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Women That Left Their Mark Throughout History

Khalid Elhassan August 4, 2020 34 min

36. Taking on the Razor War Leaders

lillian armfield the razor gang wars — Screenshot from the movie “Deadhouse: Tales of Sydney Morgue”. Night Writers

As her encounter with the crazed May Smith revealed, Lillian Armfield did not need a weapon to be a badass and shine as Sydney’s best cop. In the 1920s, the city was wracked by The Razor Gang Wars. As the name states, they were gang wars fought largely by razors: in the 1920s, new laws imposed severe penalties for carrying concealed firearms, so criminals switched to razors.

Lillian Armfield, seated at the head of the table, at the Criminal Investigations Branch in Sydney. Justice and Police Museum

Sydney’s biggest razor gangs were headed by a pair of female crime bosses who loathed each other: Kate Leigh, AKA the Sly-Grog (unlicensed bar) Queen, and Tilly Devine, AKA the Queen of Woolloomooloo. The crime queens fought each other with all available tools, with goons slashing each other in the streets, snitching on rivals to the police, and conducting PR campaigns by bribing journalists to portray them in the best light possible while vilifying their foe. Lillian Armfield took on and wrecked both.

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.