Gender:
Female
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BiographyHistory
Most Referenced Works
Notes
-
Other works by Leigh Straw not individually indexed include:
The Ballroom Murder (Fremantle Press 2022)
Personal Awards
- 2018 joint winner Margaret Medcalf Award for After the War: Returned Soldiers and the Mental and Physical Scars of World War 1 (Monograph published by UWA Publishing)
Awards for Works
-
y
The Ballroom Murder
Fremantle
:
Fremantle Press
,
2022
26583050
2022
single work
biography
'The Ballroom Murder is a true crime story that gripped Perth nearly 100 years ago, and demonstrates the power of the press and privilege in an extraordinary judicial outcome.
'In August 1925, Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiance, Cyril Gidley, in full view of hundreds of guests at a charity ball in Perth's Government House. When she was arrested, she still held the gun in her hand. It was a open and shut case of wilful murder - that is until Jacob assigned prosecutor Arthur Haynes to her defence.
'His ability to play the press and the jury for sympathy would lead to a sensational result. Not only did Jacob escape the gallows, she was found not guilty of Gidley's murder. Straw, the author of a number of books about notable Australian female criminals, tells a story that is rich with first-hand newspaper accounts from the day.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
- 2023 longlisted Davitt Award — Best True Crime Book
-
y
The Petticoat Parade : Madam Monnier and the Roe Street Brothels
Fremantle
:
Fremantle Press
,
2021
21861016
2021
single work
biography
'The Petticoat Parade, a true crime biography and social history of Josie de Bray's life is the latest book from award-winning author, Leigh Straw.
'Josie de Bray, aka Madam Monnier, aka Marie Louise Monnier, was a brothel madam who owned most of Roe Street, Perth from WWI up to the 1940s. A returned soldier tried to shoot her dead in her brothel in 1917 and her 'bungalow' was at the centre of underworld violence in the 1920s. She returned to France before WWII to visit family and was bombed repeatedly out of homes there and captured by the Germans. She was a prisoner of war and one story has her in a concentration camp. She survived, returned to Perth in 1947 and took up business again in Roe Street, having made a fortune from the rent collected from her brothels while she was a prisoner of war, up until her death in 1953.' (Publication summary)
- 2022 longlisted Davitt Award — Best True Crime Book
-
y
Angel Of Death : Dulcie Markham, Femme Fatale of the Australian Underworld
Sydney
:
ABC Books
,
2019
15436491
2019
single work
biography
'The newspapers called her 'Australia's most beautiful bad woman' and she was deadly to know...
'This is the story of 'Pretty' Dulcie Markham, a key figure of the underworld of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, who, according to one crime reporter, 'saw more violence and death than any other woman in Australia's history'. Nicknamed the 'Black Widow' and 'Angel of Death' by the crooks, reporters and police who knew her best, Dulcie's lovers were stabbed and gunned down in the most violent years of Australian crime, the 1920s to the 1950s. Not always by her ...'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
- 2020 longlisted Davitt Award — Best True Crime Book
Last amended 29 Apr 2022 12:30:55
