McElhone Place part 2

Charles Touma here continuing the story I started last week about one of the most visually attractive lanes in Surry Hills, McElhone Place, known by the locals as “cat alley”. Last week I talked about how Terence McElhone arrived on a convict ship in 1819 and built a business empire that included a row of workers cottages on what is now known as McElhone Place. Then his son John, a politician who enjoyed a punch up inside parliament, built two-storey brick houses alongside. When John passed away in 1898, the family retained the properties until 1916 when Terence’s daughter, Mary, passed away. Her nephew, William, then inherited the property portfolio. William became a senior partner in the law firm, McElhone and Company, and became Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1922. He was a founding member of the Australian Board of Cricket Control and was awarded an MBE in 1920. He decided to sell off the properties in the 1920s and they were bought by a lady in 1925 by the name of Teresa Alice Taylor.

Now Teresa was a piece of work! She became known as the most famous pickpocket. She was convicted 13 times and spent four years in jail. She was very cunning, for example, she specialised in robbing drunken sailors by replacing rolls of bank notes in their pockets with a roll of brown paper as they staggered back to their ships after a big night on the terps. Often the sailors would set off in their ships before realising, hence the main witness was not available to testify in court. She accumulated a vast range of assets financed by her criminal activity that also included robbing local construction sites for their timber which she reused for her own construction projects. However, her final arrest happened while she was collecting rents from her properties in Surry Hills. Fast forward to the 1950s and all properties on McElhone Place were now individually owned. A development application to construct a gas station by the Vacuum Oil Company on the parcel of land including 1 to 5 McElhone, was knocked back.

In 1968, Sydney Council planned to demolish the entire McElhone as well as part of Bennett Street to build a large block of flats, similar to the ones in Northcott Place in Redfern, though eventually this was canned because negotiating with 33 different property owners was just put in the “too hard basket”. Local historian, John Ross, has written an absolutely amazing publication on the history of McElhone Place, which I’m going to include in the link below. It’s a fantastic spot and it’s a really good example of what can happen when a creative community comes together. The official street record for McElhone Place is number 28, which sold for $1.5 million, bearing in mind, it previously changed hands for $230,000 in 1998! I hope you found the McElhone Place story interesting. I’ve earned my living from this area over 20 years and I’m passionate about keeping these amazing local stories alive. My name’s Charles Touma, and my office on Thurlow Street is always open for you to come in and have a chat.