Australian Desperadoes: The Incredible Story of How Australian Gangsters Terrorised California

by Terry Smyth

Overview

The Coves—San Francisco's first organized-crime gang—were Australians: men and women with criminal careers in Australia who had come to the US, mostly illegally, during the gold rush. The Coves had come not to dig for gold but to unleash a crime wave the likes of which America had never seen. Robbery, murder, arson, and extortion were the Coves' stock-in-trade, and it was said that the leader of the gang, Jim Stuart, had killed more men than any man in California. The streets of San Francisco became a battlefield as the Coves and the vigilantes fought for control of the city, with gunfights and lynchings almost daily spectacles as the police stood idly by. Jim Stewart was arrested in Sacramento for killing a sheriff, but escaped to be involved in one the most celebrated cases of mistaken identity in the annals of American crime. When the smoke cleared, the Coves' reign of terror was over.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143782377
Publisher:	Penguin Random House Australia
Publication date:	04/01/2018
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Terry Smyth is an award-winning journalist, playwright, scriptwriter, and songwriter. He has worked as a builder’s laborer, steel worker, cotton mill hand, psychiatric nurse, professional musician, and advertising copywriter. He is the author of Australian Confederates and Denny Day.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Introduction: Dos Eldorados 1

1 A kind of mania 7

2 'What a great misfortune' 11

3 The veneration of Saint Barbara 18

4 From the ends of the Earth 32

5 Oranges and leg-irons 40

6 A red-letter day 45

7 Oliver is in town 50

8 No luck with pick and shovel 60

9 Sainted women and painted ladies 66

10 Latter-Day Sam 71

11 Kangaroo courts 77

12 Who killed Charlie Moore? 81

13 Fanning the flames 86

14 'Fie upon your laws!' 89

15 'One vast sheet of flame' 98

16 'Something must be done' 103

17 Comings and goings 110

18 'Speedy and terrible vengeance' 119

19 The grocer's apologia 127

20 The wrong man 131

21 The Night Watch 134

22 Ecce homo 140

23 Deeper and deeper 144

24 Law and disorder 152

25 A 'quiet and orderly' occasion 162

26 The hangman's banner 168

27 Close but no cigar 177

28 Pillars of propriety 194

29 Chasing the wily Cove 200

30 Never a kind word 205

31 Flash and counter-flash 216

32 Osiris rising 222

33 Better angels 226

34 A scattering of Coves 231

35 What goes around … 239

36 Showgirls and charlatans 244

37 Turnabout 247

38 The man in the white hat 259

39 Unlucky last 267

Notes 273

References 291

Acknowledgements 299

Index 301