Surry Hills

This guide to Surry Hills in Sydney follows Kate Leigh, the self-styled grandmother who ran the neighborhood's illegal grog shops and brothels through the 1920s and 1930s, and the crowded slum that grew up around a land grant to a soldier named Joseph Foveaux in the 1790s. It traces her rise alongside her rival Tilly Devine, the razor gangs that replaced guns after firearms were restricted in 1927, and Riley Street's reputation as Sydney's worst street. By 1891, nearly thirty thousand people were packed into this same warren of streets.