Free Gangland Robbers by James Morton Page B

then to wear when he wasrepairing his car. The instrument that the prosecution said was for opening safes was his own invention and as he had taken out patent rights, while he did not feel obliged to explain what it was for, he would say that it was not intended for dishonest purposes. He thought the story that Constable Donald Beatty had been shot at and that a bullet had struck his police whistle was quite wrong. Ryan was, however, convicted at a retrial, and the prosecutor indicated he was considering applying to have him declared an habitual criminal. Instead, he received a twenty-eight month sentence .
    In October 1932, however, Ryan , now called Cleman, was sentenced to five years after shooting at a man who tried to stop him when he attempted to drive off without paying for petrol in Subiaco, Perth. In September 1938, along with Thomas Wood and Ernest Dawson, he was charged with the robbery of a Gingin store. He was also suspected of being involved in more robberies and to be quite prepared to shoot if he saw fit. Claiming he had been fitted up, not by the police but by the prosecution’s other witnesses, he received three years.
    By the outbreak of World War II, Ryan was now in his fifties and had racked up sentences totalling forty-three years, believed to be an Australian record. Then, thirty years after the Eveleigh robbery, he returned to Kate Leigh’s life. He had been making models of ships to be raffled for the war effort and sent them to her in Sydney. One of them raised £150. He and Leigh, now the brothel-owning Queen of Darlinghurst, began corresponding and in 1942 he sent her a painting he had done, showing Christ outside Fremantle Gaol, holding a black lamb named Shiner. The same year it was announced he would be marry ing Mrs Kate Leigh, described in the
Daily News
as a ‘prominent social worker’, which was one way of putting it. The wedding was scheduled to take place at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. ‘Nothing but the best will do for the wedding.’
    Unsurprisingly, since Ryan was still in prison, nothing came of this, and it was not until his release in 1947 that he went to Sydney, where his and Kate’s engagement was announced shortly after she and the press met his plane. The wedding took place in Fremantle on 18 January 1950; he in a fawn double-breasted suit and green fedora; and she in a delphinium-blue gown with silver beading, with a black veil, white gloves and nylons.
    It would be pleasant to record that these two old villains found happiness but this would not be accurate. They returned to Sydney, where Ryan pined for Western Australia. He stuck it out for three weeks and was off back west. A short time later, she tried to claim £3 a week maintenance, a gesture he resisted, saying he would rather go to prison, where he would at least get treatment for his asthma.
    In semi-retirement, Ryan ran a radio repair shop in Fremantle; threw parties for children, at which he blew up condoms to serve as balloons; repaired instruments for the Salvation Army band; and provided trainers with ‘jiggers’ to improve the running of their horses. He died on 27 June 1957, and the mayor of Fremantle, Sir Frederick Samson, was one of his pallbearers. On his death, Kate Leigh paid him his due tribute. He was, she said, a brilliant man who could open any lock with a wire coathanger and his hands behind his back. A little poem also appeared for him in the Sydney papers:
    Â 
    Shiner, we cannot clasp our hands sweetheart
    Thy face I cannot see
    But let this token tell
    I still remember thee.
    Â 
    He was buried in the Anglican division of Fremantle Cemetery. The plot and the grave were also paid for by Kate Leigh.

Squizzy Taylor’s Cohorts
5
    Quite apart from minor hold-ups —such as the time he organised the bail-up of a poker game and then doublecrossed the victims in the negotiations for the return of their stolen jewellery—the bludger police pimp,