporter wrote, it didn't look much different from a 1922 photograph in the guide's folder. Next time you're walking up from Central towards Surry Hills, it's worth sparing a thought for a quiet railway porter from Ashfield who never made it back to his train.

Timeline

• Saturday 17 June 1922: Francis Charles Kennedy leaves home in Orpington Street, Ashfield, late in the afternoon. He arrives at Central Station at 7.33 pm. That night he is found dead in the Schweppes vehicle dock off Sophia Street, Surry Hills.
• Monday 19 June: The Herald and the Evening News report the death as murder. Hannah Kennedy is found scrubbing his blood from the cobblestones.
• Tuesday 20 June: Frederick Reardon is arrested at Maroubra after a chase. Esther Eggers and William Williamson are also detained, and all three are taken to the Regent Street police station.
• Wednesday 21 June: The three appear at the Central Police Court on vagrancy charges, and bail is refused.
• Saturday 24 June: They are remanded again, charged as idle and disorderly. The police say Reardon and Eggers were seen running from the scene. Williamson gets bail.
• Thursday 29 June: Reardon and Eggers are charged with murder and plead not guilty.
• Monday 17 July: At the inquest before the City Coroner, Mr Jamieson, they are found to have murdered Kennedy and are committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court on 4 September.
• Thursday 17 August: At the Darlinghurst Sessions the Crown announces the Attorney-General has declined to file a bill, and the murder charge is dropped. The pair plead not guilty to robbing Cyril Starkie.
• 26 October: At their first trial for assaulting an unknown man with intent to rob, the jury can't agree.
• November 1922: At the retrial before Judge Cohen they are found guilty. Reardon gets 18 months' hard labour in Bathurst Gaol and Eggers nine months in the State Reformatory (reported 24 November).
• May 1924: Truth lists the killing of Kennedy among Sydney's unsolved murder mysteries.

My Earlier Posts

• Frog Hollow – Albion St & Riley St – Surry Hills
• Central Station – From Cemetery to Train Station
• Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
• The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery – Cnr Eddy Ave & Elizabeth St, Opposite Foveaux St
• Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court – Forbes Street & Taylor Square
• Darlinghurst Courthouse – Oxford Street – Taylor Square
• The Rocks – Sydney
• Bathurst – NSW
• Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
• John Knatchbull and the Murder of Ellen Jamieson – Sydney, 1844

Sources

Newspapers (Trove, National Library of Australia)

• "Man Found Dead. Foul Play Suspected." Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1922, p. 9. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16008416
• "A Murder Mystery." Evening News (Sydney), 19 June 1922, p. 1 (includes Mrs Kennedy's interview). https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118848037
• "Where a Man Was Murdered" (photograph of Sophia Street). Evening News, 19 June 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118848026
• "The Scene of Nightly Revels" (photograph of the vehicle dock). Evening News, 19 June 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118848038
• "About 9 P.M. Surry Hills Murder. Police Expect Arrest." Evening News, 20 June 1922, p. 5. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118848935
• "Surry Hills Mystery. Three Persons Arrested." Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1922, p. 11. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16008493
• "Three Arrests. Surry Hills Murder." Evening News, 21 June 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118857784
• "Surry Hills Tragedy. Three Persons Detained." Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16008875
• "Surry Hills Mystery." Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1922, p. 14. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16009381
• "Surry Hills Murder. Three Persons Detained." Evening News, 24 June 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118859033
• "Surry Hills Tragedy." Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 1922, p. 8. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16009602
• "Surry Hills Tragedy." Sydney Morning Herald, 30 June 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16010450
• "The Surry Hills Mystery" (photograph of the accused). Evening News, 17 July 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118855221
• "Surry Hills Murder. The Killing of Kennedy. A Dressmaker's Story." Evening News, 17 July 1922, p. 5. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118855322
• "Surry Hills Tragedy. Accused Sent for Trial." Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1922, p. 10. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16013782
• "Sees a Lot" (photograph of Mary Smith). Evening News, 18 July 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118857553
• "Echo of Murder Charge. Williamson Remanded." Evening News, 18 July 1922, p. 9. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118857672
• "Esther Eggers. Man's Confession." Evening News, 26 July 1922, p. 7. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118852170
• "No Bill. Surry Hills Murder." Evening News, 17 August 1922, p. 1. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118859120
• "Quarter Sessions" (Murder Charge Abandoned). Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16019558
• "Quarter Sessions" (court lists). Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16044007
• "Quarter Sessions" (Charge of Assault). Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16044441
• "Quarter Sessions" (Found Guilty). Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November 1922, p. 6. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16032993

Other sources

• Elliot Lindsay, "Who Killed Francis Charles Kennedy?", Murders Most Foul, July 2026. Draws on the Sun and Truth reports of 1922–24, and on records held by Museums of History NSW. https://murdersmostfoul.com/who-killed-francis-charles-kennedy/
• Joanne Karcz, "A slashing good time had by all", The Senior, 5 November 2020 (Slums, Slashings & Sly-grog walking tour; quotes Truth, 1922). https://www.thesenior.com.au/story/6971706/a-slashing-good-time-had-by-all/
• Heritage NSW, "Coroner's Court (former)", 102–104 George Street, The Rocks. https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5053156
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Coroner's Court, The Rocks". https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/coroners_court_the_rocks

Pictures

• All pictures are from Wikimedia Commons. The photographer or archive and the licence are shown under each one.

The Battle of Blood Alley – Eaton Avenue – Kings Cross – 7 May 1929

On a Tuesday night in May 1929, a little lane behind Bayswater Road at the top of William Street turned into a battlefield. Eaton Avenue ran between blocks of flats, just round the corner from where the Kings Cross neon sits today. On the night of 7 May 1929 a gang of men laid into a young woman's escort, then into the neighbours who came out to help. It ended when somebody pushed a shotgun into the hands of a block-of-flats manager and he fired it. One gangster went to St Vincent's with his leg shattered. A few hours later one of the best-known men in the Sydney underworld, Phillip Jeffs, "Phil the Jew", was shot twice at his home and left near death.

Later writers named it the Battle of Blood Alley, one of the famous set pieces of the razor gang years. I've gone back to the 1929 newspapers to see what was actually reported, who was charged and how it ended, and set that beside the version in the books. They don't always line up, and I've shown where they part company.

Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, in 1929, the year of the brawl. Eaton Avenue was a lane off this road. City of Sydney Archives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Where Was Blood Alley?

Blood Alley was Eaton Avenue. The 1929 papers put it in Darlinghurst; most of us would say Kings Cross. Larry Writer, whose book Razor (2001) made the story famous, describes an ill-lit lane off Bayswater Road that locals called "Blood Alley" because of all the muggings there.

The Sydney Morning Herald pins the spot down a bit more, although it doesn't agree with itself. On the morning after, 8 May 1929, it said the affray happened "at the corner of Eaton Avenue and Kellett Street". By 11 May it had moved it to "the corner of Roslyn-street and Eaton-avenue". At the Quarter Sessions in September the flats manager gave evidence that the men were "in the avenue at the intersection of Roslyn-street", so I'd lean towards Roslyn Street.

The lane was lined with flats. The man at the centre of the night, Charles Henry Sorlie, told the Central Police Court he was manager of "a block of 125 flats in Eaton-avenue". At the Quarter Sessions he named it as Garden Vale Flats. The people who got hurt that night weren't gangsters at all. They were residents who came out when they heard a woman scream.

So what's there now? According to Larry Writer, Eaton Avenue is no longer a street. It survives as an enclosed courtyard between blocks of flats off Bayswater Road.

One thing caught my eye. In my earlier post on the Original Villas Of Darlinghurst, there's a house called "Eaton" near Upper William Street North (the old name for Bayswater Road), lived in by Edward Knox, Captain Martindale and later Edward Fosbery, the Inspector-General of Police. I haven't found anything saying the lane was named after it, so I can't claim it was. But it's a funny thought.

Kings Cross around 1930, with the underworld only a lane away. Royal Australian Historical Society, Osborne Collection, No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Razorhurst in 1929

Six o'clock closing had been the law since 1916, which made sly grog big business, and cocaine was sold all through Darlinghurst, Surry Hills and Woolloomooloo. Brothels, grog shops and dealers were all fair game for standover men. The historian Alfred McCoy, in Drug Traffic, argued the razor gang wars were really a fight over cocaine.

The Pistol Licensing Act 1927 made carrying a pistol without a licence an offence. A cut-throat razor cost a few pence at a barber's and folded into a pocket. McCoy says that in three months of late 1927, police took 66 razors off people searched for unrelated offences.

Four names come up again and again:

• Kate Leigh: sly grog, cocaine and brothels, run from Surry Hills and East Sydney.
• Tilly Devine: brothel keeper, and Kate's great rival, with her husband Jim Devine as the muscle.
• Norman Bruhn: a Melbourne standover man who was shot dead in Charlotte Lane, East Sydney, on 22 June 1927.
• Phil Jeffs: cocaine dealer, sly grog man and later nightclub owner. He's the one who matters most for Blood Alley.

McCoy writes that after Bruhn's death things were fairly quiet until mid-1929, and calls Blood Alley "the first battle in this new round". The Herald of 9 May 1929 called it "a recrudescence of the razor-slashings of last year".

Part of a map of the City of Sydney dated c.1927, which State Records NSW used to show where the razor gangs ran and fought. State Records NSW (now Museums of History NSW), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Phil the Jew?

Phillip Jeffs, also known as Phillip Davies (or Davis), was born in Riga, Latvia, in about 1896 or 1897. McCoy says he grew up in London, went to sea and jumped ship in Sydney in 1912. He later ran the 50-50 Club in William Street and the 400 Club, and McCoy calls him "one of the toughest razor-men on the streets" of the 1920s and a major cocaine dealer.

He was no stranger to the dock. He was gaoled for larceny in 1922, acquitted of shooting at a man in 1927, and in 1928 was one of five men found not guilty of rape. In May 1929 he was 32, "known to the police as 'Phil the Jew'", and gave his trade as "pastrycook".

The Night of Tuesday 7 May 1929: What the Papers Said

This comes from the Sydney Morning Herald of 8 to 11 May 1929 and the evidence given in July and September. Almost every account comes from the people on the receiving end. Apart from denials, none of the gangsters ever told their side.

A Scream in Eaton Avenue

Sorlie said it was shortly before 9.30 p.m. Residents of the flats heard two men arguing with a young woman in the street, and then she called out, "Oh, Mr Sorley, come quickly." (The Herald spelled him Sorley that first morning.)

The first to get there was Frederick Johns, a sales agent from Arthur Street, Randwick. He later called himself "an old-time wrestler". He told the men to stop and was hit hard on the forehead with what he believed was a knuckle-duster. He fought the two of them until six more men joined in.

The Herald of 9 May said that after the first blows, "as though at a given signal, other men emerged from hiding-places and set upon the woman's companion", who was being "kicked into insensibility".

Mr Sorlie Comes Down

Charles Henry Sorlie, 38, was on the top floor of Garden Vale Flats when he heard the scream. He came down and asked a man with his coat off what the trouble was. According to Johns, Jeffs asked Sorlie if he was looking for a fight. A few seconds later Jeffs said "Take that, you ——" and swung his boot at Sorlie, who grabbed his foot.

That was the start of what Sorlie called a "battle-royal". He went down on the road and was kicked in the forehead. He told the court that Jeffs, Archer and four other men all joined in kicking him while he lay there. Other residents who stepped in were attacked too, and so was a young man named George Henry Siddle (Siddell in a later report), who Johns said Archer went for.

Sorlie said "at least 15 men" took part, and that "for nearly 20 minutes the fight was fast and furious". Johns said there were more than 50 people watching, and only one of them offered to help.

The Shotgun

Then somebody put a shotgun in Sorlie's hands: "a woman", according to the Herald of 8 May, or "a man named Larke", according to Sorlie's own evidence in July. His lawyer, Mr Parker, told the court Sorlie warned them, "If you persist, I will shoot." They didn't stop, so he fired.

The shot hit William Archer, a man in his mid-thirties from Crown Street (Surry Hills in one report, East Sydney in another), later described as a "baths proprietor". Sorlie said Archer was trying to kick him when he fired. The gang scattered to a motor car waiting in Roslyn Street. Archer ran off down the street and later turned up at St Vincent's Hospital with a gunshot wound in the leg.

Phil Jeffs Walks into the Police Station

Sorlie, Johns and Siddle, all well knocked about, went to Darlinghurst Police Station to make statements. And the police charged Sorlie with shooting at William Archer with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Then came the cheek. While Sorlie was being charged, Phil Jeffs walked into the same police station "unconcernedly", the Herald said, and announced he'd come to bail Archer out. The police told him Archer was in hospital, then put Jeffs in the dock and charged him with assaulting Sorlie and Johns. Sergeant Lynch later told the court that when Jeffs was charged he said: "Sorlie ought to be arrested for attempted murder; he shot Archer to-night in cold blood."

Before Dawn: Jeffs Is Shot

Jeffs was bailed from the Darlinghurst lock-up just before 4 a.m. on Wednesday 8 May, the Herald said, and went home. The Herald of 9 to 11 May put his house in Rainbow Street, South Randwick, but in June Jeffs himself said Todman Avenue, Kensington, and the prosecutor also said "at Kensington".

His own story changed too. On 9 May he told police men battered in his front door while he pulled on boots and trousers over his pyjamas; a man burst in and shot him in the shoulder, he jumped through a window and ran, and a second shot brought him down with a bullet in the stomach. The gunman swore, jumped into a waiting car and was driven off.

In June he said he'd got home "shortly before 3.30 a.m." and gone to bed. "Some time afterwards I saw a man standing over my bed. Two shots were fired at me. I rolled out of bed. The man who had fired then jumped through the window."

Either way, a milkman found him lying in the road and heard him calling feebly. The Herald of 9 May records what he said: "Milko, take me to hospital."

While detectives were at the house, "a handsome young woman, fashionably dressed, sprang out of a taxicab and hurried into the house". She wouldn't give her name, and the papers never told us who she was.

St Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst, in the 1900s. Both Archer and Jeffs ended up here under police guard. State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

"I'm Not Going to Die"

Jeffs and Archer lay in St Vincent's under police guard, Jeffs listed as critical for days. On 9 May he refused to make dying depositions: "I'm not going to die," he told police. Nor would he name the man who shot him. The Herald called it "a conspiracy of silence".

Archer's leg went septic. Bullet fragments were removed, the bone below the knee was found shattered, and the Herald thought "he may die". He didn't. On the innocent side, Johns was still in hospital in late June.

Why Did It Happen?

The 1929 version. On 10 May the Herald said police had pieced together that it all came from "a quarrel concerning a young girl and a large sum of money". The trouble over the young woman was "settled" in Eaton Avenue; separately, two men claimed money from Jeffs over "a profitable illicit deal", he didn't pay, and he was shot.

The later version. McCoy and Larry Writer both put it down to cocaine. Jeffs had been cutting his cocaine with boracic acid and charging full price. Writer says a Woolloomooloo gang challenged him to fight it out, and the two armed mobs met soon after 10 p.m. for "a hair-raising thirty minutes" of guns, razors, clubs and boots until police arrived in force. McCoy describes "a half-hour brawl" of about twenty men, says Jeffs dragged a wounded rival off a taxi's running board and kicked him in the face, and says Jeffs was chased home to Kensington and shot four times.

I can't settle that one. The 1929 Herald reports I've read say nothing of boracic acid. They talk about a girl and a debt, residents beaten, and one shotgun blast rather than a running gun battle. The gangsters weren't talking, so the reporters may never have heard the real reason, and the books may draw on other papers such as Truth. The shootout version comes from the books; the sworn evidence of 1929 tells a messier, sadder story.

Into the Courts

The Central Police Court, Sydney, where Sorlie, Jeffs, Archer and James Taylor all faced the magistrates in 1929. Undated Government Printing Office photograph. State Records NSW, No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Sorlie in the Dock

On Wednesday 8 May, Charles Sorlie, "manager", appeared at the Central Police Court charged with maliciously shooting at William Archer. His lawyer called him "a very reputable citizen", and Sergeant Napper, the police prosecutor, agreed the facts matched what police had been told. Sorlie got £10 bail and was still on remand in July. I haven't found a report of how his charge ended.

James Taylor, Shearer

On 28 May, police brought James Ernest Taylor, aged 28 and described as a shearer, before the Central Police Court on a charge of shooting Jeffs with intent to murder. By then Jeffs had been let out of hospital, "although one of the bullets was still in his body".

The case collapsed on 7 June 1929. Detective-Sergeant Keogh said he'd told Taylor that Jeffs had informed Detective-Sergeant Miller at St Vincent's that Taylor and "Bill Clarke" forced his door demanding money, and that Taylor fired the revolver. Taylor said his solicitor had told him to say nothing, but on the way to the station he said: "Did Jeffs tell you that the door was forced in? He is a liar. It was kicked in."

Then Jeffs went into the witness box. Asked if Taylor was the man who shot him, he said: "No; the man was tall and thin. I know Taylor; he was nowhere near me when I was shot." The magistrate, Mr Gates, found there was no prima facie case and discharged Taylor. Nobody else was ever convicted of shooting Phil Jeffs, as far as I can find.

Jeffs and Archer Committed for Trial

On 18 July 1929 Jeffs and Archer were committed for trial for maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Sorlie and Johns.

Under cross-examination Johns admitted something lovely. He'd later run into Jeffs in Doncaster Avenue and shaken hands. "Look here, Jeffs, I have nothing against you," he told him. "It was a scrap and I held my own while it lasted. I am an old-time wrestler. As far as I am concerned it is over and done with." Both men told the court, "I am innocent of this charge," and each got £80 bail.

Acquitted

At the Quarter Sessions before Judge Cohen, reported on 6 September 1929, the charge was assaulting Sorlie occasioning actual bodily harm. Jeffs and Archer made statements from the dock denying it, and both were acquitted. They were remanded on a similar charge over Johns, and I haven't found the result of that one.

So the gangsters walked free, and nobody was ever convicted of shooting Jeffs.

The Neighbours Fight Back

The people of Eaton Avenue had had enough. The Herald reported on 11 May that residents were getting together to ask the Chief Secretary for more police protection, "so as to prevent undesirables from again making it their rendezvous". They pointed out that the gangsters didn't even live there. They'd come in "from their haunts in Woolloomooloo, Surry Hills, Redfern, and other places".

What Came Next

The rest of 1929 got bloodier.

• 17 July 1929: Kate Leigh's man Gregory Gaffney and others attacked Frank Green and Sid McDonald, two of the Devine crew, in Woolloomooloo. That night at Tilly and Jim Devine's house in Maroubra, Gaffney was shot dead. Jim Devine was later found not guilty.
• 8 August 1929: the "Battle of Kellett Street". Larry Writer describes forty-odd Leigh and Devine men fighting with razors, guns, boots, bottles and rocks just round the corner from Eaton Avenue.
• Later in 1929, Barney Dalton, one of Kate Leigh's men, was shot dead in William Street. Frank Green was tried for it and in the end acquitted.

The Consorting Law

Parliament's answer was the Vagrancy (Amendment) Act 1929, with its "consorting" clause, which McCoy says was written specifically to break the razor gangs. Habitually consorting with reputed thieves, prostitutes or people with no visible lawful means of support became an offence, so known criminals could be gaoled just for being seen together. It came into force in January 1930, and Tilly Devine was arrested under it that month. None of my sources says it was passed because of Blood Alley in particular; it was the whole run of 1929 violence that Blood Alley kicked off.

Kate Leigh in her Long Bay prison photograph of 21 April 1915. Her gang and Tilly Devine's were at war within months of Blood Alley. Long Bay Women's Reformatory, NSW State Archives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Tilly Devine's prison photograph, 27 May 1925. She was the first big name arrested after the consorting law came in, in January 1930. State Reformatory NSW, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What Became of Phil Jeffs

Jeffs didn't die, just as he'd said. Larry Writer describes his 50-50 Club as a "glittering vice den" on the fourth floor of the Chard Building in William Street, and in 1937 a court heard its manager had been fined 11 times under the Liquor Act. Museums of History NSW says Depression-era Sydney called a wealthy person "as rich as Phil the Jew".

He finished up in a big house at Ettalong on the Central Coast and died in November 1945. The Dictionary of Sydney says he died at Ettalong; the Morning Bulletin's obituary says "St Vincent's Hospital", where he'd been carried in 1929. Writer thinks the old bullet wounds probably played a part, and says Jeffs was the only crime boss of his era to die with his fortune intact.

How the Name Stuck, and a Mix-Up to Watch For

"Blood Alley" doesn't appear in any of the 1929 Herald reports I've read; they just say Eaton Avenue. The label comes through Larry Writer's Razor (the basis of the 2011 series Underbelly: Razor) and has spread to museum timelines, Wikipedia, walking tours and podcasts.

One mix-up to watch for: a 2011 BBC Travel / Lonely Planet walk puts "the Battle of Blood Alley" in Kellett Street as a 40-strong Devine–Leigh riot. That's really the Battle of Kellett Street of August 1929. The Dictionary of Sydney, Museums of History NSW and McCoy all keep them apart.

Timeline

• 1927: The Pistol Licensing Act comes in, and razors become the gangs' weapon of choice.
• 22 June 1927: Norman Bruhn is shot dead in Charlotte Lane, East Sydney.
• Tuesday 7 May 1929, about 9.30 p.m.: A young woman's escort is attacked in Eaton Avenue. Johns, Sorlie and Siddle are beaten, and Sorlie fires a shotgun that wounds William Archer.
• Night of 7–8 May 1929: Sorlie is charged with shooting at Archer. Jeffs comes to bail Archer and is charged with assaulting Sorlie and Johns.
• Early morning, 8 May 1929: Jeffs is bailed, then shot at his home and found in the street by a milkman.
• 8–11 May 1929: The Herald's "MAN SHOT" and "GANG WAR" reports. Jeffs won't name his attacker, and residents ask for police protection.
• 28 May 1929: James Ernest Taylor is charged with attempting to murder Jeffs.
• 7 June 1929: Taylor is discharged after Jeffs says he wasn't the gunman.
• 17–18 July 1929: Gaffney is shot dead at the Devines' house in Maroubra.
• 18 July 1929: Jeffs and Archer are committed for trial.
• 8 August 1929: The Battle of Kellett Street.
• September 1929: Jeffs and Archer are acquitted of assaulting Sorlie at the Quarter Sessions (SMH, 6 September 1929).
• January 1930: The Vagrancy (Amendment) Act 1929 and its consorting clause come into force.
• November 1945: Phil Jeffs dies.

My Earlier Posts You Might Like

• Original Villas Of Darlinghurst
• Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court – Forbes Street & Taylor Square – Darlinghurst – NSW
• Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
• The Widening Of William Street – East Sydney & Kings Cross
• Kings Cross Theatre – Junction of Darlinghurst Road & Victoria Street – Darlinghurst
• Progress Of The Suburbs – XVI – Potts Pt & Darlinghurst II – SMH – Sat 1 Nov 1913

Sources

Newspapers (via Trove, National Library of Australia)

• "MAN SHOT. Assaults at Darlinghurst. Two Men Arrested." Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 8 May 1929, p 16. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16566882
• "GANG WAR. At Darlinghurst. Two Men Shot. Conspiracy of Silence." Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 9 May 1929, p 11. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28046987
• "GANG WAR. Over Girl and Money. Jeffs' Statement." Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 10 May 1929, p 11. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16549621
• "GANG WAR. Archer in Critical Condition. Police Hunt Proceeds." Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 11 May 1929, p 17. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16568457
• "SHOOTING OF JEFFS. Charge of Attempted Murder." Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 29 May 1929, p 12. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28048090
• "SHOOTING OF JEFFS. Charge Dismissed." Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 8 June 1929, p 19. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16567086
• "CHARGES AGAINST JEFFS. Further Remand Ordered." Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 21 June 1929, p 15. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16569465
• "PHILLIP JEFFS. Charge of Wounding. Darlinghurst Affray." Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 19 July 1929, p 10. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16559998
• "QUARTER SESSIONS. Acquitted." Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 6 September 1929, p 9. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16581761
• "PHIL THE JEW." Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), Thursday 8 November 1945, p 8. https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56436952

Books, articles and websites

• Larry Writer, Razor: Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and the Razor Gangs, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001 (second edition 2009). The Blood Alley and Kellett Street passages are adapted at Razorhurst – Tour Gangland Sydney, https://razorhurst.com.au/tour_9.html
• Larry Writer, "Following in the footsteps of the Razor Gangs – Part 2", Museums of History NSW, 2018. https://mhnsw.au/stories/underworld/following-footsteps-razor-gangs-part-2/
• Alfred W. McCoy, Drug Traffic: Narcotics and Organized Crime in Australia, Harper & Row, 1980. Extract "The 1920s: the Razor Wars", Sydney Crime Museum. https://www.sydneycrimemuseum.com/crime-stories/1920s-the-razor-wars/
• Museums of History NSW, "Tilly Devine & the Razor Gang Wars, 1927–1931". https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/tilly-devine-and-the-razor-gang-wars-1927-1931/
• Museums of History NSW, "Bosses" (Phillip 'Phil the Jew' Jeffs). https://mhnsw.au/stories/underworld/bosses/
• Mark Dunn, "Kings Cross", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/kings_cross
• "Jeffs, Phil", Dictionary of Sydney. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/jeffs_phil
• "Jeffs, Phillip (Phil) (1897–1945)", Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, ANU. https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/jeffs-phillip-phil-13643
• "Razor gang", Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_gang
• "A walk through Sydney's criminal shadows", BBC Travel / Lonely Planet, 23 August 2011. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20110823-a-walk-through-sydneys-criminal-shadows
• "Darlinghurst Books: Razor, by Larry Writer", My Darling Darlinghurst blog, July 2011 (Eaton Avenue now an enclosed courtyard off Bayswater Road). http://mydarlingdarlinghurst.blogspot.com/2011/07/darlinghurst-books-razor-by-larry.html

Images

• Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, 1929. City of Sydney Archives, via Wikimedia Commons. Commons file page
• "Kings Cross", c.1930. Royal Australian Historical Society, Osborne Collection, via Wikimedia Commons. Commons file page
• The Razor Gang areas of Sydney (map c.1927). State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Commons file page
• St Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst, 1900s. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Commons file page
• Central Police Court, Sydney. State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Commons file page
• Kate Leigh, 1915, and Tilly Devine, 1925, prison photographs. NSW State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons. Kate Leigh, Tilly Devine

The Shooting of Annie Wilson – 195 Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo – 1893

On a Thursday afternoon in January 1893, a young married woman named Annie Wilson was shot in the kitchen of a lodging house at 195 Bourke Street. In 1893 the papers called that part of Bourke Street Woolloomooloo; today it's the Darlinghurst end of the street, down near William Street. The man who fired the shot was Simon Peter Van Kaspelen, a well-known Dutch-born crayon portrait artist who lodged in the same house. After shooting Annie he went upstairs, locked himself in his room and shot himself. Annie died a little before two o'clock. She was 26.

Because the man who killed her was dead, there was no arrest, no trial and no hanging at Darlinghurst Gaol. There was an inquest the next morning in a pub on the corner of Bourke and William Streets, a funeral to the Necropolis at Rookwood the day after that, and then the story faded from the papers. This post sets out what the 1893 papers actually said about Annie, her household, the man who killed her and the days that followed. Where the old reports and the modern write-ups don't agree, I've said so.

Woolloomooloo Bay as Annie would have known it, photographed by Fred Hardie in 1892–93. Bourke Street climbs the hill from the bay up through Darlinghurst. Fred Hardie for George Washington Wilson & Co., State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Where It Happened – 195 Bourke Street

Bourke Street is a long one. It starts down at Woolloomooloo, climbs the hill through Darlinghurst past William Street and Oxford Street, then runs on through Surry Hills towards Redfern. In January 1893 the Sydney Morning Herald described number 195 as being in "Bourke-street, Woolloomooloo", and called the house "a substantially-built two-story lodging-house belonging to Mrs. De Monti". The inquest and the funeral notices give the same address. Today that stretch is counted as Darlinghurst, which is why the modern accounts of the case call it a Darlinghurst story.

So where does Surry Hills come into it? There are a few threads. About four weeks before the shooting, Van Kaspelen's wife Edith had left him and moved to 639 Bourke Street, Surry Hills, further up the same street. The doctor who was called to the house, Dr Alexander Dewar, had his rooms at 81 Crown Street, which runs between Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. And when local writer Elliot Lindsay retold the case in 2023 for Neighbourhood Media, the piece went out under the heading "True Crime in Surry Hills", even though the article itself places the house in Darlinghurst. So it's easy to see how it has come to be remembered as a Surry Hills story.

The Wesleyan Chapel in Bourke Street, photographed in 1872. It still stands on the Surry Hills–Darlinghurst stretch of the street, the same street where Edith Van Kaspelen took lodgings at number 639. Charles Percy Pickering, NSW Government Printing Office, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Annie Wilson?

We don't know as much about Annie as I'd like. What we have comes from her family's evidence at the inquest and the funeral notices they placed in the paper.

Her full name was Annie Godlington Wilson. Three of the five funeral notices print it as "Codlington", which looks like a slip at the printer's, since the news reports, the inquest and the other two notices all have "Godlington". She was born in London and was 26 years old. Her brother, George James Edwards, told the inquest she "was of temperate habits" and that she left "neither children nor property".

Annie was married to Joseph Wilson, a French polisher who worked for Nicholson and Co. in George Street. The couple lived at 195 Bourke Street, and with the owner away, Annie was looking after the house. The funeral notices give us a glimpse of the family around her: her husband, her brother George, Joseph's brothers John and James Wilson, and two couples, Mr and Mrs James Bickerstaff and Mr and Mrs Golding, whose notices call Annie a sister-in-law. She clearly had plenty of people who cared about her.

George Street in 1892–93. Annie's husband Joseph worked as a French polisher for Nicholson and Co. in George Street. Fred Hardie for George Washington Wilson & Co., State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Household at 195 Bourke Street

The house belonged to a Mrs De Monti. (The Herald spelt it "De Monti" in its main report and "De Monté" elsewhere.) She had gone up to Liverpool with her husband, who was in poor health, and had left the place in Annie's care while she was away.

Living there at the time were Annie and Joseph, Annie's brother George Edwards, Simon Van Kaspelen, and, according to George, "three single young men" who had been out all that morning. Van Kaspelen and his wife had been lodging there for about seven months. Mrs Van Kaspelen and Annie were friends, and Edith still called in to see her after she'd left her husband.

George Edwards worked as a collector for the Citizens' Life Assurance Company. He last saw his sister alive at twenty past nine on the Thursday morning, before he went out for the day.

Simon Peter Van Kaspelen and Edith

Van Kaspelen was a native of Amsterdam. Edith told the inquest he was 43. By trade he was a crayon artist, making large portraits in French crayon from photographs, and he was very good at it. His agent was W. Aldenhoven of Hunter Street, who told the Herald that Van Kaspelen had been his principal artist in that line for nine years, and that "portraits had even been sent out from London for him to enlarge".

Sober, he was by all accounts a gentleman. Aldenhoven said "when Van Kaspelen was sober there was not a more gentlemanly man", that he was educated and spoke four languages. Drunk, it was another matter. About three months before the shooting, in a drunken rage, he had seized Aldenhoven by the throat, and only the workmen stepping in had stopped it. After that Aldenhoven banned him from the shop and sent the work out to him instead.

Edith had been married to him for ten years. They had no children. About four weeks before the shooting she left him "on account of his drunkenness and cruelty towards me" and took lodgings at 639 Bourke Street, Surry Hills. She said he had often threatened to shoot her. On the Wednesday, the day before he killed Annie, he had told her: "If I had a revolver I would shoot you." Edith's own sister had been so worried that she told her to get out of the city altogether, "because she said she was sure Mr. Van Kaspelen was going mad, he looked so bad with drink". Edith said she didn't know he actually carried a revolver.

She still spoke of him with some tenderness. "We had been married 10 years," she told the Herald, "and but for the drink we should have lived very happily together."

Thursday, 12 January 1893

The Shooting

Nobody saw what happened in that kitchen. What we know was pieced together afterwards from what was found in the house.

Van Kaspelen had gone out early that morning. At some point around one o'clock he came back, and the police and the papers took it that he had been drinking. Annie was in the kitchen at the back of the house. He shot her once in the face at close range. Then, it seems, he turned the revolver on himself. One shot went through the top of his own hard felt hat and lodged in the kitchen ceiling. Another grazed his temple. Bleeding, he went up the stairs to his room, which was both his bedroom and his studio, locked the door, lay on the bed and fired again, this time into his forehead.

The gun was a seven-chambered revolver. When the police checked it, four chambers had been fired, two were still loaded and one had never been loaded.

The Discovery

At about twenty-five past one, George Edwards came home and found Edith Van Kaspelen standing at the street door. She'd come to visit Annie and had been knocking for about five minutes without an answer. George had a key, and they went in together.

He noticed spots of blood on the floor of the passage and followed them to the kitchen. Annie was lying on her back on the floor. In George's words at the inquest, "Blood was coming from her mouth, and her left eye was black. She was not dead, but she could not speak. She was just gasping". He told Edith to run for a doctor and dashed off to a chemist's shop nearby for help. Edith ran out into the street but came straight back. As she told the Herald, "I did not like to leave Mrs. Wilson when she was not yet dead."

When George came back with the chemist they saw Van Kaspelen's hat and pipe lying on the kitchen floor. George knew the hat at once. He ran upstairs, found Van Kaspelen's door locked and burst it open. Van Kaspelen was lying dead across the bed, with the revolver beside his left hand.

Crown Street in 2003, seen from above near William Street. In 1893 Dr Alexander Dewar, who attended Annie, had his rooms at 81 Crown Street. Photo by Cookaa, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Police and the Doctor

Senior-constable Thomas O'Keefe of No. 3 police station got to the house at about half past one. Annie was still alive but unconscious. He went upstairs, took charge of the revolver, and traced the drops of blood from the kitchen up the stairs to the bedroom. He found "no sign of any struggle whatever", and George said nothing in the house had been disturbed.

Dr Alexander Dewar of 81 Crown Street told the inquest he was called to the house at about half past one. He found Annie bleeding from the nose and mouth, with a wound in the left eye socket beside the tear bone that was blackened with gunpowder, which shows the gun was fired from very close. The bullet had gone into the brain. By his account she was still alive but unconscious when he arrived, and she died about twenty minutes later, close to two o'clock. Dr Dewar told the inquest the cause of death was "unquestionably the wound in the eye", and that he could find "no other injury whatever".

Upstairs, he found that Van Kaspelen had a compound fracture over the right brow, also blackened with powder, which was the fatal wound, and a second, shallower wound on the left brow with pieces of lead in it.

The Inquest at the Burdekin Hotel

In those days inquests were often held in a pub close to where someone died, and this one opened at ten o'clock the next morning, Friday 13 January, at the Burdekin Hotel, which the Herald placed on the corner of Bourke and William Streets. The City Coroner presided. Because Van Kaspelen was a Dutch citizen, the Acting Consul of the Netherlands, Señor Don Horacio Amora, came along on behalf of his government.

Before it started, a constable handed the coroner a note that had been found in Van Kaspelen's room. The coroner read it and said it "was of a private character and had no bearing on the inquest". What it said was never published.

The jury went to the house to see the scene and view the bodies, then came back to hear the evidence.

The Evidence

Edith Van Kaspelen spoke first. She described the threats, the drinking and the separation, and said that as far as she knew her husband "had never had any quarrel with Mrs. Wilson". George Edwards told the story of coming home and finding his sister, and said he had never known Van Kaspelen to quarrel with Annie either. He also told the jury: "Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Van Kaspelen were very much alike in general appearance."

The Verdict

The jury didn't take long. They returned a verdict that Annie Godlington Wilson and Simon Peter Van Kaspelen "had died from the effects of pistol-shot wounds inflicted by Van Kaspelen".

With the killer dead, there was nobody to arrest or put on trial, and that was as far as the law could go.

The Funeral – To the Necropolis

On Saturday 14 January the Herald carried a column of funeral notices for Annie, one after another, from her husband, her brother and each branch of the family. Her husband's read:

THE FRIENDS of Mr. JOSEPH WILSON are respectfully invited to attend the Funeral of his dearly beloved WIFE, Annie Codlington; to move from 195 Bourke-street, THIS (Saturday) AFTERNOON, at a quarter-past 1 o'clock, for the Necropolis.
(Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1893)

So Annie left the house where she had died almost exactly two days after she was shot, and was taken out to the Necropolis at Rookwood, the big cemetery that had replaced the old Devonshire Street burial ground. The undertaker was Mrs P. Kirby of 88 Hunter Street, with a branch in William Street. The notices don't say how the mourners got there, but in those years a great many Sydney funerals bound for the Necropolis went out on the mortuary train from the Regent Street Mortuary Station.

A funeral train standing at No. 1 Mortuary Station inside Rookwood Cemetery, dated around 1865 by NSW State Archives. Trains like this carried coffins and mourners out to the Necropolis. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The stone platform arcade at No. 1 Mortuary Station, Rookwood, where funeral parties stepped off the train at the Necropolis (undated photograph). NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How the Papers Reported It

The shooting was in the papers the very next morning. On Friday 13 January the Sydney Morning Herald ran a long report under the heading "SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN WOOLLOOMOOLOO. MURDER AND SUICIDE.", along with separate pieces headed "Statement by Mr. Edwards", "Statement of Mrs. Van Kaspelen", "Statement by the Husband of the Murdered Woman" and "The Character and Ability of the Murderer". Its summary of the day's news put it plainly: "Mrs. Annie Godlington Wilson was shot dead by S. P. Van Kaspelen, a well known crayon artist, who mistook her for his wife."

Joseph Wilson's statement was short: he too "was of opinion that Van Kaspelen had mistaken Mrs. Wilson for his wife". George Edwards agreed. In the Herald's account of what he said, the two women "were alike in build and stature, and in the colour of their hair, and might easily have been mistaken for one another, even at only a few yards distance."

On Saturday 14 January the Herald reported the inquest in full under "THE WOOLLOOMOOLOO TRAGEDY. THE INQUEST AND VERDICT." According to Elliot Lindsay, other papers took a different line. He quotes the Daily Telegraph as saying it was "scarcely feasible" that Van Kaspelen would shoot another woman in broad daylight thinking she was his wife, and suggesting he had been seized with "an insane idea of revenge on the woman who he discovered was befriending the wife who had left him".

A Modern Theory – Were Annie and Edith More Than Friends?

This next part is a modern claim, not something anyone proved in 1893, and I'm including it so you know it's out there.

In 2023 Elliot Lindsay wrote up the case twice, for Murders Most Foul and for Neighbourhood Media. He argues that Annie and Edith were in a same-sex relationship, that Van Kaspelen shot Annie on purpose out of jealousy, and that Edith, Annie's husband and her brother kept the relationship quiet afterwards. He quotes Truth as reporting that Van Kaspelen complained his wife "entertained a high and unusually affectionate regard" for Annie, and that Annie was "too intimate with Mrs Van Kaspelen". The case also turns up in the 2008 book Homophobia: An Australian History, edited by Shirleene Robinson.

Against that, here's the 1893 evidence. The three people closest to it, Annie's husband Joseph, her brother George and Edith herself, all told the papers they believed it was a case of mistaken identity. George and Edith both said Van Kaspelen had never quarrelled with Annie, and George told the inquest the two women looked very much alike. The jury's verdict said nothing either way about why he did it.

The honest answer is that we can't know what was going on in Van Kaspelen's head that afternoon. Whatever his reason was, Annie did nothing to deserve what happened to her.

Where the Accounts Differ

A few details don't line up between the reports, so here's how they stand.

• Annie's age. The computer-read text of the Herald on Trove makes her "about 12" in one place and "20" in another, and Lindsay gives her age as 26. I checked the page images of the 13 and 14 January papers, and both clearly say 26: Edith said "about 26 years of age" and George told the inquest "Mrs. Wilson was 26 years of age". The 12 and 20 are just scanning errors.
• Which eye. The Herald's first report on 13 January said the bullet hole was "just above the right eye". At the inquest the next day, George Edwards, Senior-constable O'Keefe and Dr Dewar all said it was the left eye, and the doctor described the wound as being in the left eye socket. I've gone with the inquest evidence.
• How many wounds. Lindsay writes that Annie had two gunshot wounds to the face. Dr Dewar told the inquest there was "no other injury whatever" apart from the wound in the eye. The second bullet wound he described above the brow was on Van Kaspelen, not Annie.
• The time of death. Lindsay says police recorded her death at 1.55 pm. I couldn't find that exact time in the 1893 papers. The Herald said "it was not till nearly 2 o'clock that she died", so the two are close.
• Whether the doctor found her alive. The Herald's first report said Dr Dewar arrived "shortly before 2 o'clock" and that by then "life was extinct". At the inquest Dr Dewar himself said he was called at about half past one, that Annie was still alive but unconscious when he got there, and that she died about twenty minutes later. I've gone with the doctor's sworn evidence.
• Van Kaspelen's age. Edith gave his age as 43 both to the Herald and at the inquest. Design and Art Australia Online gives his birth year as 1849, which fits roughly. Lindsay describes Edith as 36 and her husband as ten years older, which would make him 46.
• The suburb. Woolloomooloo in 1893, Darlinghurst today, and remembered by some as Surry Hills, for the reasons given at the top of this post.

A Year of Bad News on Bourke Street

Annie's death wasn't the only one on Bourke Street that year. On 26 March 1893 a woman named Emma Harrison was found dead in her lodgings on the corner of Burton and Bourke Streets in Darlinghurst. That case did go to trial: George Archer was convicted of her murder and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 11 July 1893. You can read about him and the other executions there in my post on the Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol, and about the gaol itself in Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court. If Van Kaspelen had lived, a murder charge against him would have been heard in the Central Criminal Court at Darlinghurst, right beside the gaol.

Darlinghurst Gaol in a watercolour signed by Henry Louis Bertrand in 1891, two years before Annie's death. Bertrand had himself been convicted of the murder of Henry Kinder. Henry Louis Bertrand, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

Date	What happened
About 1883	Simon Peter Van Kaspelen and Edith marry (she said in 1893 they had been married ten years).
About 1884	Van Kaspelen begins working for art dealer W. Aldenhoven of Hunter Street (nine years by 1893).
About June 1892	The Van Kaspelens take lodgings at 195 Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo (about seven months before the shooting).
About October 1892	Drunk, Van Kaspelen seizes Aldenhoven by the throat and is banned from the shop.
About mid-December 1892	Edith leaves him and moves to 639 Bourke Street, Surry Hills.
Wednesday 11 January 1893	Van Kaspelen tells Edith, "If I had a revolver I would shoot you."
Thursday 12 January 1893, 9.20 am	George Edwards last sees his sister alive.
12 January, about 1 pm	Van Kaspelen shoots Annie in the kitchen, then shoots himself upstairs.
12 January, about 1.25 pm	George Edwards and Edith Van Kaspelen find Annie on the kitchen floor.
12 January, about 1.30 pm	Senior-constable O'Keefe arrives and Dr Dewar is called.
12 January, nearly 2 pm	Annie Godlington Wilson dies, aged 26.
Friday 13 January 1893	The Herald reports the "Shocking Tragedy in Woolloomooloo". Inquest at the Burdekin Hotel, Bourke and William Streets; verdict of death from pistol-shot wounds inflicted by Van Kaspelen.
Saturday 14 January 1893	Inquest reported in the Herald. Annie's funeral leaves 195 Bourke Street at 1.15 pm for the Necropolis, Rookwood.
2023	Elliot Lindsay retells the case for Murders Most Foul and Neighbourhood Media.

Related Posts On My Blog

• Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
• Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court – Forbes Street & Taylor Square – Darlinghurst
• Darlinghurst Gaol – Taylor Square – Bourke Street – Forbes Street – Burton Street – Darlinghurst Road
• Crown Street – Woolloomooloo – Darlinghurst – Surry Hills
• Wesley Chapel – Built 1847 – Bourke Street – Surry Hills
• Riley Street – Woolloomooloo
• Original Villas Of Darlinghurst
• Mortuary Station – Central – Chippendale
• Rookwood Necropolis
• Rookwood Cemetery & Necropolis – Lidcombe
• Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
• The Story Of Old George Street
• John Knatchbull and the Murder of Ellen Jamieson – Sydney, 1844
• Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – From the 1978 March to Today

Sources

Newspapers, 1893 (via Trove, National Library of Australia)

• "Shocking Tragedy in Woolloomooloo. Murder and Suicide." Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893397
• "Statement by Mr. Edwards." Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893394
• "Statement of Mrs. Van Kaspelen." Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893395
• "Statement by the Husband of the Murdered Woman." Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893392
• "The Character and Ability of the Murderer." Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893393
• News summary, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 4. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893385
• "The Woolloomooloo Tragedy. The Inquest and Verdict." Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1893, p. 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893442
• News summary (inquest), Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1893, p. 8. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893546
• Funeral notices, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1893, p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13893594
• Page images: Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1893, p. 5 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page1373980; 14 January 1893, p. 5 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page1373988
• "The Burton-Street Tragedy." Sydney Morning Herald, 11 April 1893, p. 3 (Emma Harrison case). http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13913688
• "The Bourke-street Tragedy." Evening News, 21 June 1893, p. 6 (George Archer). http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article112606550

Later accounts

• Elliot Lindsay, "A Darlinghurst Same-Sex Love Tragedy, 1893", Murders Most Foul, 15 March 2023. https://murdersmostfoul.com/a-darlinghurst-same-sex-love-tragedy-1893/
• Elliot Lindsay, "The Bourke Street Murder" ("True Crime in Surry Hills"), Neighbourhood Media, 21 June 2023. https://www.neighbourhoodmedia.com.au/post/the-bourke-street-murder
• Design and Art Australia Online, "van Kaspelen, S. P., b. 1849". https://daao.library.unsw.edu.au/
• Shirleene Robinson (ed.), Homophobia: An Australian History, Federation Press, 2008 (index entry "Van Kaspelen case"). https://www6.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELECD/2008/108.pdf
• "Neville Henry Cayley", Australiana, vol. 34, no. 3, August 2012 (a portrait finished in French crayon by Van Kaspelen in 1892). https://australiana.org.au/assets/issue/Australiana_2012_3%20Aug_LR.pdf

Pictures

• All pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, with the original holders, licences and links given under each picture.

Taronga Zoo – From Moore Park to Bradleys Head

Most Sydneysiders have caught the ferry across to Taronga at least once, usually as a kid with a packed lunch, and we all know the view from the top of the hill. What a lot of people don't know is that the zoo started life on the other side of the harbour, on a swampy patch of Moore Park where Sydney Boys High and Sydney Girls High stand today. In 1916, in the middle of the Great War, the whole lot was packed up and moved. Lions, bears, monkeys, kangaroos, hundreds of birds and one very large elephant named Jessie all made the trip across Sydney to a new home on the bush slopes of Bradleys Head at Mosman.

This page follows the story from the start. It begins with the Zoological Society and the old Moore Park zoo, then the 1916 move and Jessie's early morning walk through the city, the opening of Taronga Zoological Park on 7 October 1916, and the years since. Those years brought gorillas and pandas, the Sky Safari, the open-range zoo at Dubbo and the conservation work Taronga is known for today. There's a timeline near the end, some notes on visiting, and the full list of sources at the bottom.

A lion at the old Zoological Gardens, Moore Park. Glass plate negative from the Tyrrell collection. Kerry & Co / Powerhouse Museum Collection, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Zoological Society and Billy Goat Swamp

It all goes back to 1879, when the NSW Zoological Society was formed. It later became the Royal Zoological Society of NSW. Animals weren't the first thing on its mind. Its early aim was the "introduction and acclimatisation of song birds and game", which was a very colonial idea of making the bush feel more like England. Before long, though, the members turned to something more ambitious: a proper public zoological garden for Sydney.

The City Council gave the Society a patch of Moore Park known, not very grandly, as Billy Goat Swamp. The sources tell this part slightly differently. Museums of History NSW says the Society leased 7 acres and that this was increased to 12.5 acres in 1881. Centennial Parklands says Council granted the 7 acres in 1883. Either way, the zoo began on about seven acres in Moore Park and grew from there.

Charles Moore, Director of the Botanic Gardens and a member of the Society, laid out the grounds. He had been looking after a small menagerie at the Botanic Gardens, and he moved those birds across to the new zoo. Animals started arriving in 1883, and the Zoological Gardens at Moore Park opened to the public in 1884. It was Sydney's first public zoo.

Two elephants: Jumbo and Jessie

Every self-respecting zoo of the time wanted an elephant. An elephant drew the crowds, and the rides brought in the money. By the end of 1883 Moore Park had two of them, and it's worth getting them straight because people mix them up all the time.

The first was a male, a gift from the King of Siam, who arrived in July 1883. He was named Jumbo, after the famous African elephant in P. T. Barnum's circus. The second was a female bought from the Calcutta Zoological Society. She arrived in Sydney on 30 November 1883 aboard the steamer Newcomen, which tied up at the Central Wharf at Millers Point, along with a number of mongooses. Two keepers, or mahouts, came with her. The papers gave their names as Parbuck and Eliback. Her name was Jessie, and she's the one who became a Sydney legend.

Getting her from the wharf to Moore Park didn't go to plan. The keepers meant to take her up in a van, but no sooner was she coaxed inside than she "walked out again before the doors could be fastened, brandishing [her] trunk and looking rather put out". They got her there in the end, and she was soon "quietly munching sugar cane" in a shed made ready for her.

Nobody really knew how old Jessie was. The Daily Telegraph of 1 December 1883 gave her age as "sweet seventeen". Museums of History NSW says she was believed to be about eight when she arrived. When she died in 1939 the Sydney Morning Herald called her 77, which would fit neither. The honest answer is that her age was a guess from the start.

What everyone did agree on was her temperament. Jessie was gentle and would "lie down, roll over, and do a great many other things at the word of command". People climbed steps to a platform and sat on a howdah, a saddle with bench seats on either side. Parbuck showed the crowds how a keeper mounted her the traditional way, with a foot on her trunk and a hand on each ear while Jessie gave a gentle hoist. She was so well known that "more hide than Jessie" became Sydney slang for a cheeky or brazen person.

Life at the Moore Park zoo

By the early 1900s Moore Park was a proper day out. There were refreshment rooms, gardens, picnic shelters, music and animal rides. There was an orangutan, a polar bear, "cages full" of lions, tigers and leopards, plus bears, dingoes, hyenas, a flock of flamingos, emus and songbirds. Kerry & Co's photographers came by with their big glass-plate cameras, which is why lovely portraits like the lion at the top of this page survive.

The site had real problems, though. It lived up to its old name and flooded. It was dusty and windswept, and the trams and traffic rattling past were noisy. In 1902 bubonic plague was found among the animals and the zoo closed for four months. Museums of History NSW says it was the wallabies, Centennial Parklands says kangaroos, and buildings were burnt and many animals lost. The zoo grew to 15 acres in 1905, and in August 1906 the Council extended the lease for another 14 years, but it had clearly outgrown the place.

Attitudes were changing too. People were starting to object to animals kept in small barred cages on concrete floors with little sun. When the Society's president, Charles Hedley, later made the case for a new zoo, he called the Moore Park grounds "mean and unhealthy" and "not worthy of this wealthy State, of this great city".

A new idea: a zoo without bars

The man who changed everything was Albert Sherbourne Le Souef. He was appointed secretary of the Zoological Society in 1903, a job that was really the zoo director's role. Le Souef was young and full of ideas. In 1908 he and Dr Robert Todd went on a world tour of zoos and came home inspired by Carl Hagenbeck's zoo at Hamburg. There the animals lived in open-air enclosures without bars, kept apart from visitors by moats and ditches instead of cages. Le Souef wanted the same for Sydney.

Choosing Bradleys Head

Plenty of sites were put forward. The list included Long Bay, Upper Lane Cove, Harris Park, Tempe, Little Coogee Bay, Rockdale, Queens Park, Maroubra, Bondi and Vaucluse. Le Souef had his heart set on Bradleys Head, on the northern side of the harbour. It had bushland, rocky slopes, harbour views, and the city was only a short ferry ride away.

In 1911 Acting Premier William Holman announced the government's policy of "preserving the foreshores of Sydney Harbour for the people". At that same event Charles Hedley put the case for part of Mosman's Ashton Park to be set aside for a new zoo. It worked. In 1912 the site was chosen and more than 40 acres were reserved. Wikipedia gives the grant as 43 acres (17 hectares), with a further 9 acres added in 1916. It was all handed to a new body, the Taronga Zoological Park Trust.

What does "Taronga" mean?

Taronga is an Aboriginal word, usually given as meaning "beautiful view". You'll find that meaning on Wikipedia and on Taronga's own material. Some sources say "water view" instead, and some link the word to the Cammeraygal people, the traditional owners of the Mosman side of the harbour. I couldn't find a primary source that settles it, so I'll just say it's usually translated as "beautiful view". Anyone who has stood at the top gate and looked back at the city will agree it fits.

The view that gave the place its name: Sydney Harbour from Taronga Park, about 1920. Government Printing Office / State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Building the new zoo

Taronga was planned around the land rather than flattening it. The enclosures were built from natural and artificial rock to keep as much of the bushland as possible. The seal ponds even had imitation ice floes. Le Souef made plasticine models and worked out how wide the moats had to be from how far each animal could leap. As he put it, there would be "nothing between the public and the animal but air space".

As each enclosure was finished, animals were put in to test it. The rhesus monkeys happily obliged by escaping, so the walls were built higher. One of the earliest features still standing is the Rustic Bridge, opened in 1915 over a natural gully. Its stone-studded walls were meant to look like an Italian grotto.

1916: How to move a zoo

Now to the part I most wanted to tell: the move. It happened over about six months in 1916, at the height of the First World War. Hundreds of animals and birds left the old cages at Moore Park and were walked, carted or carried through the streets to the harbour, then ferried across to Taronga. The newspapers called it a "miniature Noah's Ark".

Sydneysiders certainly noticed. One report described "mournful yells from hyenas, angry roars from lions and tigers, good-humored snorts from gigantic elephants hauling a veritable menagerie of wild beasts confined in cages" disturbing "the early morning serenity of Sydney streets". Centennial Parklands says Moore Park closed in July 1916, when the Taronga trustees took over all the staff and animals, believed to be 177 animals and 329 birds. By the end of 1916 Taronga held 228 mammals, 552 birds and 64 reptiles.

Jessie's walk across Sydney

The star of the move was Jessie. At around 4 tons (over 4,000 kilograms) she was by far the biggest animal to make the trip, and she did most of it on foot.

In the early hours of Sunday 24 September 1916, Jessie walked out of the Moore Park gates for the last time. Her home of more than 30 years was behind her. With her were three keepers, led by the head keeper, Mr Miller, and behind them in a car came Dr Robert Todd, one of the Taronga trustees. They led her along Dowling, Flinders, Bourke, Woolloomooloo and Palmer streets, across the Domain and down Macquarie Street to Bennelong Point, where the Opera House stands today.

It wasn't easy on her. Her feet got sore on the hard road, and she grew nervous in places, but "a pat on the shoulder, or a reassuring grip on her ear" kept her going through the narrow streets and over the tram lines. Along the way a horse pulling a milk cart took one look at her and bolted. You can only imagine the milkman's face.

At Bennelong Point a vehicle ferry, a punt, was waiting. This is where I want to be clear, because the story often gets muddled. Jessie wasn't lifted in a crate or towed on a barge. She walked on board the vehicle ferry herself. The Evening News of 25 September 1916 reported:

"With hardly any hesitation, Jessie walked on to the punt, and ran her trunk over the outer gate, as if inquiring whether she would remove the obstacle. A word from her keeper, and she stood as still as a rock during the trip down the harbour."

The trip took about 35 minutes. Two photographs of that morning survive, and they're my favourite pictures on this page. In the first, Jessie stands on the deck with her keepers in their caps and coats beside her.

Jessie standing on the deck of the vehicle ferry with her keepers on the trip across the harbour to Taronga, September 1916. Unknown photographer (Mosman Library), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting off was the tense bit. The pontoon at Taronga dipped alarmingly under her weight, but her keepers talked her through it and "she finally tip-toed across the pontoon and on to the wharf". By 7 am she'd been shown into her new home, an elephant house built to look like an Indian temple.

Jessie coming off the vehicular ferry on her way into the new zoo, 1916. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One small warning about these pictures. The caption on one of them on Wikimedia Commons says Jessie was "a gift from the King of Siam". She wasn't. That was Jumbo. Jessie was bought from the Calcutta Zoological Society. It's an easy mix-up, and it shows how the two elephants have blurred together in Sydney's memory.

The elephant house at Taronga in 1916, built to look like an Indian temple. This was Jessie's new home. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

NSW State Archives holds more than 100 glass-plate negatives of the final days of Moore Park and the early years of Taronga, and they've been digitised. Museums of History NSW used them in the "How to Move a Zoo" exhibition at the Museum of Sydney from 20 November 2021 to 24 April 2022. Many of the best pictures of the animals in transit are in that collection rather than on Wikimedia Commons, so I've listed where to find them in the sources.

The opening of Taronga Zoological Park

Before the official opening, the government offered every schoolchild in metropolitan Sydney a free day at the new zoo. It was partly advertising, but it also gave families a bit of joy in a grim wartime year. Between 100,000 and 120,000 children, with their mothers and little brothers and sisters, came over the following months. One reporter watched them charge up the hill, "spilling peanuts as they ran in a wild contest to reach the monkey cages first". He compared the scramble, in the way people did in 1916, to the charge up the hillside at Gallipoli.

The official opening came on 7 October 1916, when Premier William Holman opened Taronga Zoological Park before a crowd of invited guests. Taronga puts the attendance at about 1,200.

The official opening of the zoo, October 1916. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The entrance to Taronga Zoological Park in its first year, 1916. Government Printing Office / State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting there by ferry

From the very beginning the ferry was the way to get to Taronga, and it still is. Ferries brought crowds straight from Circular Quay to the wharf below the zoo. One of the photos below shows the ferry Kirawa at the zoo wharf in October 1916, the month the zoo opened. Families walked up the hill from the water, and later generations caught the tram or bus to the top gate.

The ferry Kirawa tied up at the zoo wharf in October 1916, the month Taronga opened. Unknown photographer (NSW State Archives), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Crowds arriving at Taronga Park, around 1916. Sam Hood / State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The early years

Jessie went straight back to work at Taronga, giving rides to generations of Sydney kids. She'd already been a hard worker at Moore Park. In six months of 1916 her rides there brought in £146 15s, about $15,000 in today's money, and she carried more than 35,000 people at a penny a ride. At Taronga the rides carried on for decades.

Elephant rides at Taronga in 1917. A penny a ride kept the zoo going for years. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Other attractions came along. The Aquarium opened in 1929 and quickly became one of the most popular parts of the zoo. The old photos show refreshment rooms, lawns and picnic spots, and Taronga became the place Sydney families went on a fine weekend.

Goodbye, Jessie

Jessie died at Taronga on Tuesday 26 September 1939, almost 56 years after she first came ashore at Millers Point. Sydney was genuinely sad to lose her. The next day the Sydney Morning Herald ran a photograph from her last birthday party and noted that more than 1,500,000 children had ridden on her back. That's a lot of happy kids from one gentle old elephant.

Sir Edward Hallstrom and King Kong

In 1941 Sir Edward Hallstrom was appointed a trustee, and he launched a review of exhibit design and animal welfare. In 1956 an Act of Parliament made the Taronga Zoological Park Trust a body corporate, which let it run more like a business.

Then in 1959 came Australia's first gorilla. Five-year-old "King Kong" arrived from California and moved into a purpose-built "Gorilla Villa". He was a sensation, and attendance went up 26 per cent to 914,000 in 1959–60.

Not every idea of that era aged well. In 1964 the seal pool was converted to hold dolphins, to compete with the marine parks of the day. Taronga's own history admits the dolphins did badly, with an average lifespan of less than a year.

A new era: from entertainment to conservation

The big turning point came in 1967. A critical review set Taronga on a new path, with scientific conservation, education and preservation taking priority over entertainment. New exhibits designed to hide the buildings in the landscape followed: the Platypus House (1968), the walk-through Rainforest Aviary (1970) and the Nocturnal House (1972), plus new waterholes.

The 1970s brought the zoo's first master plan (1970) and its first dedicated veterinary building (1971). Volunteers started in 1974, and the Education Centre and Friendship Farm opened in 1976. That same year the elephant rides and the merry-go-round stopped, and so did the miniature train and the monkey circus. For anyone who grew up riding an elephant at Taronga, that was the end of an era. It was the right call, though, and it marked the new focus on animal welfare. A new Seal Theatre opened in 1979, with the seals showing natural behaviours instead of tricks.

Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo

Bradleys Head is beautiful but steep and cramped, and big plains animals like elephants and antelope need room. As far back as 1965 Sir Edward Hallstrom wrote to the government about land for a "Living Zoo". Taronga's director Ronald Strahan took up the idea, and in 1972 the government announced Australia's first full-scale open-range zoo on an old World War II army camp just outside Dubbo.

Western Plains Zoo opened on 28 February 1977. It was officially opened by the NSW Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, and cost about $2.8 million. It was the first zoo built in Australia in 60 years, the first since Taronga itself, and the first designed on open-range lines, with concealed moats instead of fences. Today it's Taronga Western Plains Zoo, and you can drive, cycle or walk its 5-kilometre circuit.

The 1980s: Sky Safari and pandas

In 1982 Taronga imported thirteen Przewalski's horses for a breeding program, at a time when the species was close to extinction. The Australian Registry of Wildlife Health was founded at the zoo in 1985.

1987 was a big year. The Taronga Aerial Cabin Ride opened to carry visitors from the wharf up the steep hill to the top of the zoo. We came to know it as the Sky Safari. The same year a breeding program for the greater bilby began, and five joeys were born in its first six months.

Then for the Bicentenary in 1988, China lent Australia two giant pandas, and Taronga had them for a season. Taronga's own figures say 623,390 people came to see the pair in just three months. In 1989 Taronga became a founding member of the International Rhino Foundation, and it opened the first conservation and research centre in any Australasian zoo.

A zoo for a new century

In 2000 a 12-year, $250 million master plan began, with most of the money going to Taronga. The Backyard to Bush precinct opened in April 2003. Also in 2003, Taronga became the second zoo in Australia to breed the platypus.

The biggest and most argued-over project was bringing elephants back. Under the plan Taronga took five Asian elephants from Thailand for breeding and conservation. Activists in Thailand blockaded the trucks taking them to Bangkok's airport on 5 June 2006, but the elephants came anyway and moved into the Wild Asia precinct, which had opened in July 2005, in November 2006. At 3.04 am on 4 July 2009, Thong Dee gave birth to Luk Chai, the first elephant calf born in Australia. A second calf, Pathi Harn, whose name means "miracle", was born on 10 March 2010, two days after the zoo had announced he was probably dead. The Great Southern Oceans marine precinct opened in April 2008, and the same year the two zoos became Taronga Conservation Society Australia.

The elephant chapter at Bradleys Head has since closed. The last two elephants at Taronga Sydney, Pak Boon and Tang Mo, left in April 2025 for Monarto Safari Park in South Australia. Their old exhibit became the Rhino Reserve. Its first resident is Hari, a greater one-horned rhinoceros born at Dubbo in October 2021 and moved to Sydney in December 2025, who shares it with three water buffalo.

One hundred years

Taronga turned 100 in 2016 and celebrated with a parade through the city streets, a nice echo of Jessie's walk a century earlier. The 160-seat Centenary Theatre opened, and the zoo made a ten-year commitment to ten "Legacy Species": the bilby, koala, marine turtles, platypus, regent honeyeater and southern corroboree frog at home, and the Sumatran elephant, rhinoceros and tiger, sun bear and Sunda pangolin overseas.

More new precincts followed. Tiger Trek opened in August 2017. The Taronga Institute of Science and Learning, known as "The Hive" for its honeycomb design, was officially opened on 16 October 2018 by Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The Wildlife Retreat, where you can stay overnight, opened in October 2019, and the African Savannah precinct followed in June 2020. In August 2021 the lioness Maya gave birth to five cubs, the first lion litter at the zoo in 18 years. The Nura Diya Australia precinct opened in 2023, and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Centre in June 2024.

Bushfires, lockdowns and a lion scare

During the Black Summer fires of 2019–20, Taronga staff treated injured wildlife and gave displaced animals a safe place. When COVID closed both zoos, Taronga launched Taronga TV online. In 2021 ten greater bilbies bred at Dubbo were released into Sturt National Park, more than a century after bilbies were declared extinct in NSW.

Then there was the morning of 2 November 2022. At 6.40 am five lions, a male and four cubs, got out of their main enclosure through a hole in a fence. None got past the secondary fence, nobody was hurt, and the lions were back in their enclosure that morning, with one cub tranquillised. It made headlines around the world, but it never came close to being a disaster.

The Sky Safari: gone and coming back

The Sky Safari gondolas over the zoo, 2006. The first cable car ran from 1987 to January 2023. Simon_sees, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Sky Safari was updated in 2000 and gave us more than 30 years of gondola rides over the giraffes with the harbour spread out behind them. It closed on 31 January 2023 at the end of its working life. A $105 million replacement was approved by the NSW Government despite local objections about taller pylons, tree removal and harbour views. Sydney Zoo even lodged an objection on competition grounds. On 23 April 2026 Taronga announced that construction had begun. The new Sky Safari keeps the original 900-metre route, its bigger gondolas will take prams, wheelchairs and groups of up to ten, and a new lower station will link it better with the ferry wharf. Taronga is aiming for a late 2027 reopening, while other reports give 2027–28, and the zoo stays open during the works.

Conservation at Taronga today

The zoo that started out showing off lions in cages is now mostly about keeping species alive in the wild. A few recent examples from Taronga's own news in 2026:

• Northern corroboree frogs: In May 2026 about 700 Taronga-bred frogs were released into Brindabella National Park, the largest release of the species yet. The insurance population at Taronga was set up in 2010 and holds about 370 adult frogs.
• Southern corroboree frogs: In June 2026, marking 20 years of work on the species, Taronga released 1,450 eggs into Kosciuszko National Park.
• Christmas Island blue-tailed skinks: These skinks died out in the wild. In 2010 Parks Australia rescued 66 of them, and some went to Taronga. In September 2026, 123 skinks from Taronga travelled by air, road and sea to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for a release of 545 skinks onto Horsburgh Island.
• Regent honeyeaters: Taronga has worked on their recovery for more than 20 years. It has released more than 200 birds and helped plant over 30,000 trees in the Capertee Valley.
• Sanctuary One: Taronga's third site is a 3,050-hectare property on the North West Slopes of NSW, where it is restoring box-gum woodland.

Taronga Sydney now covers about 28 hectares and holds more than 5,000 animals of around 350 species. A new Taronga Wildlife Hospital, built on the old reptile house site, is due in 2027 to care for the zoo's own animals and for wildlife from across NSW.

Taronga Zoo ferry wharf in 2019. The ferry is still the best way to arrive. Mitch Ames, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 1879 – NSW Zoological Society formed.
• 1883 – Moore Park land (Billy Goat Swamp) granted. Jumbo arrives in July, and Jessie on 30 November aboard the Newcomen.
• 1884 – Zoological Gardens at Moore Park open to the public.
• 1902 – Bubonic plague in the animals closes the zoo for four months.
• 1903 – Albert Sherbourne Le Souef appointed secretary.
• 1905–06 – Site grows to 15 acres, and the lease is extended for 14 years.
• 1908 – Le Souef and Dr Robert Todd tour the world's zoos, including Hagenbeck's at Hamburg.
• 1911 – Charles Hedley argues for a zoo in Ashton Park, Mosman.
• 1912 – Bradleys Head site chosen and more than 40 acres set aside.
• 1915 – Rustic Bridge opens.
• 1916 – Moore Park closes in July and the animals move over the year. Jessie crosses the harbour on 24 September, and Premier Holman opens Taronga on 7 October.
• 1921 and 1928 – Sydney Girls High and Sydney Boys High built on the old zoo site.
• 1929 – Aquarium opens.
• 1939 – Jessie dies on 26 September.
• 1941 – Sir Edward Hallstrom appointed trustee.
• 1959 – King Kong, Australia's first gorilla, arrives.
• 1967 – Review turns the zoo towards conservation and education.
• 1968–72 – Platypus House, Rainforest Aviary and Nocturnal House built.
• 1976 – Elephant rides end, and the Education Centre and Friendship Farm open.
• 1977 – Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo, opens on 28 February.
• 1987 – Aerial Cabin Ride (Sky Safari) opens.
• 1988 – Bicentennial giant pandas visit.
• 2000 – $250 million master plan begins.
• 2006 – Asian elephants arrive from Thailand.
• 2008 – Great Southern Oceans opens, and the zoos become Taronga Conservation Society Australia.
• 2009 – Luk Chai, the first elephant born in Australia, arrives on 4 July.
• 2016 – Centenary, with a city parade and the Legacy Species commitment.
• 2018 – Institute of Science and Learning opens on 16 October.
• 2022 – Lion scare on 2 November.
• 2023 – Sky Safari retires on 31 January, and Nura Diya Australia opens.
• 2025 – Last elephants leave for Monarto in April, and Hari the rhino arrives in December.
• 2026 – New Sky Safari construction starts in April, alongside record frog and skink releases.

Visiting today

Do it the old way and catch the ferry from Circular Quay. It takes about 12 minutes to Taronga Zoo wharf, the same trip Jessie made in 1916, though she was on her feet the whole way. While the Sky Safari is being rebuilt you'll be walking up from the lower entrance, so wear good shoes because it's a steep hill. Buses also run to the top entrance: route 100 from the QVB, and route 238 from Balmoral, which links both entrances. Opening hours change with the seasons (9.30 am to 4.30 pm in winter and 9.30 am to 5 pm from September to April at last check), so look at taronga.org.au before you go.

If you want to see where it all began, walk up to the high schools on Moore Park. The remains of the old bear pit can still be seen within the grounds of Sydney Girls High. It's not open to the public, so check before you go. And if you're heading west, Taronga Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo is a cracking day out, with lots of room for the big animals.

Related posts on this blog

• Centennial Park And Queens Park – Sydney
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• Boronia House – Military Road – Mosman – NSW
• NSW Blue Plaques – Lower North Shore
• History Of Dubbo – New South Wales
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Sources

• Museums of History NSW (Anna), "The story of how to move a zoo": mhnsw.au/stories/general/story-how-move-zoo/. Cites: "Shifting an elephant", Evening News, 25 September 1916, p. 4; "Sydney's new zoo", The Leader (Melbourne), 7 October 1916, p. 51; "For the people", SMH, 21 July 1911, p. 6; "The old zoo and the new", SMH, 14 October 1916, p. 7; "100,000 children", SMH, 12 September 1916, p. 8; Taronga Zoological Park Trust Annual Report 1916; J. H. Prince, The First One Hundred Years of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW 1879–1979 (1979).
• Museums of History NSW, "Jessie the elephant": mhnsw.au/stories/general/jessie-elephant/
• Museums of History NSW, "Taronga Zoo" archives guide: mhnsw.au/guides/taronga-zoo/
• Museums of History NSW, "How to Move a Zoo" exhibition, Museum of Sydney, 2021–22: mhnsw.au/whats-on/exhibitions/how-move-zoo/
• "Arrival of the elephant for the zoological gardens" (1883), Trove: nla.gov.au/nla.news-article239270227
• Word Histories, "'more hide than Jessie': meaning and origin", quoting the Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1883, and the SMH, 27 September 1939: wordhistories.net/2021/02/10/more-hide-than-jessie/
• Centennial Parklands, "Moore Park Zoo's colourful history" (2018): centennialparklands.com.au
• City of Sydney Archives, "Zoological Gardens, Moore Park": archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1941760
• Taronga Conservation Society Australia, "Taronga History – Our Story": taronga.org.au/about/our-history
• Taronga media release, "Construction set to take off for Taronga's beloved Sky Safari", 23 April 2026: taronga.org.au
• Taronga media release, "Record Release of 842 Critically Endangered Corroboree Frogs in NSW", 18 May 2026: taronga.org.au
• Taronga media release, "Marking Taronga's 20 Years on the Frontline for one of Australia's Rarest Frogs", 19 June 2026: taronga.org.au
• Taronga media release, "Back from the brink of extinction – the great Christmas Island blue-tailed skink comeback", 21 September 2026: taronga.org.au
• Taronga, "Acting locally for global impact" (Sanctuary One), 22 May 2026: taronga.org.au
• Wikipedia, "Taronga Zoo Sydney": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taronga_Zoo_Sydney
• Wikipedia, "Taronga Western Plains Zoo": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taronga_Western_Plains_Zoo
• Daily Liberal (Dubbo), "Taronga Western Plains Zoo turns 40", 2017: dailyliberal.com.au
• NSW Department of Education, "Western Plains Zoo Dubbo – Locational factors": sites.google.com/education.nsw.gov.au
• NSW State Archives Collection: glass-plate negatives of Moore Park Zoo and early Taronga (see the MHNSW guide above).
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, from the State Library of NSW, the Royal Australian Historical Society, the Powerhouse Museum (Tyrrell Collection), NSW State Archives, Mosman Library and individual photographers, as credited under each picture.