Click on the image above to see a map of Sydney showing famous crime locations. Then click on any blue marker to find out more.
Perce Galea was major owner of illegal casinos from the 1950s to the 1970s. By the late 1960s were fourteen well-appointed casinos around the inner city where all sorts of people rubbed shoulders to play roulette and other games. The owners made huge profits, some of which was paid to police… Keep Reading
Although less well known than some criminals, Anderson – known as “Paddles” because of his big feet – was the closest Sydney had to a criminal boss of bosses. Born in 1915, he maintained a low public profile but informed observers say he was the first among equals from the… Keep Reading
It might seem odd to include policemen among Sydney’s top 20 organised crime figures, but to do otherwise would leave a large gap. For years it was argued corrupt police were only a “few bad apples” and it would be wrong to characterise the police culture as corrupt. But the… Keep Reading
The most popular activity to be made illegal in Sydney was gambling. The Gaming and Betting Act of 1906, and the Police Offences Act two years later, ensured that people who persisted in one of Australia’s most common forms of recreation, betting on horses away from the track, were now… Keep Reading
There was little organised crime in Sydney in the nineteenth century, because there was little to organise. But in the first decades of the twentieth century, in response to pressure from churches and other groups concerned with morality, parliament passed a series of laws outlawing or restricting activities that had… Keep Reading
The boom in sly grog trading continued for almost a decade after the war. Continuing beer shortages and 6 p.m. closing regulations perpetuated some of the conditions which had made illegal liquor operations so lucrative during the war. Finding enforcement of sly grog laws enormously unpopular and difficult, some senior… Keep Reading
During World War II all of Sydney’s established vice trades flourished. Sydney was just emerging from the decade of the Depression, markedly worse there than in other Australian cities, when it experienced the shock of unprecedented affluence during World War II. As rear-area base and chief recreation area for several… Keep Reading
If SP operations grew during the 1930s, the sly grog trade remained a constant source of illicit income and standover revenues. Phil ‘The Jew’ Jeffs, the leading survivor of the 1920s, became Sydney’s most prominent sly grog trader during the 1930s. Unlike Kate Leigh, Jeffs went into temporary hiding during… Keep Reading
THE END OF THE COCAINE TRADE As chemists were gradually coerced into withdrawing from the illicit cocaine trade [by the 1929 Consorting Clause], the Drug Bureau and Customs worked to break up the smuggling and criminal distribution networks. By the mid-1930s police efforts began to have an impact on the… Keep Reading
During the half-century since organized crime first established itself in Sydney there have been only two periods of prolonged and intense gang warfare — the razor gang wars covering the years 1927-30 and the syndicate executions of 1966-8. And of the two, the razor gang era was by far the… Keep Reading
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