Ellen Anstead, aka, Cranky Bella, a Melbourne historical criminal
In and out of jail and with a temper to rival any crook, Cranky Bella was not someone you wanted to meet in the dark alleys off the infamous Little Lon.
Victoria
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There was once a little city nook where devious Melburnians could get anything they wanted.
Nicknamed Bilking Square (bilking means stealing by deception) it was a criminal hotspot that even police were shy to enter.
On one side of the square was Juliet Terrace where women of the night worked even during the day.
On the other side was Romeo Lane where you could hire a man for the same job.
But if you found yourself in the square in the wee hours, you might get more than you bargained for.
Robberies were standard, stabbings were frequent and pickpocketing was an art.
And the queen of the lot was Cranky Bella.
Five-foot-nothing with a scowl forged of a hard childhood on the goldfields, Bella would have won a swag of gold medals if nicking wallets were an Olympic sport.
Her real name, Ellen Anstead, was forgotten in that hellish little hovel.
But her devilish methods and unwavering criminal mind made her one of the most prominent crooks in the city.
Queen of the slum
After a rough upbringing in Ballarat, Ellen Anstead had established a life in Melbourne by the 1880s.
The tiny-framed woman found selling her body spun a decent income.
Especially if she could nick a bit extra.
Stealing from her customers was delightfully easy, especially since no gentleman would want to report a theft in a brothel to police.
But soon the art of lightening pockets became her main game at Juliet Terrace, part of Melbourne’s burgeoning Little Lon slum district.
Her early method was to work with a female accomplice.
Bella would approach gentlemen on Melbourne streets and bump into them, using her lightning-fast little fingers to fleece them of whatever was in their coats.
The loot would then be quickly passed to the accomplice who would abscond.
If accused, Bella could be searched head to toe and nothing would be found.
By 1900 Cranky Bella, so-called because of her outrageous temper, was heralded as Melbourne’s most talented and dangerous pickpocket.
The number of victims probably piled into the thousands.
Convictions, too, came thick and fast.
Having done multiple stints in prison, including Melbourne Gaol, Cranky Bella returned to her criminal habits like a bee to honey.
In 1901 she returned to prison with hard labour for four years after a larceny conviction for pickpocketing.
Scarcely out of jail for a year, she was sent back for 12 months after more pickpocketing.
She did another three and a half years with hard labour from 1907 for, you guessed it, pickpocketing.
Her later method involved carrying an open newspaper and purposefully walking into pedestrians, taking their valuables during the brief encounter.
The goods would then be hidden in the newspaper and whisked away.
In one particularly ambitious case, when Bella nicked a whopping £100 from a hawker at the Juliet Terrace brothel, she immediately fled Melbourne to avoid suspicion.
She was later arrested in the bush and according to a newspaper report, was characterised by police as “being the companion of the lowest order of thieves”.
Her temper never ebbed.
Whenever confronted, so the legend goes, she let out all sorts of foul and loud accusations against her accuser, often leading to the men letting her go.
If physically detained, she could use those little fists to alarming effect.
Romeo and Juliet
Bella kept up her tricks into her later years.
Mugshots held by the Public Records Office of Victoria show Anstead, sometimes known as Anstice, gradually ageing as the criminal life wore her down.
After her eleventh conviction in 1911, she was one of just three Melburnians to be declared a habitual criminal under special new laws.
Her final sentence had her sent to the big house for three years, then to a reformatory prison for as long as the governor pleased.
Cranky Bella faded from the record in the late 1910s and took her last breath sometime in the 1920s, aged in her 70s.
Bilking Square was eventually demolished and built over, when the government moved to eradicate Melbourne’s slum pockets.
Juliet Terrace and Romeo Lane had gathered such a bad reputation, local authorities had to rename the streets.
They are now Liverpool St and Crossley St, running between Bourke St and Little Bourke St.
So the story goes, when Whelan the Wrecker came to tear down the ramshackle buildings around Bilking Square, a trove of fake jewellery was unearthed - a reminder of the square’s sordid past.
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