Sydney’s forgotten ‘Cocaine Queen’ May Smith vanishes from history books

A witness to one of Sydney’s oldest cold cases, madam May Smith, was later arrested by our first female detective. She was jailed and then disappeared from public records — and from memory.

She ran a sly grog operation and brothel from her terrace in Surry Hills and operated at the same time as the infamous underworld figures Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh.

At her height, she was known as Sydney’s Cocaine Queen. But by 1929, May Smith was sentenced to Long Bay Gaol for a year and disappeared from public records and, so it would seem, from memory.

Smith is the forgotten Cocaine Queen of Sydney’s Razor Gang years, says true crime historian Elliot Lindsay who delved deep into Smith’s story for his tour guide company, Murders Most Foul.

He discovered the tough Surry Hills madam, also known as Botany May, was also implicated in a murder that happened in viewing distance of her home at 25 Terry St and which is one of Sydney’s oldest cold case murders, occurring almost 100 years ago to the day.

“She may not have been as prominent as Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, but she was just as active and just as infamous as them in their time,” Lindsay says.

“But after she went to jail in January 1929, I cannot find a single mention of her name in newspaper archives or any public records.

“She just disappears.”

May Smith, alias Botany May’, was an infamous drug dealer and madam.

On June 17, 1922, Ashfield porter Francis Charles Kennedy, 45, was reportedly collecting his winnings from a bookie in Surry Hills.

His body was later found at the loading dock to the Schweppes factory on Sophia St, Surry Hills, a gold watch, chain, ring and his winnings had been stolen and his skull was smashed. A broken beer bottle lay beside his body.

A few days later, on June 21, May Smith came forward to say she saw two people assault Kennedy – Esther Eggers and her career criminal brother, Frederick Reardon. They were arrested and charged with the murder.

At a coronial inquest, Smith claimed she saw Kennedy on the corner of Foveaux and Terry streets from her terrace balcony on the night he was murdered. She claimed she saw Eggers with her arm around his waist and that Reardon hit him over the head with an unopened beer bottle and that Kennedy fell to the ground.

Scene of the murder of Francis Charles Kennedy.

When she looked 20 minutes later, his body was gone and later again she saw Kennedy standing on the corner with a policeman.

At the coronial inquest, the defence solicitor for Eggers and Reardon raised the question of Smith’s apparent underworld dealings, saying, “Isn’t your house well known to the police as one used for immoral purposes?” and asked Smith why she took three days to report the assault, questioning her reliability as a witness.

She replied: “If I were to report all the assaults and robberies I see, I would continually be going to the police station.”

The coroner committed Eggers and Reardon to stand trial for the murder. But before the trial began on September 4, the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Lindsay wondered if Smith’s unreliable evidence was part of the reason.

“What really happened on that night in June?” Lindsay asks.

“Kennedy had been drinking that night and would have had to acquire his drinks from a sly-grog shop as it was after 6pm. Several sly-grog stores operated out of Terry St and Kennedy’s body was found within the line of vision from Smith’s Terry St window that looked right up Sophia St.

Terry St in Surry Hills today, looking towards Sophia St where the murder of Francis Charles Kennedy took place.

“Could Botany May have been covering up a crime committed by someone else and blaming two local dopey crims she didn’t like?”

Several years later, Smith found herself back in court; this time she sat in the dock charged with dealing cocaine, which had been made illegal in 1925.

She had been arrested in December 1928 after months of surveillance of her Terry St terrace by renowned female detective Lillian Armfield, who had noted several women whom she described as drug-addicted prostitutes visiting the property at all hours.

In January 1929, Smith was sentenced to the State Reformatory for Women at Long Bay for 12 months.

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PIONEER OF THE FORCE

Born in Mittagong in 1884, Lillian May Armfield joined the NSW police force in 1915 after several years as a nurse at the infamous Callan Park Hospital for the Insane.

She became the first Australian female detective and was later recognised as a pioneer in the force.

She was renowned for trying to counsel young women caught up in the prostitution-cocaine cycle of the inner city razor gangs in the 1920s.

She retired from the police force in 1949 aged 65 and died in 1971 aged 86. Author Leigh Straw released a biography on her in 2018.

FREUD’S ‘MAGICAL CURE’

Cocaine has been used throughout history to relieve pain and inflammation and for conditions as varied as fatigue, depression and even sexual impotence.

In 1884, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud published a paper endorsing the benefits of cocaine, a natural substance derived from coca leaves, calling it a “magical” cure and it was an ingredient in the early versions of Coca Cola, but removed by 1903 when the damaging effects became evident.

In Australia, cocaine was dispensed over the counter by pharmacists until it became illegal in 1925, which pushed the sale of the drug underground.