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Satanic Tomatoes and Other Weird Details Not Taught in History Class

Khalid Elhassan July 4, 2020 33 min

South Lawn - Goat — Wilson's sheep. Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

2. Crutch Fu

The Crutchy Push’s leader, Valentine Keating. Daily Mercury

The brand of crutch fu practiced by the Crutchy Push enabled them to rule the streets of Melbourne from 1895 to 1905. They earned their way with strong-armed robberies and extortions, demanding drink, food, and money, from pubs, shops, and members of the public. They viciously defended their turf against rival gangs, and encroached on the turf of others with impunity.

They Crutchy Push took on all comers – including the cops. In 1898, the one-legged gangsters were involved in a sprawling brawl, and when the police arrived to quell the disturbance, the Crutchies turned on them as well. Their leader, Valentine Keating, knocked down a constable, but when his colleagues tried to arrest, they were astonished at just how fast a one-legged man could move. As one of them testified in court about his failure to catch Keating: “he was off like a flying kangaroo – although he goes on crutches“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.