Tilly Devine was born Matilda Mary Twiss, in England during 1900. Her father was a poor bricklayer from London, and she spent her entire childhood living in the slums of the city. Wanting the finer things in life, Tilly broke rules so she could to go to plays and museums. Her role models were showgirls and oil paintings depicting women of ill-repute. To achieve her desires, Tilly became a prostitute at a young age. The money she made was used for nice clothing and jewelry, just like her role models. By fifteen she was arrested for the first time for solicitation. Prostitution was a hard life, and something she didn’t want as a lifetime career, so Tilly made a plan to escape to a better life.
Solicitations from England to Australia
Escape came in the form of a sketchy man by the name of ‘Big Jim’ Devine. Originally from Australia, ‘Big Jim’ had a checkered life starting as a sheep shearer. He ended up in England after going AWOL from his military unit. When Tilly met him, ‘Big Jim’ worked for the 4th Tunneling Company of the Australia Imperial Forces. They married when Tilly was seventeen and she got pregnant almost immediately. The baby died, but a son was born the following year. At this time ‘Big Jim’ left Tilly and headed back to Australia. Not wanting to be without him, Tilly gave her son to her parents, and solicited until she made enough money to follow ‘Big Jim’ to Australia. She got to Australia and again fell on her old career to live in her new country. It didn’t take long for ‘Big Jim’ and Tilly to become the popular couple of the Sydney underground.
The Queen of the Night
The abuse ‘Big Jim’ dished out to Tilly only hardened her to further her own desires of being a business woman. In five years, Tilly was arrested over seventy times. To change her lifestyle, Tilly decided that at twenty-five, she needed to stop whoring and open her own brothel. It was against the law for men to open brothels, but being a women, she saw the chance and grabbed it. Eventually she was making enough money to own and operate over twenty brothels on her own.
As Tilly got older, her personality got more outrageous. In her environment, Tilly swore to great excess, fought everyone and anyone, and drank heavily. As she mingled with Sydney’s upper crust, she owned the best that money could buy, dressing in the latest fashions, and giving money to poor children. To amass her fortune, Tilly set up a system of three different levels of her working women. The top prostitutes serviced the elite of the city. The middle class prostitutes aided the working men. The lowest class did their duties wherever they could find a spot. When the women weren’t doing their nightly trades, they were pressed into pick-pocketing during the day.
Competition in the Sydney Underground
Due to the fact that the police force were her regular customers, the law usually left Tilly alone. But the law worked in other ways. Restrictions on liquor and guns made it difficult for her to stay out of trouble. Being a madam, Tilly needed her ‘marks’ to be loose. Her rival, Kate Leigh, supplied the public with alcohol and cocaine. What made them rivals was the fact that both wanted to be the head of the Sydney underground. Kate would use women to sell her wares, and Tilly would get even by getting her gang to cut up Kate’s girls. Their gangs would fight bloody turf wars which as a result left many people dead. After years of gang warfare, Tilly and Kate ended up fighting propaganda wars. In the end, Kate was accepted for her wares of booze and drugs, and Tilly was not openly accepted for her work in illegal sex.
Tilly finally divorced ‘Big Jim’, and married a merchant seaman. He was able to see beyond her checkered past, and even helped pay for a trip to England to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. After her trip, due to tax evasion, the law caught up to Tilly and forced her to sell her brothels and jewelry to pay the debts off. Two years later, her husband died, leaving her to once again fend for herself. By the time she died of cancer years after her husband, Tilly was a penniless degenerate. Wanting to be the center of attention her whole life, in the end, Tilly was a mere afterthought.
Sources
- Stradling, Jan. (2008). Bad Girls: The Most Powerful, Shocking, Amazing, Thrilling & Dangerous Women of all Time. New York, New York: Metro Books.
- Writer, Larry. (2002). Razor: A True Story of Slashers, Gangsters, Prostitutes and Sly Grog. Sydney, Australia: Pan MacMillan.
Maureen Zieber - I currently hold a Bachelor's Degree in World History, and Women's Studies, with a minor in Anthropology from the University of Delaware, ...
