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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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 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.
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.
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