T
Tania Admin
Places like this have such an atmosphere and perk so much curiosity. I love all my True Crime and forensic investigation books and the reading how it all began and unravelled. This is definitely somewhere I could spend hours wandering and contemplating.
At the edge of one of Sydney’s most sun-drenched tourist hotspots, the ferry port of Circular Quay, a handsome yet unassuming building lures curious visitors away from busking circus refuse and the constant stream of didgeridoo techno to reveal the darker side of the city’s past. Past the spiked iron gates and through the sandstone-block archways lurk traces of Sydney and New South Wales’ seedy underbelly of crime, violence, and gangsters from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
The Justice & Police Museum features a magistrates court, a recreated police charge room and remand cells. There is also a gallery of mug shots of Sydney's early criminals and a variety of weapons used during those early years.
For those who like the gruesome and the macabre, details on notorious crimes such as the Shark Arm Murder, the Pyjama Girl Case and the Graeme Thorne Kidnapping as well as original objects gathered from an assortment of legendary bushrangers, are on display.
The criminals who are known to researchers and whose artefacts are on display range from notorious bushrangers of New South Wales – among them Captain Moonlite, a precursor to Ned Kelly – to bootleggers known as "sly groggers" to old-world urban crime lords. Most surprising are the women who dominated this sordid scene, none more ruthlessly than Kate Leigh (1881-1964). This stout, middle-aged lady was no seductive femme fatale, but became the most powerful "vice queen" of the 1920s and 30s with an empire of illegal liquor and stolen goods and a penchant for shocking violence, the members of her gang wielding cut throat razors as standard issue (several of which are held at the museum).
Other women encountered in these corridors committed heinous crimes on a domestic level. The sweet, neighbourly granny Caroline Grills laced her irresistible baked goods with rat poison before offering them to her family and friends; see the bottle of Thall-Rat in the display cabinet. In 1889, Louisa Collins ("The Borgia of Botany") became the last woman to be hanged in New South Wales after poisoning two unsatisfactory husbands in succession; an execution hood sets this scene. Women crop up as victims, too, such as the "Pyjama Girl," a young woman found burned up in a ditch in 1934 with nothing to identify her but her exotic yellow silk jammies. Then there is Linda Agostini’s death mask and the photos of her face with its gaping, bloody bullet-wound make for a chilling contrast with the serene expression of the blonde in the reconstructed police sketch. The zinc bath in which her body had been stored and publicly exhibited for identification purposes is also among the artefacts from this case. And who could forget the falsely convicted Lindy Chamberlain and her quintessentially Australian "a dingo ate my baby" defense? She crops up here too.
At the edge of one of Sydney’s most sun-drenched tourist hotspots, the ferry port of Circular Quay, a handsome yet unassuming building lures curious visitors away from busking circus refuse and the constant stream of didgeridoo techno to reveal the darker side of the city’s past. Past the spiked iron gates and through the sandstone-block archways lurk traces of Sydney and New South Wales’ seedy underbelly of crime, violence, and gangsters from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
The Justice & Police Museum features a magistrates court, a recreated police charge room and remand cells. There is also a gallery of mug shots of Sydney's early criminals and a variety of weapons used during those early years.
For those who like the gruesome and the macabre, details on notorious crimes such as the Shark Arm Murder, the Pyjama Girl Case and the Graeme Thorne Kidnapping as well as original objects gathered from an assortment of legendary bushrangers, are on display.
The criminals who are known to researchers and whose artefacts are on display range from notorious bushrangers of New South Wales – among them Captain Moonlite, a precursor to Ned Kelly – to bootleggers known as "sly groggers" to old-world urban crime lords. Most surprising are the women who dominated this sordid scene, none more ruthlessly than Kate Leigh (1881-1964). This stout, middle-aged lady was no seductive femme fatale, but became the most powerful "vice queen" of the 1920s and 30s with an empire of illegal liquor and stolen goods and a penchant for shocking violence, the members of her gang wielding cut throat razors as standard issue (several of which are held at the museum).
Other women encountered in these corridors committed heinous crimes on a domestic level. The sweet, neighbourly granny Caroline Grills laced her irresistible baked goods with rat poison before offering them to her family and friends; see the bottle of Thall-Rat in the display cabinet. In 1889, Louisa Collins ("The Borgia of Botany") became the last woman to be hanged in New South Wales after poisoning two unsatisfactory husbands in succession; an execution hood sets this scene. Women crop up as victims, too, such as the "Pyjama Girl," a young woman found burned up in a ditch in 1934 with nothing to identify her but her exotic yellow silk jammies. Then there is Linda Agostini’s death mask and the photos of her face with its gaping, bloody bullet-wound make for a chilling contrast with the serene expression of the blonde in the reconstructed police sketch. The zinc bath in which her body had been stored and publicly exhibited for identification purposes is also among the artefacts from this case. And who could forget the falsely convicted Lindy Chamberlain and her quintessentially Australian "a dingo ate my baby" defense? She crops up here too.
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but sydney has some great spots like this