Terry Street, Surry Hills

Gday Charles Touma here. Now it’s well known that in the 1920s Surry Hills was a brutal area but i’ve been digging around to see how brutal. May Smith who was a dressmaker that lived on Terry Street, witnessed the carnage from her front window as she worked. As a witness in court over a murder, she said that stabbings and other acts of violence were a frequent occurence. She told the court that if she were to report every criminal act she witnessed she would get no work done. She worked at her sewing machine with a gun by her side. In court she went onto say that as bad as Terry Street was, at her previous Surry Hills home on Upton Street, somebody would get choked out at her back gate every evening. Smith said she moved house as she couldn’t stand the constant gurgling sounds. Upton Street was part of the Brisbane Street slum area that was cleared in 1924 eventually becoming what is now Harmony Park.

People simply had to resort to crime as a means of survival in a bleak era when brothels, sly-grog shops and illegal gambling dens were all over Surry Hills.
Terry Street was described in the Sun Newspaper at the time as “a mysterious shadowy lane”. Sophia Street ran into Terry Street and was another very dark street at night where the classic local caper was to hide in the shadows then trip an unfortunate pedestrian over, hit him a few times and take his cash. Charles Kennedy got a lot worse. The poor bloke had just had a good win on the horses and pocketed his winnings but he was followed and shot dead in the back of his head and robbed by Frederick Reardon and his Sister Esther Eggers in Sophia Street in 1922. May Smith knew Eggers and Reardon well, she said she must have witnessed over 20 assaults by the pair. Dark times but that’s how Surry Hills was. My name’s Charles Touma and my office on Thurlow Street is always open for you to come in and have a chat.