Gangland by James Morton

Author:James Morton [Morton, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

Taking hostages

9

The death of James Robert ‘Pretty Boy’ Walker in Pentridge on 26 May 1954 was a curious affair. Whether gunman and standover man Walker actually died after a failed escape attempt as the newspapers suggested is open to question. At first the papers reported his death as an escape attempt, with warders shooting, when he and two offsiders made a break for it, but in reality it was nothing like that. One of ten children and generally regarded as one of the more formidable men of the post-Second World War Melbourne underworld—until he came up against Leslie ‘Scotland Yard’ Walkerden, that is—Walker shot himself in the head in his cell in B Division.

Suspected of the September 1937 shooting of Jerry Lynch in the Tophatters Club in Sydney’s Kings Cross, Walker was also in the frame for two other murders, but the worst thing on his record in his early years had been a sentence of two and a half years for the theft of a tray of jewellery in Lismore in northern New South Wales. Released in 1939 Walker, regarded as courteous, charming and cold-blooded in equal parts, moved to Melbourne at the outbreak of war as a gun for hire and debt enforcer, commanding high fees. In 1941 he opened his own baccarat school in a one-bedroom flat in Grey Street, East Melbourne, reckoning on profits of £100 a night. His partners included the treacherous James Coates, who was crooked enough to cheat his own school, and the club was regularly raided by the police and lasted only five months. After that Walker returned to the standover racket and was shot by Walkerden in the thigh.

Some weeks later, near the old Melbourne Hospital, he was shot once more by Walkerden. Walker dragged himself up the steps and, amazingly, survived. He had clothes smuggled into the hospital and went back to Sydney. On his return to Melbourne he was once more set up to be killed by Walkerden, in what was to have been a meeting of reconciliation in Lonsdale Street. Instead in a taxi-cab chase through Swan, Bourke and Russell streets, Walkerden opened fire in Little Collins, hitting the taxi in which Walker was travelling. Two of the bullets ricocheted into the wall of the King’s Hotel. Walker had the cab driver take him to Spencer Street Station and once more he padded back to Sydney. From there he took a job as a kitchen porter on the Queen Mary, which was being used as a troop ship. It would be some time before he ventured to Melbourne again.

By the time he did, in his absence his estranged wife Rita had taken up with the bully and standover man Tom Fogarty. It appears that on 17 March 1953 Walker was in Barkly Street, St Kilda, on other business when he heard a woman call out and realised it was his wife fleeing from Fogarty, who was threatening to kill her. Walker, conveniently armed with a shotgun, shot him in the stomach.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.