This is what he said to the newspapers.

I went down there this morning looking for excitement

and I asked the police for a real gun to take a chance on him.

Then I jumped in right close and pumped the rest of the gun into his head

to save a trial and expense.

The history of Sydney's Surrey Hills is in many ways typical of inner-city suburbs around Australia.

Today it's a trendy, expensive enclave full of restaurants, galleries and extravagant renovations.

A hundred years ago though, Surrey Hills was a slum, populated by newly arrived immigrants from all over the world. It heaved under the pressures of overcrowding

and poverty. We're joined on Australian True Crime today by our friend Michael Adams from the

Forgotten Australia podcast for a story from early 20th century, Surrey Hills,

a place unrecognisable from our modern perspective, but all too real only a hundred years ago.

This is Australian true crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this

podcast is created, the Wurundri Woi Wurang people of the Koolan Nation. And a warning, this episode of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundri Woi Warang people of the Kulin Nation.

And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Surrey Hills was called in one of the newspapers at the time,

a discreditable rookery. A rookery is kind of

like a slimy place that's filled with birds that poo everywhere. So it really was,

it really was a slum. Even by Sydney standards, it was considered a disgrace. Why was that?

Because I know, you know, obviously nobody in Australia had sort of indoor plumbing or things like that at that stage.

So what made Surrey Hills a shameless rookery?

Well, it was working class.

So there was, you know, classism right there.

...